Web Hosting for Scripts Sites

This blog post offers tips and information about web hosting for scripts related sites. Our recommendation would be to order your hosting from this web host for your scripting sites.

Web Hosting for Scripts Sites

There are thousands of scripts written in PHP/ASP/JSP/etc out today. Many more come out each day under a variety of different authors. When you try to visit the homepage of these authors, much of the time they are down or slow. The reason for this is although they are proficient at writing scripts, they do not know how to find the right hosting solution so when their site starts to get popular, the server they are on cannot handle the traffic and crashes. If you are thinking of starting a scripting site, it is crucial that you find the right hosting before you start. Just by doing research a few days ahead of buying a hosting plan will save you months of headaches of dealing with a unreliable hosting company.

Script sites have quite a couple of things to look at when looking for hosting. They must know if the hosting service they choose is going to support the type of language and database they want to write scripts in. They must make sure they are not on a crowded server. They must make sure that the host is lenient on CPU/RAM requirements and has protection in place in case one of their scripts goes haywire. They have to find a host that has prompt 24/7 technical support for emergencies and they must know that there is enough bandwidth to support user downloads of their script. In this article, we will take a look at each of these aspects as well as some of the possible hosting solutions there are for scripting sites.

The first thing a scripting site must do is to make sure that the host has the right platform to support the language they want to use. Most scripts today are either written in PHP, PERL, ASP, or .NET. If you are using the first two, then a Linux server with apache is the best solution for you. If you using the latter two, then a Windows server with Windows IIS is needed. While both Linux and Windows can emulate each other and run both languages, each is just not as good at running what the other one specializes in. If you looking at a Linux solution, you are most likely looking at mySQL or PostSQL as your database whereas if you are looking at a Windows solution, you are most likely going to be looking at MYSQL,MSSQL, or MSACCESS(not recommended) as your database solution.

Once you get your hosting platform figured out, the next step is to find a host with that hosting platform whose server is not overcrowded. Hosts vary on this aspect with some hosts putting only 100 or 200 accounts on a server to some hosts who put thousands of accounts on each server. The more accounts there are on a server, the tighter the CPU/RAM usage is going to be, and the greater the chance the server has of crashing. Before going with a host, always ask for their uptime in the last 3 months and the last 6 months. You want to find a host that can offer 99.5% uptime or better within those time periods. You should also carefully read the host’s terms of service on billing policies for over-usage issues and for terms of account suspension. Many hosts will suspend shared accounts if you go over the CPU/RAM limit or charge you expensive over-usage fees if you go over. Another thing to look out for is the number of simultaneous MYSQL connections allowed at the same time. This can vary from host to host and can be as little as five to more than thirty. For s scripting site, you will definitely want a high number for this as most of your applications will require heavy MYSQL usage. A low limit on this will limit the number of users that can access your site at once and may even cause some trouble when you are testing your script. You will also want to find a host that has protection against run away scripts. It is inevitable that you will make errors in your programming every once in a while and will end up in an infinite loop. When that happens, you’ll want a server that will kill certain processes after they detect that that process is taking up too much CPU or RAM power. Without protection like this, even the smallest mistake can crash the server and get your account deleted.

Once you get the CPU/RAM issues worked out, you’ll want to make sure the host you are thinking of going with a host that has good technical support that can be reached any hour of the day. To get this kind of support, you will probably have to pay a little more than $5/month for a cheap hosting plan, but the investment is well worth it. Ask to talk to the technical support staff of a host before going with a host just to see how knowledgeable they are. Every person on the technical support staff should have a good understanding of server resources and common problems that people are likely to run into via hosting. Ask them how and what steps they took in the past to resolve those problems. You will also want to check on forums such as webhostingtalk.com to get an honest opinion of what the customer support at the host is like. At this point, you should also check the age of the host as new hosts are often overnight businesses and vanish within days because of bad planning. Try to pick a host that has been around for at least 2 years for better results.

The last thing that you should look at is the amount of bandwidth that the host offers. This should not be a huge priority on your list unless you are offering downloads that are hundreds of mb’s in size. Most hosts offer several hundred gigabytes of bandwidth to customers for a very cheap price so for the vast majority of users, bandwidth is not a huge problem. However, if you do have big downloads on your site, you’ll want to make sure that your bandwidth is sufficient to handle the amount of downloads that users will request.
Now that we have looked at the requirements for script-site hosting, lets look at some of the hosting options available.

