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We have a pretty static site on godaddy right now. I NEED to get off godaddy.

We use wordpress for the website and I have the following requirements:

  • we will publish our desktopserver app to the host after every build for users to download. (I want to publish with scp or sftp and allow anonymous downloads)

  • we want to supply screencasts or video tutorials on the website

  • we will also have document downloads.

I don't expect that we will have huge amounts of traffic, but what kind of hosting and what suggestions for vendors do people have?

Thanks

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What level of sysadmining are you willing to do? On what end you have wordpress.com, which will do everything by themselves and ensure your site is up and running, on the other end is a server hosting like Linode, which provides the base installation and the rest is up to you. – J. Pablo Fernández May 18 '10 at 19:25
We already have wordpress on our own domain name. I can do some admin, but not everything. I suppose I can pay someone to get it up and running for me. – TimJ♦ May 18 '10 at 20:03

4 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Tim - I had to get my Wordpress-based site off GoDaddy as it became slow and unreliable. I looked around and found these guys were highly recommended: http://www.fusednetwork.com/.

Their prices are very reasonable and they moved my Wordpress site for me at no extra charge. They seem to know Wordpress pretty well and I have found their support to be outstanding.

The only down-side for me is that they only host Linux boxes (as that is their specialism), so if you need to do any Windows stuff, you will have to host it separately. Otherwise I have no complaints and I think they'll tell you straight whether they can handle your requirements. (I have no affiliation, btw).

HTH.

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thank you - I'll check it out. – TimJ♦ May 19 '10 at 13:41
up vote 1 down vote

There are a number of hosts out there and we have our own dedicated server, so I can't give you a suggestion.

However, I'd advise you to host videos on a CDN or even on YouTube, as with videos you surely exhaust your bandwidth in no time. There are also a number of commercial video hosting services you can consider.

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I understand about the cdn - we're trying to figure that out - we don't want ads with our videos but we're also concerned about bandwidth. It is a pretty niche product so it is not like everyone and their brother is going to play it. We might just put it behind a login – TimJ♦ May 19 '10 at 13:42
No, don't do that (require a login), it's terrible. There a couple of very successful products whose videos are entirely hosted on YouTube, so I don't see anything wrong with it. That said, we host our videos ourselves, but using a CDN. – Dario Solera May 19 '10 at 17:49
up vote 1 down vote

I have used Hostgator for a few years now and they have been wonderful. I had issues at 3am and they were available for live chat to get everything resolved immediately. $8-$12 per month and absolutely worth it.

I recommend Vimeo to host the videos, since they have a nice interface and display crisp videos when you embed them on your site. You will also probably get a bit of traffic from people who see your videos on Vimeo.

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up vote 0 down vote

You've already gotten some great answers Tim. As you can see there are lots of alternatives available for you. I'd also like to chime in with the Microsoft Online Services option, subscriptions start at as little as 10 dollars a month, and you don't have to worry about bandwith. You can also create a unique domain name and email address (i.e. Tim@timswidgets.com)

If you want to see a demo of the services available, I'll add a link at the bottom. Whatever you end up choosing, you're correct that you need a reliable quality site. Best of luck to you!

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Thanks Rebecca. We already have the domain name and email along with hosting. The issue is where to host it. The low end stuff isn't going to cut it but the high end manage yourself type products don't really fit us either. – TimJ♦ May 19 '10 at 19:56
Hi Tim, I read through your responses, and I think you already know your answer. You're right that it might be best that you find a local technology expert to help you set it up. That way you'll also have onsite help available if you need it. Good luck! – Rebecca May 20 '10 at 16:02

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