Anybody here using "Unlimited Web Hosting" as their host/provider? Any opinions?

[Naboo32]

As per the title really .

I did a forum search and found one (positive) comment about this company. Can anyone else vouch for their service?

Thanks in advance .

 

[arad85]

Yup. I use them. For what it costs (£3.30/month inc) I think it's good value as I host a few web sites and domains there. The tech guys are very helpful (although it did take them a while to solve one of my problems but they did solve it). Page serves can run a bit slow sometimes - especially if you have a low usage site where I suspect you are swapped out of cache.

If you want to see a couple of sites hosted there check out:

http://photo.andysheen.co.uk/ (not much on there at the moment - the only thing really there is in the technical section).

and

http://www.alltheprettythings.co.uk/

First one is a Wordpress site, the second a Prestashop site. All content is served from MySQL databases.

 

[Naboo32]

Hi Andy,

This looks very encouraging I must say . Those pages load really fast.

I've actually called their help desk with a couple of queries this evening and I can't tell you how pleased I am to be able to talk to a human being (an English one at that !).

I think that this is going to be the way forward for me .

Thanks for the reassurance.

 

[arad85]

They are a 24/7 operation. I've had help at 3am on a Saturday morning before...

 

[Naboo32]

Well, I've not seen a bad word about them anywhere, so I went ahead and signed up earlier on this evening .

Let's see how it works out.

Thanks for the input, Andy.

 

[chouglez]

TSOHost come highly recommended too

 

[neil_g]

Hang on was the op majorly edited, I seem to remember the list of requirements being quite long earlier before I left work

 

[Naboo32]

Hang on was the op majorly edited, I seem to remember the list of requirements being quite long earlier before I left work

That's right Neil , but I had a feeling that I had asked a question that was just too vague, so rather than just delete the content (which is probably against some rule or other), I decided to ask a much more specific question on the same topic.

What would you have said in response to the original post, out of interest ?

 

[neil_g]

Just wondered if I was going mad lol

What did the original one say again? Lol

 

[Pete Allen]

I have three websites with Unlimited, never had a problem apart from the usual setup process.

I can only praise the support guys there, they even took my phone number to call me when transferring to them and, must have spent at least 30 mins walking me through the process.

Top guys, I'm sure you'll be fine with them.

 

[Naboo32]

Just wondered if I was going mad lol

What did the original one say again? Lol

+ Anybody here using "Unlimited Web Hosting" as their host/provider? Any opinions?


- Can someone please recommend a web hosting service which ...

- ... offers the following elements in their service package?

• Is UK-based (i.e. the telephone help desk is based there and not in Mumbai or California).
• Can offer a fixed price (preferably low) fee for at least three years.
• Supplies good site building software for novices, but which can produce a good variety of styles/templates.
• Is open and honest with its customers and does not use marketing tricks and misinformation to secure subscription renewals (this rules out most of the big names right away, I guess).
• Offers sufficient storage space for a fair number of large jpegs (say, 500MB+).
• Is not geared to business clients only, but can cater for private, non-commercial user as well.
• Truly demonstrates good customer service (this is a 'deal breaker' ).

It seems like a lot to ask, but then you might notice that I'm not asking for the very lowest price, the highest bandwidth, the lowest downtimes, the best in professional web design or any of the things that a business might need for a succesful website. No, I just want to be able to create (from design software included in the hosting package) my own wesbite for displaying my photographs, without having to deal with difficult to contact service desks, unhelpful (underpaid) staff, enormous phone bills (for USA-based help desks) and without being held to ransom when it comes to renewal time :nono:.

- What is making this so difficult at the moment is that there appear to be many websites out there which exist simply to 'review' web hosting companies, but judging by the hugely biased results (and subsequent contradictory posts on forums etc.), I think that some of these sites are owned/influenced by the hosting companies themselves .
+ I did a forum search and found one (positive) comment about this company. Can anyone else vouch for their service?

- Thanks in advance for your suggestions .

I have three websites with Unlimited, never had a problem apart from the usual setup process.

I can only praise the support guys there, they even took my phone number to call me when transferring to them and, must have spent at least 30 mins walking me through the process.

