Hosting support

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Welcome to the 2008 Hosting Evaluations and Recommendations Thread!

As has been tradition for a few years now, this is the thread to post your recommendations and experiences with Drupal hosts.

Before taking the advice of some random stranger, there are a few things to consider:

1. How long has the person been active in the Drupal community? Are they a new account making their first post, or a seasoned developer with real experience?
2. Do they actually have any Drupal sites running on the host in question? How long have the sites been hosted there?

And here are just a few of the things you should look for in a host:

1. Speed! Specifically, database speed. Just logging into Drupal requires over 100 database queries, so SQL performance is critical.
2. Reliability: If your site is down, you're losing business. Can the host handle your traffic?
3. Shell Access (SSH): While not strictly necessary to install Drupal, having access to a command prompt will make your life much easier.
4. PHP5 Support: Drupal 7 will require it, so if you plan on upgrading, make sure your host supports it.

Looking to create a Drupal video website, and will probably use FFMPEG to convert the videos to Flash. At present I'm using Siteground as my host. If I want FFMPEG from them, I have to get my own server. I've talked to someone at Cirtex Hosting, which seems to offer FFMPEG as part of their basic package. Are there any other companies out there that offer FFMPEG? Any of them recommended?

Hi,

I am quite new in Drupal so excuse my possibly obvious question.

What I could not work out is why people look for UK based hosting company as opposed to US ones when hosting Drupal websites. US ones are way less expensive.

Does it have to do with some legal matters, esp. if a commercial website is hosted? Or it is just a personal preference?

Many thanks

Alex

http://www.mattfarina.com/2007/12/18/time-pressure-webhosts

Can anyone recommend a host that has a large php max_upload limit? Dreamhost is capped at 4MB. For nontechnical users, it's such a hassle to upload a large podcast via ftp before linking to it with drupal.

Is anyone else having email and MySQL uptime issues with Bluehost?

I love the fact that I get command prompt access with Bluehost and that they have good support but latlly I have been having some uptime issues and I was wondering if anyone else was seeing this to.

Thanks,
Steve