GuitarAngel.net

I love my host, A Small Orange, however, sometimes I feel sort of claustrophobic in my 400mb of server space. While ASO is pretty reliable and the customer service is great (not to mention they name their servers after Lost characters!), they really are a bit on the expensive side for the amount of space you can purchase. So I've been considering a switch.

Anyone who has a website knows just how much hefty research goes into finding a reliable host these days, as most seem like rip offs. Real estate online is almost as valuable as buying a flippin' house to live in, with decent domain names being bought up by companies who turn around and try to sell them for thousands of dollars, ugh. But that's another discussion.

I try to read as many testimonials as possible for a hosting service, but even those you can't count on enough to get a real estimation of value. It's a known fact that the majority of people who end up discussing their opinion of any service usually are unhappy with it. Satisfied people are too busy being satisfied.

So how can you figure out if a hosting company is worth it? Obviously, you want to start with whether they offer what you want for your website. Think of the minimum amount of features you would need to "survive" on the web and go from there. It's nice to have a ton of feature options for your site but you can easily drown in unnecessary things that merely sound nice instead of being beneficial to you.

Here's my list of hosting wants:

Lots of disk space, very decent uptime, very decent support response time, low server load, email accounts, MySQL databases, PHP 4+, subdomains and the Fantastico service.

Basic list, really. More of like a "duh" response for the first three. And most hosts actually offer all of those things of an "unlimited" number. I'm not super picky and not a difficult customer to please. I like hosting services that will respond to my emails within a day or two and will hopefully work with me to get what I want working for my site. I'm not too lazy to do things for myself. ;P

One thing I've been interested in is server load, which is a little number usually viewable in your hosting control panel that represents how many processes are waiting to access the server overall. I've heard that a low number is the better performance statistic for the server you are on. A higher number means the websites stored on that server will run slow.

You can find the server load number of your server by logging into the control panel (usually) for your site and clicking a "Service Status" link that should be somewhere on the main page. It should read something like 1.02 (2 cpus), which happens to be the current load of my ASO server, "Jacob". But how do you know if the number is really "low" or not?

Most web hosting company owners apply the following rule: if the server has a single CPU (central processing unit), a server load higher than 1.00 is not good; if the server has two CPUs, a server load over 2.00 is not good and so on. ~ WHReviews.com

So according to that knowledge, ASO is doing ok with a load below 2.00 an 2 CPUs. Keep in mind that the number isn't static, it changes if you refresh the page. I actually just spent a minute refreshing mine and watched the number go up to 1.90 and then back down to around 1.15. It sort of makes me nervous to see it dip up and down like that, but according to the article I quoted: a high number once in a while doesn't always mean the server isn't performing well. What would cause concern is if the number were like that constantly, then there would be a problem most likely.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. My hosting plan with ASO is supposed to renew on the 10th of this month, so I'll have to decide before that. One host I've been checking out is Site5, because I've heard good things and several people I know use them. I'll have to think more on it!

One little update on my upcoming redesign: it's coming along great! Pretty much all my spare time now is being devoted to finishing it up. We're talking a whole new layout and a complete content restructuring and update. Once my main site is taken care of, I'm going to tackle my quilt and collective and then maybe even give kirakoDesign a new look. Wish me luck!