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A Host of Questions Has Hosts Talking
There are a lot of questions in the hosting industry - some more easily answered than others. Whether it's what outsourced services Web hosts use, getting high or even unlimited bandwidth from a host, dealing with sites being down without going crazy, or worse, a girlfriend who has run off with your servers, Web hosts and their significant others were asking and answering a number of critical questions in industry forums during the last few weeks.
One of the basic questions posed to hosts on the WebHostingTalk ( webhostingtalk.com ) forums concerned the outsourced services they use in running a hosting business. Web hosts responded that, for server and system monitoring, they use mostly Alertra with some mention of WebSitePulse.com; for Flash tutorials, DemoDemo won praise; billing and merchant services mentioned included WHM AutoPilot, Modern Bill, ClientExec, Authorize.net, 2 Checkout and Paypal; for live chat and support hosts looked to Kayako and PHP Live. Respondents also reported a good deal of custom work, adding that monitoring, support and even tutorials and ad writing was all done in-house. The other point made here dealt with value. "If you're going to run a hosting company and want to be successful," said one host, "you'd better be prepared to spend some cash."
Customers who spend their cash on Web hosting are often unsure how much bandwidth they will actually need, leading to another key question posed to WebHosting Talk in the latest round of discussion. The question in this case was whether there were "any good high bandwidth hosts out there?" The inquiring customer said he would like unlimited bandwidth, and earned some jeers with the idea of a terabyte per month, but was basically trying to avoid overage charges while Web-casting video for a gaming fan site. The consensus among Web hosts was that there is no real unlimited bandwidth offered because it simply is not feasible. "If any host claims to offer you that, you can expect them to shut down your site the moment it pushes 20GB of transfer or sooner for ˇ®overusing CPU resources' or some other nonsense," said one response. The customer was also advised that if bandwidth was a concern and budget was realistic, a dedicated server was in order.
Recent posts to an older SitePoint ( sitepoint.com ) thread regarding CSS and whether it is a cleaner language and layout than older methods - the consensus was that it is - resulted in a discussion of the change to newer technology. One poster, who called use of GIFs as spacers a fourth generation browser-class move, said the abandonment of TABLEs and its exclusion from the W3C spec, not even proposed but possible, will make sites "look utterly crap overnight." However, another respondent argued that sites would not actually change at all even if the W3C was to change its spec, which is unlikely because the table construct is quite valid for tabular data. "[Sites] won't actually change at all," said the poster. "Because even if a new spec comes out, it'll take years before all browsers in the wild will support it, and it's likely that general browsers will still have backwards-compatible modes that enable them to render at least XHTML 1.0 strict [if not even HTML 4.01] for quite a while."
Another discussion, this one on HostHideout ( hosthideout.com ) centered on the question of how to keep from going crazy in the face of servers offline for four days. "We've lost our mind. What do I have to do?" said a frustrated poster who referred to repetitive emails, short messages and phone calls that went unanswered. Hosts chiming in on the discussion advised the questioner to seek a refund, find a new host and look into the provider more thoroughly next time around.
That advice might also apply to another distressed hosting poster who complained, "My girlfriend ran off with my server, help! Please help. I don't know what to do." The questioner explained that after he and his girlfriend had garnered 56 clients to host on two servers running in their home, the scamp left him in the night and took the servers with her. With sites down along with the poster's love life, hosts offered their usual words of comfort. "Report it as theft, that's all you can do, and choose your girlfriend a bit more wisely next time."
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