----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell McMahon" Subject: [OT] Web hosting recommendations sought > Looking for a well priced web presence to complement my large but > sloooooow (128 kbps pipe) home server capacity. Russ I am currently using two different hosting companies. Each has their charm, both are inexpensive. http://www.tlchost.net has blisteringly fast servers and quite a few features. It is basically a one man band, so from that perspective perhaps a little shaky. But on the other hand, the one man is very responsive, if a little gruff. He is a fellow radio amateur so perhaps I trust him a little more than the average bear. http://www.astrahosting.com has a full set of features and is priced a little higher for a little more storage in the low end package. These guys have pretty much all the features, and killer stats which is perhaps what I like best about them. They have support via IRC which is pretty decent, but seems to be the only way to get support. They aren't that great at answering emails, but the IRC support is good. They are pretty much the same price, but astrahosting has a setup fee which makes the first year a little more expensive. Both have email, mailing lists, stats, cgi, perl, php. I think tlchost has MySQL, but I'm not sure ... not using it there. I am using MySQL on astra. On tlc, you can grab your mail by pop3 or redirect it, but for SMTP you need your own server. Astra, in addition to that, has webmail which allows you to send mail without using your ISPs server. Astra also has autoresponders and pretty complete setup of email aliases. Since you are apparently in nz, tlchost's one man band thing could be a problem since he is unlikely to be awake when you are. I really don't know how responsive astra is in the middle of the night here, but I have gotten quite good response from them late in the evening, so I suspect they man the IRC account 24 hours. Of course they claim to, but ... --McD -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist