Hosting [Suggestions?]

I've got a small group of followers who want me to make them a little phpbb forum and I see some hosts that offer 5-10GB of storage. I've had some issues with databases crashing, but I've been pondering using some of the storage (the avatars and such are very generous as far as storage and bandwidth go) for sharing anime goodness.

I'm looking to see if anyone has any quality hosts who could help me to offer my files. Currently, I'd be looking at 20GB of storage with bandwidth that would basically only be used from downloads of said anime. Thanksies!

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www.dreamhost.com

I use them and I know Blah also does, plus eithe rme or Blah could create a promo code for you, which would make it around $30 for a year on the lowest plan, which is 20GB space and 1TB bandwidth ~

They've had some recent problems with downtime, but it looks ok now. Aside from this week, I haven't seen any downtime in the 6 months I've been with them. I'm not sure of download speeds seeing as I'm on a 1mbit line, though I usually hear around 400-900kb/s from people downloading my stuff.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Hmm. Sounds decent. Perhaps I saw that site here on GFF, but it does sound familar. Discounts are great! I'll check 'em out tonight.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I wouldn't go with Dreamhost.

I had Dreamhost and, although the price-to-features ratio was and still is FUCKING EXCELLENT, the downtime made it not-so-worthwhile for me. With Dreamhost, if it wasn't one thing malfunctioning, it was another. Sometimes I couldn't connect to my FTP. Sometimes MySQL wasn't working. Sometimes I couldn't access my admin panel. Just lots of little things that just frustrated me. My Ruby on Rails blog especially was always suffering from 500 errors. This was, apparently, a flaw in the programming of the application. Dreamhost's solution was to "remove all the bugs from your application". Which is to imply that there's such thing as software without bugs, which there is not. Certainly a small bug should cause my blog to malfunction temporarily; but I would experience up to an hour of downtime because Dreamhost didn't have Ruby on Rails setup properly. There was no bug in the application that should have been so debilitating; it was just the buildup of lots of tiny bugs that would eventually cause a forced shutdown of Ruby processes that would leave my blog on the ground for an hour or more.

Then one day I googled for "Dreamhost sucks", just out of curiosity. I found out some things.

I guess it depends on your site. Is uptime important to you? Will you get so few hits that it won't matter? Or do you expect lots of activity? How much money do you have to spend, monthly?

But by all means, feel free to go ahead and try out Dreamhost. You have 90+ days to see how much they suck, if at all. Just be careful not to use your free domain registration in that period, as they don't refund that "free" item if you cancel your hosting.

I keep hearing people talk about how awesome Dreamhost is, but I haven't seen it at all. Dreamhost oversells, which is fine. All hosts should oversell. It would be dumb for the streets to be x-million lanes wide just because that's how many cars are in existence. But if I had to guess, Dreamhost oversells too hard.

If you want me to suggest and alternative host; I'm not sure if I can. I'm still looking. I'm trying to find that balance between features, reliability, and price. Right now, the host I have my eyes on is Site5, but I had to choose them over other potential hosts because I need adequate Ruby on Rails support.

How ya doing, buddy?

You can pretty much disregard Dreamhost's less than stellar track record if all you're using it for is to transfer anime files -- and no other host offers a monthly transfer of 1 TB for such a low price. Their bandwidth is great too, I've had reports of people getting over 1.2 megabytes per second (with multiple connections).

As for downtime, yes, your site will go down from time to time, ranging from 10 minutes to a couple of hours. Sometimes it's the database server instead of your webhost, which means your forum will not function.

If you're hosting a rather active forum or running important applications and you really need stability, you might want to go for another host instead. Or even two hosts. Dreamhost purely for file transfers, and another cheaper plan with a more reliable host for the forum.

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I'm not running 4chan's boards. In fact, we have (had before my other DB crash) a forum dedicated to browser-crashing images, HTML coding, [youtube] video, and plenty of other ways to waste and destroy the space we had (We used very little though). It's unimportant. It's basically a testing forum (for a GFF comparison). But as far as feeding the masses of GFF free anime, I guess you guys are all for having me choose Dreamlol as my hosting service. Now, to wait for my Paypal account transaction.

EDIT: Roph, I'll use you as my reference since you posted first.

Double Post:
Oh, I've been told after a year, they jack your prices to rediculous amounts. Confirm/deny?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Bigblah

You can pretty much disregard Dreamhost's less than stellar track record if all you're using it for is to transfer anime files -- and no other host offers a monthly transfer of 1 TB for such a low price. Their bandwidth is great too, I've had reports of people getting over 1.2 megabytes per second (with multiple connections).

So getting 200KB/sec for FTP is normal?

FELIPE NO

Sounds like it (I get around 300 kB/sec using university bandwidth). Any higher requires multiple connections.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Bigblah

Sounds like it (I get around 300 kB/sec using university bandwidth). Any higher requires multiple connections.

Well so far, so good. I did have to flush my DNS cache for the site earlier...but it seems to be working alright. I'll return the favor soon enough with my own FTP thread in My Stuff. Thanks again, Roph for the UBER discount! <3

Jam it back in, in the dark.

i use godaddy. there are some pros and cons.

pros:

1. it's cheap, decent hosting- lots of space and bandwidth
2. with the linux account, you get 5 ftp accounts and with either you get 10 subdomains

cons:

1. tech support generally sucks hard. there are apparently a few smart people in there, but it takes a LOT of tries to get the right one.
2. transfer speeds are not super-high. 100-150KBPS? fine for me, but maybe not for hosting video files.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by RushJet1

i use godaddy. there are some pros and cons.

pros:

1. it's cheap, decent hosting- lots of space and bandwidth
2. with the linux account, you get 5 ftp accounts and with either you get 10 subdomains

cons:

1. tech support generally sucks hard. there are apparently a few smart people in there, but it takes a LOT of tries to get the right one.
2. transfer speeds are not super-high. 100-150KBPS? fine for me, but maybe not for hosting video files.

I appreciate the offer, but it seems that Dream does that and more. I'd imagine with some complexities like this stuff, tech support is going to be difficult. I'll just whine to Blah if I have any more problems. Thanks everyone!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.