*** If you don't want to read alot of jargon about web hosts, skip to bottom of this post for a message about my server being down. ***



Please don't assume the video above is an endorsement of Mya. It's not that I dislike her music, I nothing it.


The recent heat wave has forced my hand. This server (the one that runs my entire website) is housed on a computer in my 3rd floor apartment office. The problem?: 90 degree weather raises the temperature in my office to around 95 degrees. At this temperature my CPU runs hotter than my computer will allow and the server shuts down. As such I have but 2 options: I can either run my air conditioner all day long during the hotter summer days or I can buy time on a professional web hosting service. As much as I like being anally raped by the electric company I think I'll go with web hosting.

And thus began my journey in to the mouth of madness. Web hosts are a dime a dozen and the supposed "Top 10 Hosting" lists are nothing more than corporate shills giving the higher paying sites a better rank.

I've blogged previously about how my website is set up so I'll not rehash the past. Needless to say trying to find a web host with my requirements was difficult at best. The biggest question, though, is: Do I use a shared host of a virtual private server?

Shared Host
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Pros - Affordable, easy to use, web friendly, secure, tried and true technology.
Cons - Limited control, many web hosts are scams, dumbed down interface.

Virtual Private Server (VPS)
----------------------
Pros - Completely controlled by the user, infinite expandability, dedicated resources at a fraction of the cost
Cons - More expensive than shared hosting, difficult set up, fairly new tech., limited reviews.

For my purposes VPS is the way to go. It affords me the ability to add in uncommon modules such as subversion source code control.

It took me awhile but I finally found a review site I felt I could trust. I can't speak for the validity of this review site but their reviews seem fairly honest and they don't have that smarmy feel of a shill review site. Of course I could be wrong. As I stated above the VPS option can be expensive. Most decent VPS services start at $20.00 dollars, the cheaper ones tend to suck monster balls.

After 3 hours of searching I've decided on Westhost.com. All of their shared hosting options run on a VPS backbone. I imagine these aren't true VPS' in that they don't have their own reserved resources such as RAM and CPU. I'm also guessing that cost savings come at the cost of bandwidth. But for a budget option this might be the site to try.

In the next few weeks I'll post me trials and tribulations as I switch from a home server option to a web host.

Rant: Every time I try to do something new requiring me to use the internet as a resource I realize just how bad the signal to noise ratio has gotten. When did we reach a point when nothing could be trusted? I'm so fucking sick of having to spend countless hours checking and rechecking supposed "facts" simply because the democratized net lends itself better to spammers than it does valid information. Don't get me wrong, I love the net, I just think we need some sort of consortium to help with detecting scams... kinda like a Consumer Reports for sites.

**** Important Info. ****
My server will down a lot in the next few weeks. I'll wait for the Google feed bot to hit my feed so that I can do down and you can still read this post. I'm hoping by the end of next week to be fully migrated. Thank you for your patience.

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