Reply to: Best UK-based web hosting site

[Spoiler]

I run ~6 websites, mainly WP but also 1 Joomla and a static. When I started out getting into creating sites, I used to love doing it all myself, and the AWS thing would have been perfect.

But ... I then started getting paranoid about WP security so loaded on a bunch of security plugins. And then paid for a backup service.

In the end I was spending too much time messing around, so just migrated them all to Siteground. Binned off the extra security plugins. They take care of all backups. If something goes wrong, they are pretty good at sorting it out - even if it's not directly related to their hosting. All is good !

Have used Vidahost also in the past, but prefer SG now.

[TestMangler]

My brother's band have wordpress on some guy's box for £25 a year. The performance is tulipe because it's not the only wordpress instance he's running and he refuses to let them have FTP access to enable decent updates and management. Not saying you'll behave the same way but there can be issues with initially kind offers of hosting.

Thanks for your input. Difference is, as stated in my post, he would have access and the performance isn't tulip because I don't stick all and sundry on it. But come on, it's a wordpress site. Would need to be on some right tulipty box with right tulipty pipes to be poor with the kind of traffic it'll get.

[ladymuck]

Jings, It's a bloody Wordpress site. I'll stick it on my dedicated box for you for £25 with a fully auto-updating WP install and CPanel access to your webspace. Unless you're planning to turn yourself into the next Facebook, you need nothing more.

My brother's band have wordpress on some guy's box for £25 a year. The performance is tulipe because it's not the only wordpress instance he's running and he refuses to let them have FTP access to enable decent updates and management. Not saying you'll behave the same way but there can be issues with initially kind offers of hosting.

[TestMangler]

Jings, It's a bloody Wordpress site. I'll stick it on my dedicated box for you for £25 with a fully auto-updating WP install and CPanel access to your webspace. Unless you're planning to turn yourself into the next Facebook, you need nothing more.

[LondonManc]

Azure, It's what us cool kids use.

On that basis, aws it is.

[woohoo]

Azure, It's what us cool kids use.

[terriwrist]

I've been with Zen Internet for a few years for a basic wordpress website and have not had any issue with them and they had decent support.

[LondonManc]

Can't recommend 123-reg either.

Site performance has been poor.

[Platypus]

Can't recommend Easyspace :-(

[billybiro]

Once the free trial is out of the way, how much does that sort of site cost (cba with clicky clicky)

A simple Wordpress blog on AWS Lightsail would be a flat $5 USD per month. The same thing using the "proper" AWS Management console and spawning your own EC2 instance and configuring it yourself etc. would probably set you back about $10 USD per month.

Lightsail has a fixed (albeit large) amount of bandwidth and storage space for the flat cost, whilst the "proper" AWS is all based upon the CPU/Storage/bandwidth that you use over the course of the month, which can be as little or as much as you want (hence everything is "elastic").

There's more to it than this, however, but this is the "layman's terms" if you will.

[billybiro]

I must say Amazon AWS sounds good, and there are simple instructions here for setting up a Wordpress blog on it:

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-start...press-website/

Oh, and if all you want is a Wordpress blog, definitely take a look at the AWS Lightsail functionality (which is fairly new, as of only the end of last year) as that will give you (almost) the same as what your quoted link will give you, but for an even cheaper cost (yet backed by the same reliable AWS technology).

[billybiro]

I must say Amazon AWS sounds good, and there are simple instructions here for setting up a Wordpress blog on it:

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-start...press-website/

Just to give you some idea. I had a handful of small, low traffic websites running on a shared host. It used to cost be around $100 USD per year. I have a number of "monitors" (i.e. Uptime robot Site Up Time etc.) that used to ping my sites and email me an Uptime report every month. On the shared hosting, I routinely saw some outages, so the monthly uptime was something like 98 to 99.8% every month.

Around 12 months ago, I switched all my websites to run on a single AWS EC2 instance (t2.micro instance) at a slight increase in cost of around $130 USD per year, however, I have yet to receive a monthly uptime report with anything less that 100% up time for all of my sites. Plus, I now have full control over hosting as I'm running my own Virtual Machine (so I could easily put additional software on there, for example, at no extra cost).

So, whilst AWS isn't the cheapest, you'll get what you pay for and if you're after affordable and very reliable hosting, you can do far worse than AWS.

[LondonManc]

I must say Amazon AWS sounds good, and there are simple instructions here for setting up a Wordpress blog on it:

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-start...press-website/

Once the free trial is out of the way, how much does that sort of site cost (cba with clicky clicky)

[OwlHoot]

I must say Amazon AWS sounds good, and there are simple instructions here for setting up a Wordpress blog on it:

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-start...press-website/

[billybiro]

Having registered a couple of domain names (.co.uk and .com) for a blog I plan to start, the next stage is to subscribe to a web hosting site.

Any recommendations?

I suppose it would be better if the site was hosted in the UK, although this is not essential.

My main criterion is that page views must be fast, and the subscription not vastly expensive.

Also, it must be flexible in letting me configure Apache security within subdirectories etc, i.e. not a "managed" and limited environment.

(I'll want to run Wordpress, with a MathJax or MathML plugin.)

I know I could just Google something like "best UK web hosting", and indeed already have, but I also wanted to hear any esteemed CUK readers' recommendations and constructive suggestions (for example of slick-looking hosting companies that are actually awful and best avoided!)

Amazon AWS. If you're running a fully static site, you can even serve it up from S3 storage. Alternatively, you can use a small sized Virtual Machine (AWS EC2 instance) which will give you full control over the entire machine, or even just use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to host a simple site. Amazon even has a new service called Lightsail, which is a somewhat simplified version of AWS, and cheaper too.

I've posted about using AWS before, but just to be clear. I have nothing to gain from these recommendations, I'm just a very happy and satisfied customer.