Hosting support

I work at a webhosting company in Sweden and i wanted to start hosting preinstalled Drupal accounts for people who don't know how to make their own website and would benefit from a preinstalled Drupal account with lots of themes and modules to use. However i ran into the obvious problem of protecting the settings.php files so i'm wondering if there is a way to turn off the PHP execution function in a file somewhere so that the different drupal administrators can't turn it on?

We run PHP as CGI on our UNIX webservers though so i guess in theory i could protect the files by creating one vhost for each drupal domain, running each vhost with a different user and group for suexec and making the files in the drupal directory executable and readable by all. Then i could just change the permissions of the settings.php files to match each domains user. I haven't tried this yet because i'm waiting for the Drupal version with support for PHP 5.2.0 so i can move the Drupal hosting account to another webserver where we run the latest PHP and Apache 2.

I would still like to get the question answered though because it's good to know, possibly if i end up with a server running PHP as a module, how would you protect the files there? I'm asking only because the sites function seems to be such a core feature of Drupal, basically you can't avoid using the sites feature to some extent when you use Drupal.

Virtuoso Net Solutions get a good write up in several posts. I looked at their reseller plans. PHP is listed as CGI, not a module and there is no mention of a PHP accelerator, control of php.ini, or .htaccess. Is anyone using Virtuoso Net Solutions and:
PHP as a module?
A PHP accelerator?
Custom php.ini?
.htaccess?

petermoulding.com/web_architect

Hi,

I am looking at hosting companies for a new project and came across Dreamhost. I've seen a mixed bag of reviews about Dreamhost on the forums. I've read that their database queries are slow and that some users experienced some noticeable down time last year. I also read that people when they sign up are being required to fax in a copy of their credit card info. If you have had any experience with Dreamhost, could you give me some feedback please?

I am trying to find the best hosting companies being used by members, and to get a brief run down of what they think about their choice of host.

Please can users list their chosen hosting companies and a brief outline of theirs costs and the services they have.

cheers

Hi,

I've read the hosting company thread and am still trying to determine the best way to go in terms of a shared web host. I am a web designer with less than a year of pro experience, my experience is more along the lines of marketing and general business project management. In this case, I have spent alot of time researching open source CMS for a large non profit site (Church) that I have bid on and Drupal makes the most sense. All the functionality plus a table free design!

Prior to starting my freelance design business, I was the marketing manager for a shared web hosting company hence my hesitation at making a decision on a shared web host for what may be a very important client to my new business:) I have used godaddy for my clients thus far (no CMS installation) and with each new account, I become increasingly unhappy with them. After having a bad professional experience with a smaller web host as an employer and seeing the inner workings of the company, my thought was "go big", at least I know they have to provide the services they advertise and that they won't close their doors unexpectedly. This is true but I find that godaddy has many limitations-the biggest issue for me was their lack of root access for an ecommerce site I set up. They only will install their own SSL and ALL of their tech support replies offer apology as their only explanation as to why what I am looking to accomplish cannot be done (i.e. no way to schedule a cron job to back up the data base for my ecommerce client). Lessons learned. As a marketer, I did not even know all of the questions I needed to be asking as a designer so I come to Drupal with many more valid questions (I hope):)

I'm about to set up 4 or 5 Drupal sites that I will run (I'm reviving a few blogs, helping out a musician friend and another friend w/ a small business).

I can set up, say, 5 accounts at SiteGround all for $25 a month, which seems reasonable, but would it be better to run them all off 1 drupal install / 1 database?

My goals:

- spend as little as possible
- do as little technical setup as possible (SiteGround has 1-click install, I can add modules etc. etc.)

Any advice welcome!