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  #1 (permalink)  
Old Sep 10th, 2003, 15:13
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UK Hosting

Hey All, I am working with a partner company of mine to bring better hosting to the UK. Hoping for some feedback.

<ul>[*]Who do you guys currently use?[*]What kind of features do you guys look for?[*]If you found a better deal...would you switch?[/list]
Thanks for the feedback.
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 15:54
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Stephen, we use 3 different hosting companies to offer the 3 different levels of hosting our wide range of clients require.

Firstly we have a reseller account with http://www.fasthosts.co.uk, its pretty good and reliable and the online control panel is excellent, it gives us full control over email accounts and ftp and many many other features which is perfect for our smaller clients because it doesnt cost us much.

Next is a reseller account with http://www.Netbenefit.com, the hosting we purchase is always shared windows 2000, the uptime and connection speeds are excellent, DNS management is good and so it the email management, they also have a basic online control panel. They are more expensive but you get what you pay for.

Next is a Dedicated server with either BT, UUNet, or the slightly cheaper http://www.dedicated-servers.co.uk

The features i look for are:
- Windows platform
- CDONTS or simular
- Backup
- Stats
- Email management
- DNS management
- FTP management
- DSN management
- fast connection speeds

Thats all really, so far we havent had the requirement for .net or a large selection of COM's or even a great demand for SQL server. Usually when a client needs these things we sell them a dedicated server!!

If i was going to switch it wouldnt be because it was cheaper, im prepared to pay more and have better service/uptime/connection/helpdesk rather than cheap hosting. Its quality, not quantity!

Hope that helps?
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 16:22
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That is great feedback. Anyone else?!
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 17:04
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Don't get CactusJack started on the subject of Fasthosts!!! heh heh
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 17:07
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Rob

Don't get CactusJack started on the subject of Fasthosts!!! heh heh

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
You rang?

http://www.cactushop.com/support/vie...recor=0&ID=575

We even have an article for Fasthosts in our knowledgebase, we see so many customers with problems there. We used to host there to... it is completely 100% crap service and reliability. And SLOW.

FarceHosts I believe most customers call them.
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 17:09
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Sorry.... i can't stop laughing to finish this post.......
....
...
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 17:10
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Rob

Sorry.... i can't stop laughing to finish this post.......
....
...
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
GRRRR Farcehosts. You shouldn't have got me started on those ****ers... GRRRRR....
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 17:16
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Stephen

Hey All, I am working with a partner company of mine to bring better hosting to the UK. Hoping for some feedback.

<ul>[*]Who do you guys currently use?[*]What kind of features do you guys look for?[*]If you found a better deal...would you switch?[/list]
Thanks for the feedback.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
These are the things that are important...

1) reliability. If you are reselling in particular you don't want to have irate customers on the blower all the time because there site is down. I'd rather pay to have reliability.
2) online control panels for setup are cool
3) cost is obviously a factor but to me if you are hosting a business site the different between 50quid a year and 200quid aint that big if one is crap and the other is good fast and reliable.

One thing, probably the only thing I liked about farcehosts was the fact that you could create a site that you didn't yet have the domain transferred for, design it only and then map a domain to in in real time (no DNS lag) for client to view. We could create www.clientsite.com before client had moved DNS and then map cactusoftdevelopment.co.uk to it so client could view online. Once happy they could move the DNS and we got our domain back to use on another clients site. This is really useful.
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Old Sep 10th, 2003, 17:24
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I was more bothered about a cheap service, but my current provider, http://www.echolima.com/ are complete pants. They offer a huge amount of technology, bags of webspace and transfer, but the reliability is dire and the tech support and online FAQ's are terrible.

I don't mind paying that little bit extra for a decent service - And half of the features I haven't used anyway.
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 07:42
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When did you last use "Farcehosts"? Because I would say they are very reliable and fast now, no problems at all mate! Admitably over the last 5 years that ive been using them, there have been problems, but nowadays they kick ass! fo shizzle
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 10:44
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I always would recommend www.tollon.com

I have prolly had around 4 hours downtime in 3 years... not bad.

Fast and reliable and the tech support aint too bad either.

Lots of features, components, etc and loaded with the .NET framework.