1. Free hosting – This is a bad choice for a serious script developer. Free hosting lacks a lot of the options that are needed for serious application development. Many free hosting services do not have any database you can use and the ones that do often run on slow or congested servers. Technical support is usually bad to non-existent since free hosting does not make enough profit to keep any technical staff around. If you need to go for a free host, go for one that requires a banner ad or forum posting as these hosts are more likely to be reliable for more than just a few weeks. Free hosts that are supported by a paid counterpart are also more dependable than free hosts just running by themselves. Overall, I would highly suggest that you avoid free hosting for a script development site. The only two free hosts that I could recommend are stonerocket.net and zoomcities.com . Both these free hosts are supported by their paid hosting counterparts and both require forum posting to keep your free account. However, both services offer PHP and MYSQL and provides good technical support, even for their free hosting customers, which is very rare to find in the free hosting world.
2. Shared hosting – Shared hosting is when people get tired of free hosting and want to move to the next tier. You are paying for a bit of space on a server with hundreds of other of users. Shared hosting is not a bad start for a scripting site although you will probably run into some usage problems along the line with shared hosting. There is almost always a CPU/Bandwidth cap on shared accounts and many hosts take a suspend-now-and-ask-questions later approach with customers who have shared accounts. When choosing a shared account it is best to choose a smaller host that has been around for a while than to choose one of the larger hosts with tens of thousands of customers. The larger hosts such as 1&1 generally just treat you as a number and do not give great technical support when problems arise. The answer “it seems to work for me” is an answer that is often quoted when you ask their technical support for help. The number of simultaneous MYSQL connections allowed is also a problem on shared hosting as most hosts have a limit. If you go over this limit, you site will be slowed and the additional users will not be able to access your site. Runaway scripts are also a large problem on shared solutions and hosts are not very tolerant of bad or inefficient PHP scripts as these scripts run the risk of crashing the entire server. If you do go with shared hosting, ask around on webhostingtalk and find a smaller host that will work with you and help you solve problems. These are far better than the large overselling hosts who use huge numbers for space and bandwidth to draw people into their service.
3. VPS Hosting – This is where a lot of scripting sites eventually migrate to when they outgrow a shared plan. Most people who get VPS hosting get a managed VPS account and have their host take care of the server issues. In a VPS, you are sectioned off part of the server and do not share your CPU or RAM resources with anyone. No one can use your resources and you cannot use anyone else’s resources. In a VPS, you are given root access into your part of the server and have administrator status. Many experienced server people choose a VPS because of the control they can have over their hosting environment. In many ways a VPS is just like a dedicated, except you don’t control an entire machine and in general a VPS is less powerful than a dedicated server. Account suspensions due to over-usages do not occur on a VPS but website slowdowns can occur if your VPS does not have the CPU or RAM resources to power your site. When that happens, you’ll either need to upgrade your VPS plan to the next level or get a dedicated plan. In general, a VPS is good enough for most scripting sites and unless your script is popular like PHPBB, WordPress, or Joomla, a good VPS plan should be sufficient enough for your needs.
4. Dedicated Server – Dedicated servers are for scripting sites that get above 10,000 unique visitors a day. At this point a VPS may not be able to handle all the MYSQL requests that are coming in and the website may slow. If your getting a dedicated server for a scripting site, get at least a mid-level dedicated server with a dual-core and 1GB of RAM. Anything less would be little better than a high-end VPS plan and will not help you expand. I would also recommended getting a managed dedicated server as it will save you in the long run when technical problems arise. Management usually adds on $75-$100 per month on a hosting plan, but this is far less than you’ll pay if you don’t have it and must pay the hourly rate of about $100/hour for technical support and service if you have an unmanaged plan. Most hosting companies let you choose the amount of management you want so you can choose one based on your skill level with servers.
5. Clustered shared environment – This is the new “datagrid” environment that places like Mosso.com use. It is like a shared environment except instead of one server, you are running off of the combined power of hundreds of servers. While over-usage by a particular user can be a problem, it is far less likely in this environment because of the raw amount of CPU/RAM that is available across the datagrid. However, SQL issues are common in this kind of environment as the new “SQL containers” are still being worked on. This is an interesting setup but until it becomes fully mature, I’d suggest to go with a more traditional VPS or dedicated rather than this solution.

So those are the requirements and options for script-site hosting. Remember to know the requirements for the specific kind(s) of scripts you will be writing and choose a host accordingly. Pay attention to key details like server resources and limitations and work with the host to find a solution. Choosing a solid and upgradeable plan will go a long way in determining the success of your scripting site.