Comparing Hosts: A Plethora of Checklists


Figure 4.1 shows a typical hosting provider's Web page, where they compare their various hosting plans. This is kind of like cell phone plans, in a lot of ways: Different plans have different features, different limits (like minutes on your cell phone), and so forth. Probably 90 percent of the features and whatnot won't matter to you for a PHP-Nuke site.

Figure 4.1. Comparison chart for one host's various plans.


Here's what you really need to worry about:

  • Price. Usually per-month. However, note that many hosts advertise a lower monthly rate that applies only when you pay for a year or two in advance. Check their cancellation penalties, if any. See, this really is like a cell phone contract!

  • Space. Disk space is important, but not as important as you might think. For example, my PHP-Nuke site at www.ScriptingAnswers.com takes up a whopping 1 megabyte (MB) of disk spacefrom my allotment of 20 gigabytes (GB). A gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes, which means I'm using only a tiny percent of my allotted space. Unless you plan to host a lot of downloadable files or big graphics, most hosting plans will give you ample space.

    UNDER THE HOOD

    PHP-Nuke is really a sort of Web application in and of itself, written in a language called PHP (hence the name PHP-Nuke). PHP, in turn, is designed to run on a Web server, such as the free Apache Web server or the InternetInformation Services ( IIS) Web server bundled with Microsoft Windows. Apache, by the way, can run on most Linux versions or on Windows. PHP-Nuke requires a database, which can be the free MySQL database, the similar PostgreSQL, or any of a number of database engines. It's getting all of those bits installed and talking to one another that can be complicated, which is why it's a task I leave in the capable hands of my hosting provider.


  • Bandwidth. This is potentially something to worry about if your site becomes as popular as, say, Microsoft.com. Bandwidth is usually calculated in gigabytes per month. So, let's say your home page, including all of its graphics, takes about 100 kilobytes (KB) to transmit across the Internet. If 100 people view your home page in a month, they'll consume 10,000KB, or 10MB, of bandwidth. If your hosting provider gives you 10GB of monthly transfer rate (bandwidth), you can have 100,000 people view your home page each month. Of course, every page, not just your home page, consumes bandwidth, and different pages are of different sizes. But for most hobbyist Web sites, the bandwidth a host offers is probably more than sufficient.

  • E-mail accounts. Most Web-hosting plans come with more e-mail accounts than you could possibly need. Mine gives me an unlimited number, which is just ridiculous.

  • PHP, MySQL, and PHP-Nuke. Of course, these are all things you want to see. They tell you that PHP-Nuke is offered by the hosting service.

  • Domain name registration. If you don't have a domain name for your site (something like www.MyFunWebSite.com), the host will get one for you. Normally, domain names cost about $35 per year, but you may get a deal if you buy it along with a year or more of hosting service.

  • Setup fees. Plenty of hosts don't charge this, so if you don't want to pay it, you don't have to. Hosts that do charge a setup fee range from $10 to $50. Since most of the setup is actually automated, there's really not much need to charge you. For comparison purposes, I usually figure out what the first year of hosting will cost me, including any setup fees and monthly service fees, and use that as my comparison number.

Like a cell phone contract, overage charges apply. Use up too much disk space or too much bandwidth, and you'll pay a little bit extra (maybe a dollar or so) for each increment you're over. Of course, if you're consistently over, as with a cell phone plan, you can usually upgrade to a bigger plan that provides more capacity in the base monthly fee.

Look for a host that provides a 30-day guarantee, refunding your money if you aren't happy. This gives you 30 days to make sure PHP-Nuke works correctly. Generally, you'll have to install (sort of) PHP-Nuke yourself: This usually involves going to a Web-based "control panel" after signing up for service and clicking the Install PHP-Nuke button. Not very hard.

From the Fridge

I recently switched from one company to another for my cell service, and it looks like they're about to be bought out by yet another company. I firmly believe that all cell phone companies suck, so the choice for Company B was based primarily on the price of their service. I have since switched plans about a million times, trying to find the sweet spot between the minutes I need and the lowest possible price. On one switch, I think they got annoyed at me because they took me off the national plan I was on. The next time I traveled out of state on business, I was charged something like $50 a minute for roaming (I'm exaggerating, but not much) and got a $400 cell phone bill. I had to argue for an hour that I was supposed to be on a national plan. Very irritating. Fortunately, Web-hosting services don't have a "roaming" concept, so you won't have to worry about that for your PHP-Nuke site.


Also look for a service that provides nightly backups. If someone hacks your site, or if you just screw up and delete everything, they can restore your site to last night's condition by using their backups.

How much should you expect to pay? For a small site, $6 per month isn't impossible to find. If you want fancier features, like an e-commerce plug-in (to make an online store), more e-mail accounts (why?), or more disk space, you'll pay a bit more. If you're paying more than $25 a month, though, either you're paying too much or you have some really esoteric needs that you're paying for. I currently pay something like $17 a month for 20GB of space, 60GB of monthly bandwidth, infinite e-mail addresses, and so forth.

By the way, all these hosting plans I've been talking about are virtual server plans. In other words, whatever Web server your site winds up on will also be hosting other people's Web sites. You're all sharing the server. My host, canaca.com, tells me that its Web servers hold 300GB of space total. Knowing that I get 20GB of space, I can conclude that my server may be hosting up to 14 sites other than my own (or more, if those other sites are on smaller plans). You might ask your potential hosting companies how many sites they load onto a single server. Sure, $5 a month is cheap, but if you're sharing with 200 other sites, your site isn't going to be very peppy. After all, one server can do only so much.

So your next step should be clear: Find a hosting provider. If you plan to host PHP-Nuke yourself, get the server up and running. C'mon, what are you waiting for?

Sidebar . FAQ

How much disk space/bandwidth/whatever should I shop for?

How much will you need? Seriously, there's no way of providing a stock answer for that. A typical PHP-Nuke site might use as much as 10MB after a few months of operation, and 4,000 users who visit every day might consume 1GB or so of bandwidth. But that's like saying the average temperature in Las Vegas is 100 degrees: It's true for only a relatively few number of days out of the year. In other words, you'll need to experiment a bit to see how much space and bandwidth you need. Remember that most hosting services will let you upgrade to a bigger plan if you need to.

Should I splurge for my own dedicated server?

Sureand you should buy it from me. Send checks to Don Jones…. Oh, heck. No, you probably shouldn't. The fact is, if your site is getting hammered enough to need a dedicated server, then you're probably approaching or exceeding what PHP-Nuke is designed to deliver. PHP-Nuke isn't made to handle 50,000 users a day, which is something where you'd probably want to have your own server.

I saw an ad for a $10 domain name! Is this for real?

Probably, with some caveats. Many Web hosts will register your domain name cheaply or even for free to earn your business, but they might require a long-term contract. Cancel early, and they might hit you with the registration fee after all. Other times, the low-priced registration is per year, but based upon your registering the name for a long, multiyear period, which means you could be forking out a hundred bucks total. Read the fine print! The "suggested retail price" for a domain name registration is $35 per year.




    PHP-Nuke Garage
    PHP-Nuke Garage
    ISBN: 0131855166
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2006
    Pages: 235
    Authors: Don Jones

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