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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 11:14
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i would also recommend http://www.crystaltech.com/ - great range of features (including a scheduler, which allows you to schedule the execution of an asp page! handy)
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 12:39
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Smokie

When did you last use "Farcehosts"? Because I would say they are very reliable and fast now, no problems at all mate! Admitably over the last 5 years that ive been using them, there have been problems, but nowadays they kick ass! fo shizzle
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Last used Farcehosts about 2 years ago for our customers but moved to Tollon.com about that time (see robs post below). Tollon are great, we've probably got 60 or 70 sites hosted there, including some semi dedicated server ones. They fix problems when they occur and seem to be interested in making sure customers don't run crap code that takes down servers... they have an error logging service and you get warned if your code is causing errors. This is good as it means buggy sites get removed. I like that alot.

We still have many customers who buy our software who use Farcehosts. I can tell as soon as they give us tech support questions that they are on Farcehosts, hence the article in our KB. Common ones are "my sites keeps going dead", "my site is so ----ing slow" or the classic (and I've never seen this happen anywhere else) "RPC server is unavailable". That last one only ever happens on Farcehosts... refresh and it goes, but people still get sick of it happening.

And Farcehosts support??? Emails never returned, by the time we got to the front of the phone queue the server had been rebooted so the clown tells us he sees no problem.

Try this, we did. Can probably post code if you need it. Basically we had a global.asa line that logged each time the IIS was restarted (a good sign that something went wrong). One day we saw IIS restarted 23 times in one day. That was when we moved. We'd had enough.. our site was constantly down. Farcehosts didn't give a ****. They just do not care about keeping customers happy, "hey, we spend X million on advertising each week, so why do we give a **** about your business?"

I still give this script to customers when they have problems. They are horrified to see so many restarts in one day. The most I ever had at Tollon is 7, and they moved the site to another server when I asked them. Now we average about 4 or 5 IIS restarts per month. Most of these take around a minute I would guess, others are patches being installed hence reboot.
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 13:14
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CactusJack, i know what you mean, ive had the same problems in past, but they now run Windows 2003 server so theres no more of those RPC errors, thank god - and they just seem to be better in general now, they have a support forum, emails with ticket numbers, and when ive had problems, they've phoned me back.

To be honest i think its just the luck of the draw, some people have a nightmare with fasthosts, overs dont. I had a look on DooYoo (http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/services/tel...sthosts_co_uk/) and read some of the opinions of fasthosts, some people love em, some hate em - its just the luck of the draw. Of course that doesnt help, a good hosting company should be good all of the time!!

One that ive heard really really good things about is http://www.mediatemple.com
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 13:15
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I think it would be a very interesting addition to this thread to have the code you mention, so people can check it on their own hosts....

Cheers!
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 13:41
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Rob

I think it would be a very interesting addition to this thread to have the code you mention, so people can check it on their own hosts....

Cheers!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Here you go. Save as global.asa in root of site. Then create a file called server.txt in root. Good idea to put the date and time you do this as first line.

