Hugely OT question for computer-smart people

www.inmotionhosting.com

blogger?

/s

fatcow!

www.webfaction.com

I've recently used www.namecheap.com for the domain name registration and www.hostgator.com for hosting.  Happy with both.

Considering all of the SOPA stuff that has been going on around here and the fact that GoDaddy publicly supported SOPA until tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people moved their business elsewhere might signal that today would be a bad day to go with GoDaddy.

I usually just register through the host of the website. It might cost a few extra bucks a year, but everything is in one place.

Also, I've been using nearlyfreespeech.net. You only pay for what you use. If you are only planning on doing basica HTML and no server-side code, then you will pay next to nothing.

GoDaddy has a horrible reputation of using poor customer service and shady practices to screw you over.  Their favorite trick is to find some BS reason to seize the site and hold it hostage.  Personally I like IXWebhosting.com for my needs.  

Some commentary:

-Many web hosts offer free email and the like with their hosting.  However this email is often not secure and not all that great.  Consider purchasing Google Apps for your Email, Calendar, etc (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gmail.html).  Basically you register your domain with IXWebhosting or someone else and then you can use that domain name with Google apps (so you don't end up as @gmail.com for your emails, you get @yourdomainname.com).  Five dollars per account per month gets you email, calendar, and document storage on Google's servers.  

-A lot of the smaller and cheaper providers don't have 100% uptime.  You get what you pay for.  Consider having a fallback page or something on a Google Site or something if that matters to you.  

-Consider grabbing up the .net, .org, and maybe even .info when you get the .com.  I've seen irrate customers set up yourdomainname.net and start up a site detailing why you're a horrible human being.  

I can give you the name a great design/hosting company that I used to work at, before law school

Buying/registering a Domain name is the easy part, because after you buy the .com, all they will do is send users coming to your address to your host/servers. Unless you also buy hosting from them. It's choosing your hosting service that is the hard part.

So buying a domain with Godaddy should be fine. It's their hosting service that people complain about.

HostGator and Host Monster, are all fine options. I'd probably go with ease of use and quick customer service, as in contact us or call us or chat with us anytime anywhere if you have a problem, as my number 1 priority. I use Bluehost, and while I'm not too thrilled with their hosting(a few downtimes the past few months), the customer service is one of the best I've seen.

Buying a domain name is a trivial process. Just do it with whoever you buy the hosting from.

As for the hosting, I hosted a couple of sites on Bluehost.com. I have had no complaints. 

don't use GoDaddy, they supported SOPA until a few weeks ago when everyone found out and started transferring domains (which, in response, they made very difficult to do)

has actually won a fucking race of any consequence.

I've had a very good (and cheap) experience with bluehost.com

I was a senior "tech support" rep for Godaddy for 3 years and actually just moved back to Ann Arbor this summer to get back to doing actual tech work.  I would say to get and keep your domains there.  As long as you're not trying to run your own DNS from your own server, there's no reason not to.  Price is right, their dns is moderately reliable and the interface is pretty straight forward.

However, DO NOT...I repeat...DO NOT use their hosting.  While their monitoring, security and facilities are top notch (I've been to the data centers, they're pretty awesome), their servers are utter crap.  While I was there, we purposely would cram the servers because we were getting more customers than we could keep up with, and our sub par load balancing couldn't keep either.  Thusly meaning if your site didn't go down every so often, it had good chance of consistently experiencing latency.  Also, they have a lot of BB servers (bad boy servers, for customers not playing nice).  While that's a nice concept to piss off douches, it's fairly common for a brand new hosting account to accidently get assigned to one of those servers, and it's not fun to try to go to your site when it's on one of those.  Also, if you're not too experienced it web development and need to go with a site builder, Godaddy's Website Tonight is not too user friendly.  I never had any issues with it myself because I worked with it every single day, but not a day would go by without me talking to a few people who seemed to have moderate internet know how brought to the verge of tears trying to figure it out.

Lastly, their "tech" support.  A joke.  A few great guys there, but for the most part, it's a bunch of good salesman who were hired and then given a 2 week crash course on all of Godaddy's 60+ products.  Most of them don't have any website experience outside what they were taught at GoDaddy.  Most of my job was fixing other reps mistakes caused by misinformation and misguided deflection.  However, to be fair, GoDaddy seems to attract the least web saavy clientele of any hosting provider who couldn't tell the difference between MySql and MSSQL if their life depended on it.

So basically, what my way too long rant is saying, it's fine to buy your domain at GoDaddy, but try elsewhere for hosting if you can.  InMotion and HostGator are worth a look, I guess.

Computer-smart people and web developers are definitely not one and the same

Modern Data in Toledo. www.moderndata.com. Owned and run by an alum and season ticket holder.