Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi, my business partners and I are creating a social network site, which is near completion.  As a social network the amount of users will grow over time, thus so will the amount of users that are on the site at a particular time.  What is the best hosting method/company to use in this situation.  I have read some articles about cloud hosting but am not very web savy and am not sure if this approach is beneficial or not. Any comments/opinions would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Hi. For your situation it might make sense to go with either a virtual dedicated or dedicated server. Depending on your hosting budget a virtual dedicated server could be a great way to "grow into" a robust hosting situation.

I've personally had great luck with the virtual dedicated hosting at ServInt. The maintenance for a dedicated or virtual dedicated host can be higher than a standard shared hosting account, so you'll probably want to make sure you hire a tech unless you have in-house skills.

There are plenty of on demand server maintenance companies out there. I've had a good experience with Platinum Server Management.

Storage could be an issue for a social network. Amazon's S3 and CloudFront services are a great way to get into a cheap storage solution.

Feel free to PM me if you'd like more info. Best of luck!

I have read a lot of good reviews with Yahoo as a web hosting site. Aside from being popular, I heard that they also have a great customer support. It is better if you go for those paid web hosting service rather than the free ones so that your social networking site won't look like a site for advertisements. :)

yahoo web hosting , best google adwords

If you plan on your website growing be sure to select a VPS or Dedicated Server as you will quickly outgrow Shared Hosting.

If you need some help or have any questions, feel free to contact us: contact(a)zorveo.com.

That's a nice list of alternatives. Give us an update about your social networking site :)

you can go for dedicated hosting or private server. what ever your hosting may be the provider  who you get should be reliable. try TheWebPole.com to get reliable hosting service

Amazon allows you to scale your website as it grows --- it'll even auto scale if you want.  I'd highly recommend it (that's what we use for most of our sites now).

It's relatively inexpensive (for the first year it's less than $2/month, after that it'll go up to $12 or something).  That's for their basic package, which if you're only running one website, is pretty good.

The money you save you can get someone to set it all up for you (that's not me, btw.  Though I used to know a guy who did this kinda stuff for me, but we do it in house now.  So PM me for his contact info).

Ignore the advice to go with a dedicated server.  It will cost you hundreds of dollars a month from the get go -- and a cloud based system is exactly what you're looking for (services like Amazon).

There is a good video tutorial available about how to setup an Amazon server easily (and it'll likely do what you need it to do).  That's where I started last year - now we've moved most of our stuff away from Dreamhost (it's way faster, and more stable).

Our recent test on our newest server showed 50 concurrent connections (50 visitors browsing our site at the same time) and a delay time of 1/2 second.  Our old Dreamhost account crashed at 8 connections (it's a resources intensive website).  Cost per month is roughly the same (between Amazon and Dreamhost VPS).

If you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them.  If I've been helpful, I'd love a response on one of my posts.  I'm trying to get some information about why people don't choose (or won't go back to) web designers.  I'm starting a new web project targeting non-profit (missionary) organizations and providing a very, very low rate (below cost - we recoup losses from our business side).

You don't have to be part of the demographic to tell us why you don't want a web designer (or why you wouldn't want one again).  Thanks in advance!  http://www.startupnation.com/Don-t-hire-a-professional-Great-Why-/topic/