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  • Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

    Aloha,
    What's the deal with servers here in Hawaii? Lavanet sells web host services from Florida. My office Website is stuck on one in Wisconsin that cripples along all morning long. On Friday afternoon it shuts me down completely, and at a certain point each evening, too.
    I'm looking for a local server for my Web hosting. Shoots even Network Solutions is in Virginia! What's here? What's worth the money? I'm looking at a budget of say $450 annually.
    Thanks,
    @
    Aloha from Lavagal

  • #2
    Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

    Originally posted by lavagal
    I'm looking for a local server for my Web hosting. Shoots even Network Solutions is in Virginia! What's here? What's worth the money? I'm looking at a budget of say $450 annually.
    If virtual hosting is good enough for you, and you aren't talking about a large amount of storage, and if you know what you're doing, I highly recommend flexnet. It tries to scare you off with "no tech support," but you don't have to know quite so much as the linked page says you do.

    The price structure looks like this (quoting the linked page):
    Just a one-time fee of $50. Then you pay your regular FlexNet account fee of $9.95 per month. However we do limit Virtual Domains to one per account. All accounts come with 10Megs of space, and additional storage is $1 per Meg per Month.
    I'm quite sure Del's stuff is physically located near the airport in Honolulu. I hosted a site with Flexnet for a year, and it was a great way for me to get the hang of things. Currently, I use Flex as my dial-up ISP (ten bucks a month worth whatever I'm supposedly missing with cable or dsl). Let me know if I can help.
    But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
    GrouchyTeacher.com

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    • #3
      Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

      Scrivener: Could you take a look at my sight and give me an idea about whether Flexnet is big enough? If you click my news tab on the top of the homepage, you'll see a list of stories, each with its own page. There are even more than that. So this site is hundreds of pages long (and a bitch to keep track of!)

      http://www.usmsfp.org

      Your wisdom would be greatly appreciated. Other $.02 contributions of opinion and advice considered as well.
      Aloha from Lavagal

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

        I often recommend Del's "been around forever" Flex service for folks looking for the bare-bones stuff -- dial up internet service, and $50 to have maybe a dozen pages for a basic site. But $9.95 is a great price only insofar as you're also getting ISP service with it, which I'd imagine you don't need, and 10 megs will run out fast. And while he offers standard CGI, I don't think the other bells and whistles that come with conventional webhosting are included.

        I can't gage too well how large your site is, but with a constantly growing archive of articles, PDFs, and photos, you might be nearing 10MB anyway.

        Off the top of my head, I can only think of a few companies that do hosting locally, and all of them are (1.) doing so for clients that already pay them to run the site, and/or (2.) are priced way out of line with the industry. On the Internet, physical location is irrelevant, anyway... though it certainly sounds like your current provider has bandwidth issues.

        I've been with Dreamhost for almost eight years... and I don't even really know or care where their offices are. They host my two dozen or so domains (including this one!), constituting nearly 2GB of files and a little over 1GB of transfer a month. Of course, I'm hosting at a high-level plan (just short of "dedicated server" - which I might soon need), but they have an entry level plan that's pretty attractive -- particularly if you pay a year at a time.

        For $10/mo. ($8/mo. paid two years at a time), you can host three domains (and one comes free with the plan), 15 subdomains (subdomain.domain.com), unlimited "parked" domains (i.e. forward to another site or your own site), 2.4GB of space (that's 2,400MB), hundreds of e-mail mailboxes, 75 users (if you want to set others up with FTP space or shell access)... in addition to CGI, you get PHP support, MySQL databases, IMAP and web access to e-mail (in addition to the standard POP), etc. Support is done via e-mail, and account management is done through a very robust web control panel.

        But that's only one of, oh, a million or so webhosts out there. There's a lot of shopping around you could do. In addition to Dreamhost I work with Interland (a very, very large webhost) and 1&1 (a U.K. company trying to take over the U.S. now).

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        • #5
          Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

          How much is it to run a server?

          Maybe if I can get my skills up in that area, then I'll start a small business and promote it here
          How'd I get so white and nerdy?

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          • #6
            Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

            I have a dozen domain names and 2 websites with godaddy.com.Inexpensive and their Website Tonight makes it easy to set up a website in minutes.I just pasted a Paypal Buy It Now button from Paypal onto one website.If you are interested in setting up a store,Ebay stores do very well with its millions of visitors and is cheaper than setting up a hosted website.

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            • #7
              Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

              Originally posted by adri1456
              How much is it to run a server?

              Maybe if I can get my skills up in that area, then I'll start a small business and promote it here
              If you plan on using Windows 2003 Server to run the server, just the operating system alone runs $1000 for the standard edition. Maybe another $1000 for the hardware assuming you plan on using a desktop class computer to run, more if you get a server class computer.

              Then you have to worry about the on-going charges and things to do:
              1. Network charges. Will need to have static IP for the server. If you using DSL you will need the business class not the residental class
              2. Backing up the data on the server
              3. Making sure that your clients are paying you

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              • #8
                Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

                It's hard to judge how much capacity you need. For example, my site (http://linkmeister.com) is currently at 61.49MB, and I don't think I'm particularly big. I'm sure the blog takes up the bulk of it (3/02 - present), but still.
                http://www.linkmeister.com/wordpress/

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                • #9
                  Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

                  pzarquon & others:

                  I appreciate the responses. I had a feeling I didn't have to stay in Hawaii and thought that Network Solutions or Dreamhost might be the answer I need. I am learning as I go here. Just want to make an informed decision without blowing the organization's budget!
                  Aloha from Lavagal

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                  • #10
                    Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

                    Originally posted by helen
                    If you plan on using Windows 2003 Server to run the server, just the operating system alone runs $1000 for the standard edition. Maybe another $1000 for the hardware assuming you plan on using a desktop class computer to run, more if you get a server class computer.
                    Uh, you could also use a free OS like some variant of linux or bsd. These options have the addition advantage of better security and remote access.
                    Last edited by kamapuaa; May 26, 2005, 10:41 AM.
                    I am Jack's absent signature.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Hawaii Web Hosting--Want a local server!

                      Originally posted by adri1456
                      How much is it to run a server?
                      Maybe if I can get my skills up in that area, then I'll start a small business and promote it here
                      A friend of mine who used to run one of Chicago's main ISPs once said, "If you thinking about opening an ISP, take all of your money, put it in a big pile, and burn it - in the long run it will hurt less and cost you less." The point is, the ISP business isn't too much fun. The costs of "running a server" vary with a number of differnt factors. For example: What kind of network connectivity do you anticipate needing? Are you thinking about doing virtual hosting on a single system? What kind of SLA (service level agreement) are you planning to have - that is to say, when people call you at 2 am because they can't see a picture on their site, are you going to fix it, or are they? Can you offer service at an attractive price? And on and on and on and on.
                      I am Jack's absent signature.

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