Top guys, I'm sure you'll be fine with them.

Well Pete, I'm delighted to say that I've had the same experience as you, so far .

When I called to ask a question about Domain registration (before joining them), they took my number and called me back too. This is especially handy, as I live in Germany .

Since joining, I've had lightning fast responses (well, less then 15 minutes) to a couple of the emails I've sent and had some really friendly, informal, but helpful chats with their support staff about various newbie issues.

What worries me now is that the more that people like you and I publicise them, the more other people will join and down will go our response times and patient support staff .

Anyway, so far, I'm delighted with the hosting, but am totally unable to create the kind of website that I want from the (one) site building tool supplied (Plesk) . Given how helpful UWH have been, I took a chance on sending them an email about this issue and now they are even offering to source me some alternative web building software for free !!!

It seems that the 219 five star reviews (97.7% satisfaction rating) that I found here were not a marketing scam after all :shrug: ...

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews245933.html

Anyway, it's been less than 24 hours since I joined, so I am jumping the gun somewhat with all this praise, but what a difference from my last host :bonk:.

 

[Pete Allen]

What worries me now is that the more that people like you and I publicise them, the more other people will join and down will go our response times and patient support staff .

Yea, you have a point there, maybe we should drop a few negatives in, problem is, I can't find any.

 

[Naboo32]

Yea, you have a point there, maybe we should drop a few negatives in, problem is, I can't find any.

No, as far as being a hosting service goes, there's really nothing to fault them on so far.

My problems lie elsewhere :|. They've given me access to a Joomla platform to work on, which as about 100 times better than the Plek tool, which comes as standard. I like Joomla! I've even found a good, free template that I can work with and have gone through all of the trauma of (successfully) transferring my domain hosting to UWH. No, the problems that I now have are that I can't preview any changes that I make to the template without them immediately being visible in the (public) 'live' domain, as I only have one domain registered with them (obviously) and there is no proper 'preview' function in the standard version of Joomla!

Secondly, there appears to be no way at all to back up and restore 'projects' in Joomla, the way that there was with the software that my last hosting company used (RVSitebuilder).

I'm on the verge of despair here (which is pretty common for anyone who doesn't have a degree in Computer Science and tries to build their own website ), as I can't believe that I have found such a great hosting company and yet might end up having to turn my back on them and go skulking back to the the American *******s who I was with before, simply because they have a Control Panel which actually works the way that I (and eveyone else, I assume) needs it to :shrug:.

To be fair, UWH have given me a lot of their time in trying to guide me through the actual web-building process (which is not what they're being paid to do), so I have no complaints about their support, whatsoever.


Maybe I just need to go and lie down for a while .

 

[arad85]

Hang on...

Joomla is a content management system. Plesk is the admin interface to your web site.

In plesk, create a sub-domain e.g. testing.abcd.co.uk and host your test site there. When you're ready to go live, just upload the site or any changes that you've made to your main live site.

As to backup and restore, there are two things you need to do here. Keep a backup of all the code you have changed to alter the look and feel of the Joomla site. This can be done on your home PC as you're probably uploading the files from there.

The second thing to do is to take a backup of the mysql database that Joomla relies on. You can set this up from plesk through the "Automated tasks" settings of the panel which runs a cron job at 3:15am every day that does (you need to change the USER and PASS lines of course!):

#!/bin/sh
USER='your_mysql_username'
PASS='your_mysql_password'
DDIR="private/dbback"
DUMP="$DDIR/db_$(date +%g%m%d_%H%M).sql.gz"

/usr/bin/mysqldump -u $USER -p$PASS --add-drop-table --all-databases | /usr/bin/gzip -c - > $DUMP; 

find $DDIR -ctime +7 -exec rm {} \;

exit 0

This puts a database backup in your private directory that you can access whenever you want.

There's always a way to do what you want to do Simples.

 

[arad85]

PS. plesk is a tad closer to bare metal than cpanel.... Stick with it - you'll be a linux guru before long (or at least a crontab one)

 

[arad85]

PPS. you have to create the dbback directory before it will work

 

[Naboo32]

Hang on...

