Hivemind: hosting

[prog]

Jmac.org web & email has gotta move again, and soon. daerr has been my latest kind host, but his machine is falling apart and he's planning on bailing soon. I figure that, after more than eight years of hoboing this domain around, it's finally time to move it off of FriendlyNet and into the realm of paid-for hosting.

Any recommendations for hosting solutions? I am assuming that, since I want me own MySQL tables and Mason-based websites, I am too much of a control freak for Dreamhost, but feel free to tell me otherwise. (I don't need mod_perl, so long as Mason works.)

I am leaning towards getting a virtual user-mode Linux thing somewhere. They're more expensive, but you can go crazy on them. OTOH you have to do your own sysadminning, and enh.

I politely decline in advance offers to host on your own server or your friend's server or whatnot, thank you anyway. (Unless your friend runs a legit hosting business.) This will support, among other things, my professional identity. I need to be able to yell at someone when it falls over, without feeling like I'm stretching a personal favor thin.

Comments

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I am in the middle of a Dreamhost experience, as you know. I have reached the point where Django/FastCGI is pretty much working -- but that's taken five days of trying every random remedy I could google up. Most of which were pure placeco effect, and I could tell that even as I was trying them.

The last remedy I tried was (a) in the documentation and (b) offered to me by the support staff. And now my site is working. So that's circumstantial evidence that Dreamhost is acceptable... except that things were *kind of* working *before* I tried that remedy. So maybe it's just another placebo.

For added fun, I have two virtual hosts (of the form "NAME.com" and "test.NAME.com") and I can only get FastCGI to work on "NAME.com", despite *identical* configuration. Also, each one of their web hosts is configured slightly differently (!) so whoever you go to for help can offer only imperfect advice. (My two hosts are on the same server, so that's not it.)

Basically, there are an unnerving number of Dreamhost stories out on the web of the form "It stopped working, and I don't know why, and later it started working again, and I don't know why." I guess if it doesn't start again, the person bails on Dreamhost and goes somewhere else.

It's working for me. If it stops working, I'll bail.