What chuck said. I was shopping for 3 key features : CGI, SSI, and Mailing
Lists. On top of that, I have about 25 meg of images archived on my page, and
was planning on (now installed) adding a discussion board upgradeable to MySQL.
I have 100 Meg now (should be good for 3 or 4 years, then I'll have to
upgrade.)
Your requirements may vary. :)
Daniel Gwozdz
The Water-Cooled Volkswagen Ring - http://www.wcvw.org
| That is what you get at catalog.com.
| A virtual server.
| Why pay more if not necessary?
The question is "what do you actually get"?
The answer is easy if you needs are few (e.g. serving static html
pages with low traffic.)
The answer is more difficult if you need to run CGI/Perl or if you
need things like SQL, PHP, etc. to run well, especially if you
expect lots of traffic.
The difficulty arises from the fact that:
1.) it is very difficult to know ahead of time how much CPU time a
particular script will take when implemented on a particular
platform (e.g. RH linux on a PIII 600 server), or how much it will
take in 6 months, so you don't know exactly what you need from
a host. Of course, peak use is what is critical (i.e. you can only
use your share of server resources, or say 1/400th of what is
available on the server, during the peak usage time for that
server.) The cheaper the package, the more accounts will be on the
server, and the less powerful the server will be and the less often
the server will be upgraded.
2.) hosts most often don't specify exactly how much CPU and resource
use you get with virtual hosting accounts, so it is a gray
area. Almost always these issues are addressed on a case by case
basis when an account "disturbs the normal operation of the
server"....
So far so good with Ringlink on a $30/month account though : )