Joomla is a content management system. Plesk is the admin interface to your web site.

In plesk, create a sub-domain e.g. testing.abcd.co.uk and host your test site there. When you're ready to go live, just upload the site or any changes that you've made to your main live site.

As to backup and restore, there are two things you need to do here. Keep a backup of all the code you have changed to alter the look and feel of the Joomla site. This can be done on your home PC as you're probably uploading the files from there.

The second thing to do is to take a backup of the mysql database that Joomla relies on. You can set this up from plesk through the "Automated tasks" settings of the panel which runs a cron job at 3:15am every day that does (you need to change the USER and PASS lines of course!):

#!/bin/sh
USER='your_mysql_username'
PASS='your_mysql_password'
DDIR="private/dbback"
DUMP="$DDIR/db_$(date +%g%m%d_%H%M).sql.gz"

/usr/bin/mysqldump -u $USER -p$PASS --add-drop-table --all-databases | /usr/bin/gzip -c - > $DUMP; 

find $DDIR -ctime +7 -exec rm {} \;

exit 0

This puts a database backup in your private directory that you can access whenever you want.

There's always a way to do what you want to do Simples.

Hi Andy,

It's really kind of you to post this stuff and try to help me out - I really appreciate it .

Unfortunately though, I have no idea how to do most of the things on your list .

I created another domain name in the Plesk 'control panel' and can now toggle between that and my live domain name. However, I have no idea how to link anything that I do in Joomla to this new domain name and (more importantly) no idea how to transfer any website that I might build in one domain to the other one :shrug:!?

I'm sorry, I know that (to those who do understand this stuff), I must appear to be a dunce who is missing the most obvious steps, but I just find this whole topic of web-build/publishing to be so completely 'specialised' and utterly un-user friendly to the novice, that I really wonder how anyone manages to work with it :shrug:!?

Any time that I ask for help, I just get bombarded with 'tech speak' and can never seem to find any online help that fits between 'Beginner' and 'Expert' levels . I'm not a moron - I work with computers all day, can read English and have even built a few (fairly) advanced Excel spreadsheets, but learning about web build and hosting is just a few steps too far for me, I think.

It's annoying though, because without a website, there's not much point in me taking any photos in the first place :shrug:!

Still, none of this is your fault Andy and I really do appreciate that you are trying to help me. It's just that I 'don't speak your language' .

Andy

 

[arad85]

Right. What we need to do is have an identical install (but with a different set of data for the moment) to your main site, but at the testing site. That will give you a live setup and a scratchbox you can play about in. THE DATA WILL BE DIFFERENT though so you can ensure that you don't mess around with your live data.

So for a subdomain see: http://kb.unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk/?View=entry&EntryID=7

You now need to install joomla there as well - you can do this from plesk... Log into your admin account (the UWH one, not the Joomla one) and then Web Applications-><choose your sub domain>->Install Web Application and search for Joomla. Select the latest and answer all questions. That will install it in your subdomain and you should now be able to just go to the subdomain and set it up.

That'll get you 2 Joomla installs - one on your main page, the other on your subdomain. You can play about with the subdomain to your hearts content without changing anything on the main pages.

We can worry about backing up the database when you've got your head around this

 

[arad85]

PS. often a step back and looking at the file layout in an FTP program like Filezilla gives you an idea of what's going on. There's a tutorial: http://kb.unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk/?View=entry&EntryID=22

Follow with a few beers/wine/<insert your poison here> and retire until tomorrow

 

[Naboo32]

Right. What we need to do is have an identical install (but with a different set of data for the moment) to your main site, but at the testing site. That will give you a live setup and a scratchbox you can play about in. THE DATA WILL BE DIFFERENT though so you can ensure that you don't mess around with your live data.

So for a subdomain see: http://kb.unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk/?View=entry&EntryID=7

You now need to install joomla there as well - you can do this from plesk... Log into your admin account (the UWH one, not the Joomla one) and then Web Applications-><choose your sub domain>->Install Web Application and search for Joomla. Select the latest and answer all questions. That will install it in your subdomain and you should now be able to just go to the subdomain and set it up.

