Web Hosting
There's a lot to be said about web hosting, but I know many of you just want to get down to business, so I'll try to organize this page in the most convenient manner possible. Let's start with the available plans and then move on to the gory details.
Packages
I currently offer two different hosting packages. The two packages are nearly identical, so let's first look at the difference between them. If you want to know the details of what the two packages offer, all you have to do is scroll down to the next section.
| Package | Disk Space | Monthly Transfer | Free Domain | Monthly Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 250MB | 10000MB | No | $2.50 Order! |
| Standard | 1000MB | 40000MB | Yes | $9.00 Order! |
If you purchase your hosting package on an annual basis instead of monthly, there is a 16.67% discount. (Essentially, two months are free.)
What Do You Get?
Both packages come loaded with features to make your web hosting experience as comfortable as possible:
- PHP 5.2.6
- Perl 5.8.8
- MySQL 5.0.51a
- Ruby on Rails
- cPanel Control Panel
- Shell (SSH) Access
- Fantastico Script Installer
As stated above, I currently use cPanel to manage my hosting servers. Love it or hate it, it does seem to be the industry standard. I do, however, always keep looking into other options.
My Philosophy (or "Why Web Hosting?")
There are a seemingly infinite number of web hosts out there, both large and small. A disturbing trend I've noticed over the past couple of years is the inflation of the amounts of disk space and data transfer certain hosting companies are offering. It's not that more space and transfer is a bad thing, but dishonesty sure is. I've heard several stories from users who expected to have even unlimited space, until they reached some invisible wall and had their account canceled.
I'm not going to lie to you, of course. Unfortunate as it may seem, there is a wall. No host can truly offer everyone unlimited disk space or data transfer. I've chosen to take a different route with Calindora. Instead of hoping most customers don't cross my invisible line, I've chosen to offer a generous amount of space straight up, with no catches. You'll know exactly what you're getting and how much it's going to cost you. That's a peace of mind that can be as valuable as an ethereal amount of space.
Aside from that, there are a few other tenets of my hosting philosophy:
- I don't place any extra artificial limits on your hosting packages. You can have as many add-on domains, parked domains, subdomains, databases, e-mail accounts, and FTP accounts as you can fit in your allotted disk space.
- I intend the amount of disk space and data transfer I offer to be more than plenty for a small to medium-sized site. I expect that sites that need more of either are probably large enough to warrant a virtual private server, at the very least. Excellent options are available from several companies, including Slicehost and Linode. I recommend Xen over other virtualization solutions. All that said, if you do have a genuine need for additional disk space or data transfer, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm more than happy to work something out.
- Software is upgraded as soon as feasible, keeping stability in mind. Using cPanel does induce a delay in new software arriving, but I do try to upgrade PHP for instance as soon as new versions become available via cPanel.
- If you need anything else, such as a Perl module or anything else you can think of, please just ask. If it's feasible, I'm perfectly willing to do it. I might even be willing to host a Django application on another server if it'd be helpful. (Of course, the other server isn't client-configurable, but that's the price you pay, I suppose.)
Hosting Details
That's right, here's the full disclosure regarding my hosting setup. I can't expect you to pay for hosting if you don't trust that I know what I'm doing.
Calindora currently consists of two servers, one of which is currently used for hosting client web sites. Both servers are actually virtual private servers provided by Slicehost. I have chosen virtual private servers for this task due to their much lower cost. In addition, my testing has revealed that as long as the servers aren't overcrowded, performance is more than acceptable. If a time comes when the performance is no longer acceptable, I will migrate to physical servers, but I don't expect this to occur anytime soon, if at all.
I am not sure of the limit of the number of users per server I expect to enforce, but my estimates indicate that given average users, it will most likely be around 100. For reference, some web hosts have been known to put as many as several thousand users on a single server. In any case, the exact number will be determined in such a way to keep all web sites performing well.
All user data is backed up every four hours to a remote location. Even so, I do recommend that you keep your own backups as well, since you can never be too safe with your data. cPanel provides an excellent backup tool.
If you have any additional questions regarding the details of my web hosting, don't hesitate to ask.