Servint VPS

You can get web site hosting dirt cheap these days. Most of these hosting companies just offer you plain old shared hosting. Your account can host mutiple sites, you can FTP in to upload your pages, and you’re on the same server as thousands of other sites.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

If you’re a bit nerdier like me, though, you’ll probably have fun running your own VPS. This is a whole step up from shared hosting – you basically run your own server.

The only catch is that your virtual “server” is sharing the same hardware with a few other virtual “servers”. This virtualisation allows you to run a fully self-contained server, while not paying for using all the hardware.

When I say you get a server, I mean that with a VPS you can:

• Log in to your Linux server through the command line
• Install any program you like to customise the site. Need a special image manipulation library for PHP, just install it.
• Fully configure Apache, MySQL through config files, log files, custom timeouts – whatever you want.
• Guaranteed RAM and CPU cycles for a fast site load.
• Install SVN and forget about FTPing files.

What I went for

I’m not a Linux command line pro. Actually, I felt a bit lost there at the beginning. Instead of going for a blank canvas approach such as Slicehost, I opted for Servint which is a fully managed VPS solution. This means that if something goes wrong, if I mess up Linux or Apache, their 24/7 support guys will fix it.

Try out Servint if you want more than just shared hosting. All my sites are hosted on my VPS, the busient being IrishGaelicTranslator.com with over 500,000 page views per month. The page you’re reading right now was served by that VPS. It takes a bit of server juice to serve all those dynamic pages, especially at peak times.

Get hosted with Servint VPS hosting!