RELIABLE webhost

Bluesmachine

Bluesmachine

Messages
666
Name
Niall
Edit My Images
Yes
I'm just in the process of getting my website sorted but I can't find any solid reviews of providers of hosting. It all seems to be the company quoting users, which is never a decent way to judge a company for this.

I'm planning on having the site hosting the photos, probably with a lightbox kind of window opening up to view the images. About 6 months ago I had everything sorted; I had the package for the site sorted, which was a professional package you can use with various installs like wordpress, etc but now has vanished completely, and I can't find a replacement! Also the hosts I had narrowed down have both been slated by people I personally know, so I'm completely back to square one.

Can anyone point me the right way for hosting and recommend any packages that include a shopping cart? Basically I do gig photography and up until now have just been sending the finished work straight to the client/PR company and they then sort it from there. I've decided that I now need a website as I've got 2 high profile events coming up later in the year, so I feel now is the time to get a polished site up and running.

I've actually found a company that basically provides the whole thing from hosting to package including shopping cart for around £270 a year, which seems a bit too good to be true considering what they're offering. It's been several years since I've done any website coding, so this sort of thing would be preferable really.

All help appreciated :)
 
Check out LayerSpace..professional sites at template prices..with e-commerce and lightbox I think prices start at around £15 per month, that's a starter, depends on how many gallery and text pages you want and of course the design/theme you choose

Robin
 
Last edited:
TSO host user here, no issues whatsoever. I'm on the £4.99 a month package and it does everything I need it to do.
 
+1 for tsohost - use them for our company website and they seem fine so far. I've had issues with web installations (some of which has been my fault) and they've emailed back same day with a response. At one point they even did a fresh Joomla installation for me.
 
Thanks for the advice so far. I've only just got today out of the way, so haven't had a chance to look into everything yet. I'll hopefully get the site/hosting sorted when I'm off work Friday-Monday.

I got a bit sidetracked buying a guitar and hunting for pickups, etc :D
 
I've used hostmonster.com for years and found them great value and as reliable as any other host. Their basic package works out about £40 per year and includes unlimited bandwidth, storage etc. They are based out in the US, but that doesn't seem to affect the server speed over here. They are fairly responsive with support queries (most issues are resolved within 24 hours). Like any host they seem to have the odd period of down time, but if something dies it's usually back up within five minutes.
 
I bought the Rhea theme from Theme Forest, from memory it was about £20. Have a look on Theme Forest, there are lots to choose from, all with slightly different looks and content, depends on what you want. You can customise still further by using Plugins. Of course there are other sites you can look at as well, just google Wordpress Themes.
 
I've just this minute bought another domain and hosting from TSO host. Typically I accidentally double clicked on the final payment option, causing a problem. I called support and it was all sorted within seconds.

So far I'm impressed. Just need the domain to be resolved now and I'll go theme shopping. I've got a photoshop guru mate sorting a watermark and logo for me :)
 
cant complain at all at their support.

i raised a ticket at 08:42:40 AM this morning as i was having problem updating some contact details and 08:49:52 AM i had a response with resolution. ive had that sort of response time at 11pm too which is handy.
 
I also sent a ticket through yesterday as I wasn't clear whether a warning on the support page was just that, or an actual problem. I had a reply within 10 minutes, which was not expected as it was Sunday!

I think I've found a new host to rave about :D
 
Having read this thread I'm now looking at moving to TSO. Does anyone know if you can use email piping to a PHP script on their Cloud accounts (you can do this with cPanel and it's the only thing I need to confirm before moving)?

Never mind - just checked with their online sales and it's not possible. Looks like I can use a POP3 collector though so that should be fine.
Regards
Jim
 
Last edited:
+1 for TSO host.

I have 4 sites hosted, never had a problem apart from one hitch with a WP install that was sorted out within an hour by TSO. With them for about a year now, awesome. Wish they did ColdFusion hosting and I could move the rest of my sites there!
 
Could we see some figures for site load times? (Timed perhaps with http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/)

Recommendations are fine, but in the web-hosting world, page load time matters. Especially if you're running a Wordpress theme with a number of plug-ins and expecting some traffic.
My website for instance, has just loaded in 1.42 seconds (from Amsterdam, UK hosted), page size 3.9 MB. Hosted with PickaWeb.
Tbh when I usually test, it's in the region of 3 seconds.

I've used NuBlue to host another largeish website and they usually come in at about 2 seconds, but I've just tested that site and it's come in at 5.

Please post your stats and give a general (objective) idea on how well hosts are doing.
Thanks
 
When I get a chance, I'll show you the last year at 99.9% or higher uptime every month for the last year or so. Page loads are much quicker than 3 seconds.

All with TSO host, both on shared hosting and a virtual windows box.
 
afasoas said:
Could we see some figures for site load times? (Timed perhaps with http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/)

Recommendations are fine, but in the web-hosting world, page load time matters. Especially if you're running a Wordpress theme with a number of plug-ins and expecting some traffic.
My website for instance, has just loaded in 1.42 seconds (from Amsterdam, UK hosted), page size 3.9 MB. Hosted with PickaWeb.
Tbh when I usually test, it's in the region of 3 seconds.

I've used NuBlue to host another largeish website and they usually come in at about 2 seconds, but I've just tested that site and it's come in at 5.

Please post your stats and give a general (objective) idea on how well hosts are doing.
Thanks
Click to expand...

3 seconds for a 3mb page to load certainly seems a long time in this day and age! Just tested my site on pingdom and get 929ms for 3.5mb (70 requests). One of my pet hates is pages that take an age to load and is often a sign that a webhost is taking on too many customers with too few resources.
 
Gtmetrix is a good site to look at load times.

A website I use is diabolically slow, 15 seconds or more to load a page. Gtmetrix shows that it is waiting for 75% the time. The website I think is web fusion. Trying to persuade the website people to move to a new hosting company.
 
To be fair, 3 seconds is to get the page fully loaded. It's often less to get all the viewable content.
Both sites have the twitter feed on the home page and that's usually the biggest culprit of the slow load time.

I should have factored that in to the figures I quoted.
 
Mines on TSO:

Tested from on June 27 at 09:05:19
Page size 10.2MB
Load time 1.86s

Requests 78

Perf. grade 78/100
Your website is faster than 73% of all tested websites

That is on works fibre.

Didn't realise mine was 10MB. I really need a redesign.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top