Hosting recomendations

I am building a website for a community centre which will have a database as its back end.

The entire thing has to be coded so the staff can update it just by using webforms.

I am not sure what to technonlogy to use, initialy I thought of doing it in ASP just because I know it better. However thinking about it it might be better to do it in PHP as it will be cheaper and a MySQL database will be faster and more stable than a MS Acess one.

Does anybody know of any good webhosts that will provide me with webspace and a MySQL database already installed? So I all I need to is create the instances rather than installing stuff on the server.

 

Many hosting companies provide PHP and a MySQL database. The place that hosts Zerogain is http://oneandone.co.uk/ . I find them excellent in terms of reliability, speed, and importantly, service and support. They have all sorts of packages but IMO their rates are very reasonable, especially for a UK/European based hosting company.

Michael.

 

www.hosting4less.com is nice and cheap and also reliable - both pfm and Groovehandle use(d) this facility.

Tony.

 

Please consider the use of open source applications where ever possible for not only the backend database but the development tools and environment; possible advantages are licencing of products, cost and access to an existing community of dedicated open source developers. As allways what you select should be a business decission after factoring in the costs in both money and time of your learning, the actual development and maintaining of your bright, new code.

I am sure other will be able to recomend suitable open source products but if not then look at SourceForge and prehaps SlashDot for open source product ideas and something like WebHostingTalk for what is happening in the wide world of hosting.

Auric

 

AFAIK both PHP and MySQL are OpenSource.

Michael.

 

Thats why I am using PHP and MySQL as they are both open source like Mike says. I will be using Photoshop for the graphics though, I don't really like The Gimp much.

 

I would avoid one and one. They made an absolute hash of the hosting for the website that I write for, and couldn't fulfill the bandwidth rates we were paying for. They would not respond to tech support enquiries, and when we pushed, all we got was an email saying our account had been cancelled. A few months later, they sent the heavies out from a debt collection agency for money from after the date that our account was cancelled.

We have (happily) moved to hosting with www.34sp.com and I (and several other people I know) use this for personal hosting also, without any problems.

 

Surprised about your hassles with 1&1 Isaac. I've had nothing but excellent service from them and so far the uptime and speed of the site has been excellent aswell.

Only gripe I have (and it's a small one) is that I don't have as much control over my domain zone information as I would like.

Michael.

 

Well all I know of One and One is this forum and this forum is the most reliable site I know on the web.

At the end of the day its not up to me though, I am just volunteering my services to produce a site (looks good on my CV) its the council that will pay the web hosting bill.

Thanks for your ideas though, I will probably but down One and One as a recomendation, I've also had recomendations from fasthosts (now they have sorted their problems out), Web Tapestry and a few unkowns I will probably avoid.