Simple Invoices - Forum

I have been using Lunar Pages (www.lunarpages.com) for a while now and have relatively few problems with them. They are very quick to update to the latest versions of products like MySQL and PHP so that development can take advantage of any new features. The other nice thing about their setup is that additional config lines can be added to the PHP. I have not installed Simple Invoices onto the server there yet but feel that it should not be a problem. Have been looking at slicehost though after lurking here for a while and you mentioning them. I have 4 separate accounts right now on Lunar Pages so would actually save money switching.
Regards,
Paul

If you don't mind my asking, what draws you to a VPS? Unless you shell out a lot of money for a VPS, you tend to get an underpowered system that will actually run slower than a shared hosting account (which makes sense when you consider a bohemith shared server even with 300+ sites sharing it will only have maybe 10 sites getting any traffic at any given moment, versus a VPS having very limited RAM and having to wait its turn for CPU cycles). The two advantages to a VPS that I see are isolation from others (i.e. some other site getting the digg effect affecting your site also), and root access. Plus, shared hosting is usually much cheaper. :)

[quote=rvnomad]
I have been using Lunar Pages (www.lunarpages.com) for a while now ...


Thanks Paul, i'll checkout lunarpages.com - they have MySQL 5 & PHP 5.2+ available so that helps alot

i'd recommend swapping to slicehost if you already got 4 accounts on lunar as they have been getting great write-ups and look really good

Cheers

Justin

[quote=speedpixel]
If you don't mind my asking, what draws you to a VPS?


Hey Stephen,

was mainly looking for root access so can install and do whatever i want
- the next major release of simple invoices may be a little tricky to install
-- will require PHP 5.2 (PDO Mysql or Postgres) which not all hosts provide

if i can find a decent shared host with php5.2, mysql5 and ssh i'll be happy enough

Cheers

Justin

Hi justin,
We're using bluehost.com for and are fully satisfied
price is good - services too
you get what they promise
try the live chat - surprising !
cheers
Phil

Justin,

I still have plenty of space on my "ovh.com" account.
We can make some room for SimpleInvoices on it...

They provide PHP5, MySQL5, HTTPS, SSH, FTP, etc...

Greg

Thanks guys for the suggestions

I've just missed the cut off day to cancel the current servage account (need some more time to sort out backups, dns, etc..) - so another couple of months of the same - but its not the end of the world

will most likely look at moving to lunarpages

though eleven2.com put up a good offer - its not enough to get it over the line

Thanks again everyone for all the offers via email etc..

Cheers

Justin

Justin,
I am about to move my shared hosting to a new data center. (which by the way is totally green, solar and wind powered) I'd be willing to do the hosting for this site for credit.
Also I noticed that you are using drupal for parts of the site. I keep a private drupal repo, that has what I consider the most necessary modules and stuff.
All your requirements are there but root. and for free.

JOsh

I am actually with eleven2.com, and they have recently started upgrading their servers, memory and etc. They have also updated MySQL to 5 and PHP to 5.2. Their support is good, helpful, and fast.

Thanks Pixels,

I've read ALOT of bad reviews about eleven2 so that was teh main reason for not swapping to them

i'll review the situation again in a few months and see

Cheers

Justin

Well you are going to find bad reviews for every host, even some of the better ones, like mediatemple.net. I had no problem with eleve2.com, and when I contacted their support, they were always fast and helpful. I have recently found geekstorage.com. I am thinking of getting a reseller account with them. Also their vps accounts are priced reasonably.

Also both of these, eleven2 and geekstorage offer 60 days money back, so you can test them out, and most other hosting companies offer at least 30 days, but I think, for me at least, 30 days isn't enough to test out to see how a hosting company is.

hmmm thanks

i like the sounds of geekstorage - thanks for the link - that reseller plan sounds like what im

cheers

justin

I actually just moved away from geekstorage because I experienced a fair amount of downtime while hosting there. I hate putting negative feedback on a public forum like this, because it's likely they will change in the future, or that maybe I just had a unique bad experience. But I thought I would share a couple of things that made me decide to ultimately move, and maybe make anyone reading a bit more informed with them. First, I would recommend taking a look at their forums, where they post if a server is having continued issues ... as a customer, it just appeared to me like the downtime (a few days during the February incident) could have been cut in half a lot of times if they truly had a server on the ready for disaster recovery situations, or a more-robust disaster recovery plan in general. Another thing that urked me was that, even though they post a phone number, it always goes to voicemail, day or night. Maybe this was just my experience because I would call after a couple of hours of a ticket going unanswered regarding a server being offline, but that is the time to answer the phone.

