Nov
29
2008

Alternative web hosts for LabourStart

Our readers have come up with a list for us — here are some of the suggestions.  If any of you could take a look and pass on your opinions (use the comments here) it would be appreciated.

  • LeftSpace Very appealing, UK-based with a focus on trade unions.  They’ve contacted us and were recommended by another reader as well.
  • Memset Recommended by Nick Holden; our mailing lists are hosted there now.
  • Electric Embers Appealing, San-Francisco based worker coop.
  • Nearlyfreespeech.net Recommended by a progressive US web activist and one of our supporters.
  • Lunarpages.com Recommended by a Canadian union webmaster.
  • Meccahosting Recommended by one of our readers in the U.K.
  • Laughing Squid Recommended by a reader in the US
  • 1&1 Recommended by an IWW webmaster in the US and a trade union one here in the U.K.  Obviously people have had different experiences with this company – but ours sucked.
  • Flexihostings An Australian hosting company recommended by a comrade in New Zealand
  • The Phone Co-op A UK company – I think this evolved from Poptel.

I may add more names to this list as other recommendations come in.  Stay tuned.  Add comments below.

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |

3 Comments »

  • I like anything that (a) understand us and what we are doing so they’re not going to do something stupid as with what recently happended, and (b) has great reviews from people who have had real problems and received decent customer service.

    Cost isn’t an issue: send me the bill.

    Comment | November 29, 2008
  • Andrew Casey

    I think whoever we use as a webhost needs to be in Eric’s time zone, or close by.

    It makes it easier to get things done. Eric should if at all possible not have to be up in the middle of the night.

    I agree with Derek’s comment that they should understand us as a campaigning website and not do something stupid – as just happened.

    Not much more I can say at moment.

    Comment | November 30, 2008
  • Andy

    I agree with Andrew about the time zone.
    After doing a whois on LabourStart, perhaps we need to start by transferring the domain name to an independent registrar and managing our own DNS.
    What exactly are we looking for (a hosting plan, a VDS – virtual dedicated server – or our own remote server)? How much disk space? How many databases? More importantly, what sort of bandwidth do we need (now – in a year)? How many possible simultaneous accesses?
    We also need to look into the price of repairs. How are they billed, fixed price or by the hour?
    How much to shoot a virus or a conflict between scripts? Ban a hacker? Stop a DOS attack? Will the host repair third party scripts? What happens if we have an attack that brings down other peoples sites? If 1&1 arbitrarily put us on an auxiliary server, they were probably worried about the sudden upsurge in traffic and it’s propagation on the usual server.
    Perhaps it would more judicious to have two hosts, one for the campaigns and one for the news? Rather than have the whole thing crash, we could inform people on one or the other.
    As for the potential hosts, LeftSpace certainly announces the colour but they don’t look big enough to do a 24/7 service.
    Not too hard to find a bad review of Memset. They brag about commercial customers like Disney, KFC, etc. What happens if we run a campaign against them? I seem to remember a piece about Twitter…
    Phone Coop doesn’t seem to be a specialist in webhosting…

    Comment | December 1, 2008

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