Recommendations for a muck around hostng account? Slicehost?

[atetlaw]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for recommendations for a cheap but functional muck-around host. i.e. something that gives you support for a lot of things, but is cheap enough just to use for mucking around.

I stumbled over Slicehost, and they've got a $20 mnth, 256 account that sounds alright - gives you a Linux install and you're off on your own.

[dklynn]

Andy,

The consensus from members is that hostgator has the best inexpensive hosting - unless you need a VPS. From your lack of description of needs, I think their plan is about $6/mo and that would suit. Some have recommended various VPS solutions starting at $20/mo but they seem too limited to be of much good (in the production environment).

If you're just "mucking around," try Kevin's book (your signature's BYO link; you have it but others could just download the FREE Chapter 1 for installation instructions) and put together a test server on your own computer. I have and it saves great embarassment in the real world when you experiment with new code, layout, etc, and allows you to match the configuration of your host's server.

Regards,

DK

[digital_shubhi]

hostgator has the best inexpensive hosting

I agree with you !

I also use it and happy with it.

- Digital -

[EastCoast]

Linode do a similar vps account to Slicehost except you get more memory (360mb) for the money and a choice of datacentres so you can choose the one with the best ping if you tend to do a lot of ssh work. A 256mb vps is perfectly capable of hosting production sites as long as it's not on an oversold host, is correctly setup, and is not expected to sustain large amounts of traffic. In the case of linode/slicehost they don't have plesk/cpanel installed which would take up a bit too much memory for a 256 VPS. For purely short term experimental work amazon ec2 is also great - you can select an AMI with the closest match of software and rent it for an hour or a week, then switch it off when finished with. If you want to persist your data when switched off then you need to look into Amazon EBS too.

[~ServerPoint~]

You said you need to have support for a lot of things. That is general statement. If you could please name at least some of them that would be really great and that will help us to suggest you something

[raena]

We actually had an article about this with a few choices:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/dev...dly-web-hosts/

There was a bit of grumpiness about "why isn't _____ on here?" but it's a fairly nice overview of some interesting plans you may not have heard of.

(PS: How do you know you love your internets a LITTLE too much? atetlaw sits right behind me )

[ldcdc]

PS: How do you know you love your internets a LITTLE too much? atetlaw sits right behind me

That is pretty funny!

[forumplace]

Hi,

The price is reasonable if you are looking for a VPS. However, there are many other cheaper options around if you are looking for a unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth shared web hosting.