Like I said you will hear bad things about any hosting company, when I was looking for hosting, I stumbled upon eleven2. They had just what I wanted, so I went on and read some thnkgs that people said about eleven2, and most were not good, but anyway, I went on. As of now I didn't have any big problems with eleven2, and like I said their support is helpful, informative, and fast. Since their reseller accounts are bit more money then what others offer, like geekstorage.com, and for now it's a bit too much for me to pay. I am planning going with geekstorage.com prettey soon, if I don't find anything better, going to get 3 months, and I will fully test them out, before I start using them fully. I am actually going to simulate some of the things, when I test them out, like a big traffic spike, to see how their servers perform, and I am going to have monitoring 24/7 for server and site uptime. If anyone knows of any other companies that offers something simillar to what geekstorage offers, when it comes to price, features, and offering reseller account, that I can test out, and post my findings here.

[quote=Pixels]Like I said you will hear bad things about any hosting company
Absolutely, and that is why I wanted to be careful to make my post to be more of a "my experience was" post rather than a "they are" post. Take it for a grain of salt, because ymmv (your mileage may vary).

[quote=Pixels]I am actually going to simulate some of the things, when I test them out, like a big traffic spike, to see how their servers perform, and I am going to have monitoring 24/7 for server and site uptime.

I agree; this is an absolute must with any new hosting provider. FYI, I am monitoring using site24x7.com, which has very reasonable pricing. Just be sure to use a Gmail email address (or some other external address) instead of your domain name, so that you get email alerts when your site does go down and your usual domain/email is offline. :) In my experience, (again, ymmv) the server load was typically pretty high (i.e. within the 8-11 range).

I have actually done this once, that's why I am going to do it again. It was actually for my friend. From doing this I have found out, that the hosting company and the server his site was on didn't handle traffic that well, and that was, on my first test, when I had the site accessed once every minute. It was apparent really quickly, that this host isn't good, since after a few minutes the website crashed. For now I have 24/7 monitoring on my site at eleven2.com. Since there is not going to be allot of traffic to this site, I have not done the test if it can handle big traffic, but it is important to me that this website stays up for as much as possible. Only had one problem with eleven2.com with the server constantly being down. They have tracked down the problem to hardware issue, and since have fixed it. Taking in account another small problem they had with software, which wasn't their fault, the server was up constantly for about 3 months.

I am a hosting re-seller using http://www.mosso.com . LOVE mosso, they are up-to-date, linux and windows platforms, root access, and scalable (our previous host couldn't handle our big client site). The catch is $100/month price tag.

IF you want the technology of mosso, I re-sell 30 GB disk space, 10MB data trans for $20/month. You can add on the mosso 24/7 tech support or just run tech support through me (although I love mosso's live chat).

Just another idea to throw in the mix. Good luck on switching, that is the one thing I hated when we moved over to mosso. IM me if you'd like to discuss this, I'm pretty flexible on options if you are interested. YIM=amipianogal

Oh, the previous host I used was IX webhosting. Pretty good until you hit 50 or 80Gig disk space. We had to switch after that. I don't think they had root access at that time and not sure if that has changed.

[quote=ampianogal]
Oh, the previous host I used was IX webhosting. Pretty good until you hit 50 or 80Gig disk space. We had to switch after that. I don't think they had root access at that time and not sure if that has changed.


I would highly advise NOT using IX webhosting EVER. :evil: Last summer their database array crashed and they lost an INSANE number of databases, for which they had NO backups on file - EVER. They had not ONCE backed up the databases they hosted. I had my own backups, but as i was hosting live ecommerce stores with them, i was pretty heated up about the whole situation. The servers were down for a solid 8 hours before i could even re-upload my own backups. There was also a long list of little things that they could not help me with and i too, like ampianogal mentioned, don't think they had root access. Even if they do now, i will never trust them again.

Thanks Ampianogal & Mr Meech,

mosso looks great but out of my budget for now - for $20pm i'd probably look at slicehost

i'll steer clear of IX - thanks

Cheers

Justin

Hi Justin,

justin> Just wondering if any of you guys are resellers of any fast and
justin> reliable web host services - be that shared host/vps or other

Recently I took hosting at http://widget-it.com/site/ after finding the
guy (sportman) in #cms (CMS Made Simple). He was very helpful and quickly
configured everything.

The price is OK for me and it's smaller provider with a real human
behind it, not another GoDaddy or something.

otoh, since I'm interested for Django hosting as well, I found out about
http://djangohosting.ch/ - it's not Django-only and it's possible to host PHP & other stuff.


Sincerely,
Gour

Thanks Gour

i'll check out widget-it

Cheers

Justin

Justin

Have a look at hostgator.com, I have an account with them and am running SI with no problems - they're running PHP 5.2.0 and mySQL 5.0.45 and have 45 day money back guarantee - US$4.95 for single domain or US$7.95 for unlimited domains. Loads of addons too...

Chris

Thanks Chris

we've moved over to scarabweb for now

i'll take a look at hostgator next time we have to move

Cheers

Justin