Web Hosting Research

For a variety of reasons, I've decided it's time to find a web host and create my own site. I've been bookmarking pages on web hosting providers for a few years and decided it was time go forward.

So, if anyone else is interested, here are some annotated links.

Invoke the Lazy Web

Absolutely nothing wrong with asking the hive mind first. The following links from LifeHacker and Ask Metafilter contain plenty of links, advice, and pointers to plenty of sites you can investigate.

Good webhost? | Ask MetaFilter

Ask Lifehacker Readers: Web hosting provider?

For & Against

A piece of advice I picked up from one site was to Google a hosting provider using the phrase "[provider] sucks" and see what you get back. Using this phrase, DreamHost returns a ton of results, as does GoDaddy, but maybe because they have tons of users? You decide. DreamHost also has its partisans and other review sites.

My del.icio.us links include a few other praises and pans. You can go to review sites, but I found them of little value.

What I Did

I collected up a bunch of names, set the kitchen timer for 1 hour, and surfed around really quick, just trying to catch the vibe of these places. My feeling is that web hosting is now a pretty commodity service, and until you've actually gone through the process, you won't know how the support or uptime actually is. It's also pretty clear that the provider holds all the cards--they can cancel your service at any time, they tend to be unresponsive when it's their mistake, and the customer is usually left to clean up the mess. So, go in with your eyes open.

I want to use a WordPress blog, which seems to be included in a script package called Fantastico, so that knocked out a few local contenders.

I looked for a while at DreamHost, since it was recommended to me by a classmate. But I was uneasy with reports of downtime, so rejected them. They certainly offer an attractive package, though.

I narrowed it to three: AN Hosting, A2 Hosting, and InMotion Hosting. These names popped up because I noticed that some of the sites I admire and visit frequently trumpet their wares.

When it came down to making the final decision, they were all pretty similar in their deals and prices. So I basically made a contrarian decision and went with the one that didn't start with "A." A silly decision-making heuristic, but there you go. I opted for a year's contract, so that I can switch to another provider next year if I don't like their service.

Muleteer, Occultist, Whitesmith

For a recent paper, I researched the Bureau of Labor's Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. The government uses the codes to ensure consistent statistical and information gathering.

As part of my research, I looked up the SOC's tortured history, starting from 1940 till the Office of Management and Budget mandated in 2000 that all governmental departments standardize on it.

At the back of a rather dry 1999 document on the code's revision (PDF) I found a simply wonderful two-page list of all occupations listed in the 1850 Census.

The three trades in this post's title come from there, as do these charmers:

• Philosophical instrument maker
• Salaeratus maker
• Shoe-peg makers
• Chandlers
• Sawyers
• Morocco dressers
• Daguerreotypists

Salaeratus maker? It's explained in a 1999 Voice of America broadcast on the above document. (I only found this VOA page because I searched on "Salaeratus," which had even Google and Wikipedia stumped.) (And now this lowly post will perhaps join it.)

It's a remarkable picture of a vanished land and time, when life was local, rural, and everything of any value had to be made by someone, not imported from offshore. Notice how many occupations end with "makers" and "manufacturers." Notice how few of those jobs make their way to the current SOC headings. We've gained, certainly--less tedious, back-breaking work for a majority, more prosperity--but I can't help feeling something's been lost, too.