Hosting support

Hello,

Last me a hostprovider that I've only been with for 4 months went out of business without letting customers
know, leaving me in the lurch. I tried switching to a company called Siteground on Friday and their customer
support was hideous so I cancelled and tried a service called SiteLogic, I'm having a ton of issues trying to get
drupal to work on their service, and they haven't responded to a single support request in the last 4 days, so I'm
going to move to someone else on Friday, because I'm not getting the "warm fuzzies" from Startlogic.

I have yet to find a shared host that will provide for a modest mail list.

My hope is to set up a forum and then tie the forum into a mail list so that when USER#X posts a message to the forum, Drupal will send an email to all other users who have opted in at the forum level. That is, I'm not expecting my users to have to opt in to every single thread.

However, when I suggest to a webhost (ixwebhosting, lunarpages, dathorn) that my email traffic might approach 10,000 messages in a day (500 people with 20 messages a day - actually, I can see it getting much higher) and note that Yahoo!Groups provides this service for free, I get told in no uncertain terms that the normal limit is something like 200 messages per hour and anything more than that will get my site shut down. Further, none of them will even allow me to purchase an add-on just for the email levels anticipated.

So I have a question or two or three:

1) Is having a mailing list on a Drupal site fundamentally inconsistent with hosting services?

2) Am I misunderstanding the number of emails that a mailing list will generate? That is, suppose 500 members with 20 messages per day. Is it possible that the system only really sends 20 email messages out, but that each has a really, really long "To:" header?

3) Assume the answers to 1) and 2) are Yes and No, respectively. Is anybody aware of a third party SMTP email provider that would support the scenario mentioned?

It might be eaiser to find the Holy Grail than a good web host.

A year ago, I set out to find a good web host. It took about a month of research, longer than anything else in my project. I found Lunarpages, and I was happy.

But now, Lunarpages says they no longer support Drupal, which has sent me looking again for web host, and pulling my hair out in the process.

I have tried a number of the hosting review sites, but most of them have bogus information since they make their money off of referral fees and will recommend whichever hosts pays the most. And hosts which pay out more to acquire new customers often times make up for that expense by overselling their resources, which is what it looks like happened to Lunarpages.

I have scoured the forums here looking for hosts, but it is a very tedious process which thus far has not led me to what I need. Specifically, I am looking for an inexpensive shared account that can host five domains that I can use for development, which can be ramped up to a semi-dedicated or dedicated server when the need arises.

It would seem that a community like this one, which can produce such a great CMS, could find a better way to organize a list of Drupal-friendly hosts, complete with ratings and reviews. If someone could build the structure, I'd be happy to pass on what I have found in my searching so far.

I am off again on my quest.

hi guys i need your opnion. tell me if its worth it. I have seen a reseller hosting with the following plan.

$25.00 a month.
5gb disk space
50gb bandwith

i was thinking, because good hosts are hard to find.... and those GREAT hosts, dont want to sell plans cheaper than $5.00 a month, unless you pay YEARLY. so, i was thinking if a few friends got to together and bought the above package and divide it as follows:

this is for 5 users, having to pay this amount monthly. so when they dont want or cant afford it anymore, they can come out of the plan, saving you from having to pay this small monthly fee which is usually charged yearly with BIG GREAT HOSTS. BIG GREAT hosts i found that, they want to charge yearly for such small amounts. otherwise they wont give you this cheap. minimum is $9.95 usualy. but say you want GREAT HOSTS but want to pay a small monthly fee, is this a good idea?

5 friends share

$5 a month each
1gb space
10gb bandwith

on the above plan with a GREAT HOST. only pay monthly to one friend, he pays off the reseller account.

my question is this:

1. how many of you would go for this plan if i said, it will be hosted on the top rated host, (we can review drupal hosting forum and see who is winning host with good feedback.)

REMEMBER: THAT GREAT HOST WONT GIVE YOU THIS PLAN UNLESS YOU PAY YEARLY.

2. IS THE PLAN ABOVE WORTH? $5 A MONTH FOR 1GB SPACE AND 10GB BANDWITH.

versus setting it up on your own computer. Are there things that one just can't do if their site is hosted, rather than totally under their own control?

I'm just trying to decide if there are any negatives associated with keeping my (low traffic) site on my own DSL connection, rather than spending $3/month or so to put it somewhere else.

Obviously, if my site was going to be a high traffic site, I would want it to be on a server at a hosting company. But I don't think it will be.

Thanks

Has anyone tried to set up a dedicated server using *outsourced* admin management?

Hi, everyone...

So... I'm going over my options and considering getting my own dedicated server (or even colocating! ... my god... i'm probably jumping too far in) but i have virtually ZERO sys admin experience. so, i'm wondering if any of these management companies, like rack911 or platinumservermanagement, can handle the admin responsibilities for me. And what people's opinion of these external management companies are.

i guess, i feel pretty clueless when it comes to stuff like setting up a firewall, security, etc. -- and so i'm trying to figure out the best way to handle it all.... if /when i make the jump...

Also... are there any management companies that specialize in drupal and can handle a drupal install on a dedicated server. Platinumservermanagement charges $30/month, I think... and rack911 charges "by the job". But I don't know if they'd be that much help with drupal specific issues.

I mean I'm reading through some of the forum messages, and tho' people seem to be able to get things up and running ok, there's a lot of optimization that sometimes looks problematic -- and this is for people who already seem pretty far up the hierarchy of drupal knowhow, like bjaspan or nbd --- :-)

i'm pretty sure I could get something running, with the ol' apache, php, and mysql... ( heck, i installed WAMP on my home computer ... how different could it be right? :-) ) but there's fancier stuff that I think I'd need help with... like installing exim / postfix and installing configs for og2list, etc. that seems like it would be tougher... and so, i'm not sure how to do this and whether any of these outside management companies would be of help....