Hey we could all do this on our sites and also include hosting company name at top of server.txt. Then we could have a list of links so people could see rough reliability on each hosting company, and these would be real sites, not monitored ones like other phoney tests?
Code: Select all
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript" RUNAT="Server">
Sub Application_OnStart
	'==FrontPage Generated - startspan==
	Dim FrontPage_UrlVars(0)
	'--
	Application("FrontPage_UrlVars") = FrontPage_UrlVars
	'==FrontPage Generated - endspan==
whichfile=server.mappath("server.txt")
On Error Resume Next
Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set thisfile = fs.OpenTextFile(whichfile, 8,0)
if err then
Set thisfile = fs.OpenTextFile(whichfile, 8,1)
thisfile.writeline "Date & Time of Server Restart"
end if
logwrite= formatdatetime(now(),0)
thisfile.writeline logwrite
thisfile.close
set thisfile = nothing
set fs = nothing
End Sub
Sub Session_OnStart
	FrontPage_StartSession '==FrontPage Generated==
End Sub
Sub FrontPage_StartSession
	On Error Resume Next
	if Len(Application("FrontPage_VRoot")) > 0 then Exit Sub
	' discover the VRoot for the current page;
	' walk back up VPath until we find global.asa
	Vroot = Request.ServerVariables("PATH_INFO")
	strG1 = "global.asa"
	strG2 = "Global.asa"
	iCount = 0
	do while Len(Vroot) > 1
		idx = InStrRev(Vroot, "/")
		if idx > 0 then
			Vroot = Left(Vroot,idx)
		else
			' error; assume root web
			Vroot = "/"
		end if
		if FrontPage_FileExists(Server.MapPath(Vroot & strG1)) then exit do
		if FrontPage_FileExists(Server.MapPath(Vroot & strG2)) then exit do
		if Right(Vroot,1) = "/" then Vroot = Left(Vroot,Len(Vroot)-1)
		iCount = iCount + 1
		if iCount > 100 then
			' error; assume root web
			Vroot = "/"
			exit do
		end if
	loop
	' map all URL= attributes in _ConnectionString variables
	Application.Lock
	if Len(Application("FrontPage_VRoot")) = 0 then
		Application("FrontPage_VRoot") = Vroot
		UrlVarArray = Application("FrontPage_UrlVars")
		for i = 0 to UBound(UrlVarArray)
			if Len(UrlVarArray(i)) > 0 then FrontPage_MapUrl(UrlVarArray(i))
		next
	end if
	Application.Unlock
End Sub
Function FrontPage_FileExists(fspath)
	On Error Resume Next
	FrontPage_FileExists = False
	set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
	Err.Clear
	set istream = fs.OpenTextFile(fspath)
	if Err.Number = 0 then
		FrontPage_FileExists = True
		istream.Close
	end if
	set istream = Nothing
	set fs = Nothing
End Function
Sub FrontPage_MapUrl(AppVarName)
	' convert URL attribute in conn string to absolute file location
	strVal = Application(AppVarName)
	strKey = "URL="
	idxStart = InStr(strVal, strKey)
	If idxStart = 0 Then Exit Sub
	strBefore = Left(strVal, idxStart - 1)
	idxStart = idxStart + Len(strKey)
	idxEnd = InStr(idxStart, strVal, ";")
	If idxEnd = 0 Then
		strAfter = ""
		strURL = Mid(strVal, idxStart)
	Else
		strAfter = ";" & Mid(strVal, idxEnd + 1)
		strURL = Mid(strVal, idxStart, idxEnd - idxStart)
	End If
	strOut = strBefore & Server.MapPath(Application("FrontPage_VRoot") & strURL) & strAfter
	Application(AppVarName) = strOut
End Sub
</SCRIPT>
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 13:48
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i think thats a great idea, heres a list of hosting companies i can monitor:

Netbenefit
itex-ci.net
WorldCom/UUNet
link-connect.net.uk
Keme
Fasthosts
Internetters Ltd
mailbox.co.uk

Could you post an example of the server.txt file? (what date format should it have?) ...i'll provide links to all the server.txt's when im done.
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 13:59
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Cheers for sharing your code, It will definitely be of use, especially because of what you said about putting it on our sites to get a *real* view of server resets.

Q: Don't the global.asa/Application_OnStart only execute on the first page hit after a reset? or does it happen immediately after a reset?

u2o

<nag>
This is a good example for a "Shared Code" forum.
</nag>
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 14:56
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Q: Don't the global.asa/Application_OnStart only execute on the first page hit after a reset? or does it happen immediately after a reset?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yup you're right, only when the first page is hit. I imagine the quietest of sites should still get hit at least once between restarts of the server though - even on fasthosts.
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Old Sep 11th, 2003, 16:59
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by u2orange

Cheers for sharing your code, It will definitely be of use, especially because of what you said about putting it on our sites to get a *real* view of server resets.

Q: Don't the global.asa/Application_OnStart only execute on the first page hit after a reset? or does it happen immediately after a reset?

u2o

<nag>
This is a good example for a "Shared Code" forum.
</nag>
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Yes this is true, it will fire when the first page is hit. Assuming a site has ok traffic it will give you an idea of restarts, but clearly if the site ain't busy it won't show many of the restarts if they are more regular than visitors!
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