Self-hosting vs Commercial-hosting

[555]

Hello everyone.

I love:

- Web-designing
- Advertising
- Do art commissions
- Selling arts
- Building mascot suits
- Auctions
- Selling 3D models

I am thinking to purchase the Advanced 175 IPB hosting plan for my mini animation deviant art website anim.tv : Parked Domain (domain purchased in 1999). They offer unlimited bandwidth wich is good for my affiliates and ads.

Should i go with a Company-Hosting?



They offer the IP.Board / IP.Blog / IP.Gallery / IP.Downloads in one package + the hosting and the no technical expertise required. Something that is very easy to add contents, a bug free website and hack proof. They are hosted on a private server.

Just pay'n go for $119.99/month

The reason why i want to choose IPB is because not only i want to create contents for my website alone but i also want other peoples to create contents to my website. I want to make a mini-deviantart for the cartoon fans out there especially the anime fandom / furry fandom / superhero fandom where they can post limited size fan-arts and fan-fics… create mini blogs and interact with other fans and schedule conventions and meets. All this in one combo.

Or should i go with Self-Hosting?

I have a good 8TB Mac Pro 8-Core (OS X 10.6.2) and an affordable unlimited internet connection. The machine runs on UNIX (Snow Leopard)



Is it a good idea to host my website on my own using XAMPP for Mac OS X (Free) and purchase standalone IP.Board, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, IP.Downloads, IP.Content, IP.Chat, IP.Converge ($364.95)?

I think that way, i could save money on file storage (great advantage for those who wants to upload pictures and videos), unlimited post numbers and freedom.

Wich one should i go?

I feel like self-hosting is for self-employers and commercial-hosting is for employers.

Does self-hosting affect search engine ranking ?
Does company-hosting improves search engine ranking ?

[Curtis2011]

The only advantage of company hosting I can imagine is that most web hosts will "ping" Google and the other search engines with your sitemap.xml file, automatically.

What this means is that every time you update your website with a new page, they alert the search engines to the update, making them more likely to index you faster. I am not sure if a self-hosted server would be programmed to do this.

And as far as the whole hosting for your website, $129/month is way more than anyone just starting out should pay. You won't need that much bandwidth until you have hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of visitors per day, and getting to that level could take years. For most people, it never happens.

I say go with the smallest possible hosting package so you don't waste money. Your web host will be happy to upgrade your package if you get a lot of visitors and need the additional bandwidth.

[The Rock]

You should never host your site on your own PC. Get a shared hosting plan when you're starting out and upgrade to a VPS or a dedicated server later on.

[Vanessa]

As hot as your mac pro is there is no reason to try to become your own webhost.

You're putting the cart before the horse, you don't have traffic, you dont have a secure environment for that beast. You're thinking in future terms of potential scaling issues. Way too many steps forward.

There is nothing wrong with starting with a shared or vps hosting account or using cloud hosting for large files then moving to a dedicated machine or colocating your mac pro into a data center.

How is this set up really cheaper? Was the mac pro free? Do you have a t1 or t3 connection that doesn't have a monthly cost? How often are you going to backup your server or perform maintenance? What makes you think you won't have to upgrade hardware in 6-12-18 months? Who is going to be your tech support team when you accidentally drop liquid on your machine?

Nothing about hosting improves search engine ranking.

What hosting does impact is how fast and reliable (uptime) your website loads for users and spiders.

Stick to the things you love, becoming your own hosting provider is not on your list.

[555]

My domain name provider (DirectNIC) is offering:



US$15.95/Month for 6GB of file storage & 1000GB of bandwidth.

Is this a good deal ?

Originally Posted by Vanessa

How is this set up really cheaper? Was the mac pro free? Do you have a t1 or t3 connection that doesn't have a monthly cost? How often are you going to backup your server or perform maintenance? What makes you think you won't have to upgrade hardware in 6-12-18 months? Who is going to be your tech support team when you accidentally drop liquid on your machine?

- No the mac pro was not free it costed my 4K (purchased 5 months ago)
- No i have a DSL but it's unlimited.
- I can backup any time with my Time Capsule
- Well... I usually change computers every 3 years.
- Nobody just me.... but i take a lot of care of my beast.

Originally Posted by Vanessa

Nothing about hosting improves search engine ranking.

What hosting does impact is how fast and reliable (uptime) your website loads for users and spiders.

Stick to the things you love, becoming your own hosting provider is not on your list.

I agree, i think i was about to make a bad move right there.

[Plays With Life]

I would normally go with a hosted system. Here's why -

There are a lot of security issues that can come up when self-hosting. Also configuration issues - it can take a bit of doing to get the right software installed, and set up to behave correctly. Also, a commercial host will usually have some monitoring set up, so they know if the site goes down. They'll also normally have redundancy set up, so that even if a hard drive or one of their internet connections goes down, your site doesn't lose connectivity or otherwise stop working.

If you want to set up a machine exactly the way you want it, but also take advantage of the reliability the webhost can provide, you could look for a direct root access plan. Then you have 100% control over the system, to set it up to do the things you want.

Also, I wasn't sure if your own internet connection is a commercial line? A home line will normally have less available upstream bandwidth - ie, for serving out web pages.

[555]

Originally Posted by Plays With Life

Also, I wasn't sure if your own internet connection is a commercial line? A home line will normally have less available upstream bandwidth - ie, for serving out web pages.

I think it's a normal home line. I don't think the speed is that great:



Someone suggested me to go with a cheap host for now. And i realized that my domain name provider offer $15/month. What I should be doing is doing my development, all my beta testing (even when it's live, keep a beta tag on it for now), building my user base and content and finding advertisers once I can show X number of traffic.

Once I hit a point where I've got a critical mass for my website, then consider me hosting options and move my website there. I don't want to burn through that much money every month and risk having no one go to my website.

Also, for the first iteration of my website where I have gathering numbers of users - force them to link to outside embedded video formats so I can avoid the hosting fees. Once again, once the audience is there, roll out a brand new version on the new host which requires users to upload the videos. I could even try to get a partnership with something like Vimeo and DirectNIC.

I'd say anything to do with hosting videos is a very risky endeavour

[Plays With Life]

Yeah, I wonder whether < 1Mbit / sec would be enough, especially for hosting video. I guess that would take quite a bit of bandwidth.

I use the Gandi cloud service for some things -
Hébergement - Gandi.net - Serveurs flexibles Ã♥ ressources dédiées

And it rocks. If you check out the slider, and slide it around, you can see the different capacities available. You can start with a smaller capacity, and upgrade to more resources - more RAM, more HD space and more bandwidth - on the same service, on the same account, without any interruption in service or anything. You can also set up automatic upgrades / downgrades based on resource monitoring. So ie, if the you go over the bandwidth limit for a month, the system will automatically upgrade to a higher capacity for that month, and downgrade again so you're paying less when your usage goes down.