Hosting and Maintenance

_want the bottom line right away?

_read on if you want more information...

I offer hosting and maintenance services for websites. I'm not a hosting company, and I can't compete with large dedicated hosting companies on price, but I offer an attractive managed service for complex sites, and more importantly, my server is optimised to run complex website applications such as Drupal.

The majority of cheap hosting offers out there are for shared hosting - meaning that you are sharing a server with an unspecified number of other websites, and in most cases the server power allocated to your site is strictly limited. I used to use shared hosting myself, until I found that complex website frameworks such as Drupal often struggle with the limitations imposed on most shared hosts.

Also, Drupal and many other CMS require regular updates to stay abreast of security patches and ensure your website is safe. Updating Drupal, unfortunately, is still too difficult for most non-web-developers.

_get to the point!

Okay. So I offer a hosting package on a server with excellent specs for running Drupal websites. In particular, everyone on my server has access to a 256MB PHP memory limit. If you don't know what that means, don't worry. But this is one of the settings that most shared hosts won't tell you about, and it causes problems for a lot of Drupal sites.

I also offer a managed service. I will keep Drupal up to date with all the latest security patches, deal with any spam problems, and (if you want) set you up on Google Apps for your email and other business services.

_how much does it cost?

£20/month. If this sounds like a lot, then perhaps your website doesn't need the kind of service I provide. However, what I find with many clients is that even if they think they don't need a managed service, at some point they need to pay a web developer to make updates to the site software, or help them deal with other problems that may arise. At a developer's hourly rate you might quickly find that any value you saved by getting cheaper hosting has been erased.

When you take into account the great performance that Drupal (and other PHP frameworks like Wordpress and Joomla!) sites get on my server, I think it's a really good deal.

_if you need a little more...

If you have a need for ongoing developer involvement on your Drupal site, and you want to stay up to date with absolutely everything (not just essential security releases) then maybe you need my Advanced hosting and maintenance package. For £50/month you get everything that you would get for £20/month, plus up to 4 hours of developer time on your site per month. That's a huge saving on normal hourly rates - very appropriate for sites that might need regular attention.

If you need even more time, then for £100/month you get my full attention - up to 8 hours of it, per month. This is appropriate for busy sites with a lot of small, incremental changes that can't be taken care of by simple content management. The advantage to you of paying this much per month is that if you need that amount of work on your site monthly, you're saving a lot of money on normal hourly rates.

_what if you only need hosting?

Then I charge £10/month. You're in charge of your site yourself, and my only involvement is on the server side - making sure you stay online.

_what if you only need maintenance?

A maintenance-only contract is possible, but it's complicated slightly when you're hosted elsewhere. It's probably best if you get in touch and we talk about what you need.

_what are your server specs?

That's my kind of question! I run a Virtual Private Server with VPS.net. This means that my server is full scaleable - if I need more resources, all I have to do is add them. The server is running CentOS Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, and a lot of other stuff you probably don't need to know about. I am currently running at the following specifications:

• Dedicated CPU: 6Ghz
• RAM: 3.76GB
• Disk Space: 100GB
• Monthly Bandwidth: 2.5TB
• PHP Memory Limit: 256MB

For any other specifications, please ask. I don't offer email services from my server - if you want email on your domain I always recommend Google Apps. Google do a lot of things better than I ever could, and email is one of them.

_information overload. What should you do?

Say hi! I'll be happy to advise you on any and all of this and explain it further. Hosting on my server is particularly attractive to clients who have hired me to develop their site, because usually they are already comfortable working with me, and it's always simpler to get the original site developer to maintain the site too. However, anyone can benefit from having their CMS-based site running on a server that will make it zippy, speedy, responsive and in all ways much happier!