A quick list of web hosts for those looking to do it themselves.
Though their prices are competitive with GoDaddy and 1and1, they are smaller and tend to have better value, according to reviews that are not tainted by referral fees.
It seems the Costco website (www.costco.com) is down. The site says "temporarily unavailable" and when I searched to see if it was just my own connection (not likely since I get the temp page), I found out that there was a recall on their Kirkland Cookies (in Canada).
Costco is warning its customers that cookies bought at its stores may contain pieces of metal.
How can cookies take down a website? It can happen to any website if there is a newsbreaking story. And even the best servers may not be able to handle the load.
In the past, I've posted about scams related to Domain Name Registrations, like the bogus invoices from Domain Registry of America. Well the FTC in the US has won a judegment against one of these companies, Internet Listing Service. (I don't know if they are related to DROA, as there are many aliases used in these scams).
In June 2008, the FTC charged Toronto-based Internet Listing Service with sending domain name owners fake invoices that instructed them to pay an annual Web site listing fee or sign up for a search engine optimization service. Finally, in August 2010, the case is closed. The settlement issued a suspended judgment of $4.3 million, but since the defendants cannot pay up, they will turn over $10,000, the FTC said.
SimplWeb makes it even more affordable to host your Joomla website. They have now lowered their prices to $19.95/mo, with a first month free trial.
When it comes to hosting for Joomla, the average web host server is not usually optimized for Joomla. The low-cost web host usually is a one-size-fits-all setup, where they go for the lowest common denominator of optimization. PHP5? mySQL 5? Maybe not on those $5/mo hosts, because the thousands of websites they are hosting might break, since how many people keep their scripts up-to-date? (Unfortunately, too many don't upgrade and risk getting hacked.).
Then getting help for your Joomla questions can be difficult, if not impossible. Big hosting companies are not going to know your specific needs for Joomla. They usually just make sure you have access to your site and email.
I just ran into this trying to use SquirrelMail. It also affected RoundCube and likely Outlook. Usually this feels like a permissions problem server wide, but this only affected one account. One that had recently changed servers.
Authentication failed:
Error 535
Incorrect authentication data
A search gave me many solutions, many complicated root-based commands. And one simple solution. I like simple.
Choosing a web host relies on many factors. The most important is the abilitity of the person who will be maintaining and updating the website. Too often, new 'webmasters' shop by price, looking for the cheapest web host for their website, but they then get stuck when trying to do anything. What is labeled 'Easy' is not really easy for most people. If you have never setup a mySpace or Facebook profile, and barely know how email works, then you might need something more than cheap hosting.
A nice balance between affordable is SimplWeb, which does most of the management for you, but makes it easy for you to create the content.
First, figure out what type of person you are in terms of Internet experience and computer abilities. Be honest with yourself. Are you a Do-It-Yourself person, or maybe a "Not-So-Technical" but capable person?
With Simplweb, you can create a professional looking site in the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee. When we mean professional, we mean it, no flaky templates here, only high quality designs specific to your industry. Your website can look like it cost thousands for less than the price of drinking a cup of coffee every day!
SimplWeb builds your website with open source software. They use Joomla, a hugely popular content management system. It's used to run everything from small personal websites to big organizations like Porsche or the United Nations. It provides an amazing array of features, from user polls to ecommerce shopping carts. Joomla sites are insanely easy to update, with one click you can edit pages and with another save your updates, live on your site.
Did you get one of those Domain Renewal Notices from some company you haven't heard of? Or maybe it's a Domain Name Search Engine Listing reminder?
These come periodically from places like Liberty Names of America (LNOA), Domains of USA, Domain Names of America, and other patriotic names that sould official. And they tread a fine line between Legit and Scam. And luckily for consumers (at least in the US), the FTC has cracked down on them to make sure their 'notices' are less deceiving.
Found on the web:
I can't afford to pay for hosting, so I have been looking for a free host. I was using “zzz-free-host-zzz.net”, but all of a sudden they disappeared, along with my sites. Luckily I had copies of most of them. After that, I have found a few, but the support from the ones I have tried has been... well, for the most part, non existent.Non-existent support? Well, that matches the non-existent cost, doesn’t it?