That'll get you 2 Joomla installs - one on your main page, the other on your subdomain. You can play about with the subdomain to your hearts content without changing anything on the main pages.

We can worry about backing up the database when you've got your head around this

Right, now this is much more 'my level' - I actually understand all of this !

The sub-domain has already been succesfully (I hope) created and I went through the (UWH) Plesk control panel to find the list of web-building tools to add to it, but Joomla 2.5 is not on that list (only versions 1.5 & 1.7).

I think that I need to speak to the helpdesk at UWH, because they managed to install Joomla 2.5 to my main domain name, so I guess that they could easily do the same for the newly-created sub-domain!?

After that, it's just a case of finding out how to move 'projects' from one to the other and then I'm right back where I left off (in terms of funcionality) with my old provider . Much as I hated the 'Customer Service' values of my previous web host, they certainly did have a very easy to use site building interface.

 

[arad85]

I think that I need to speak to the helpdesk at UWH, because they managed to install Joomla 2.5 to my main domain name, so I guess that they could easily do the same for the newly-created sub-domain!?

Why not do it yourself. First download Joomla 2.5 from: http://www.joomla.org/download.html

Then read the documentation pointed to on that page. It really is simple to set these things up and once you have done it once (and maybe deleted it as you've got it wrong ) you'll have a MUCH better idea what's going on.

Just take your time and follow the instructions to the letter

 

[Naboo32]

Why not do it yourself. First download Joomla 2.5 from: http://www.joomla.org/download.html

Then read the documentation pointed to on that page. It really is simple to set these things up and once you have done it once (and maybe deleted it as you've got it wrong ) you'll have a MUCH better idea what's going on.

Just take your time and follow the instructions to the letter

Hi Andy,

Actually, I have alread been through the process of installing Joomla locally on my PC - that didn't work either !

I managed to install XAMPP (needed to manage PHP/SQL data!?) and Joomla itself, but when I started making changes to the template, the screen was full of 'Strict Standards' errors, which appeared between graphics on the live version too. I Googled this error and the solution involved somehow going into the program files of Joomla and re-writing parts of the programming text. This was way too hard for me to follow and it seemed that forum users who were discussing the topic couldn't even agree on the right way to change the code in order to make the rest of the programme run correctly . Not only that, but in the search for the answer to that problem, I came across lots of other posts where people who were running Joomla locally had run into problems, which involved re-writing PHP.ini files (whatever they are ).

I know it makes me sound like a dullard, but I just really don't want to be bothered with stuff like that - I just want a piece of software which works!

On top of that, I had major security worries about having these SQL/PHP tools installed (as part of the XAMMP package) and running all the time, potentially giving hackers access to my website, or my PC. When I tried to add passwords to all of the various applications, I somehow locked myself out and couldn't get access to the PHP.admin tool again :bang:.

Finally, I uninstalled everything and went back to the idea of having the site building software available on a remote server, as that way I can also update my website from work as well from home .

As of now, I just need to get through two more steps and then I should be all sorted . I need to get my hosting company to allocate me another small part of storage space (or whatever it is that they have to do), from which I can build and test my website in the 'virtual' domain that I have created and then I just have to figure out how to back up, transfer and recover files/complete projects between the virtual and live domains.

That should be possible, shouldn't it :shrug:?

Again, thanks for all of your help and patience, Andy .

 

[arad85]

I know it makes me sound like a dullard, but I just really don't want to be bothered with stuff like that - I just want a piece of software which works!

No, that's a fair enough position to be in

On top of that, I had major security worries about having these SQL/PHP tools installed (as part of the XAMMP package) and running all the time, potentially giving hackers access to my website, or my PC.

As long as the PC is hidden behind a router, no one can access these things. I run a FAMP (FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PHP) setup here and actually use the MySQL database for a couple of different apps around the network. I also run an internal website where I document how I keep the network setup here - much better than pieces of paper and it allows you to copy/paste command lines easily!!

As of now, I just need to get through two more steps and then I should be all sorted . I need to get my hosting company to allocate me another small part of storage space (or whatever it is that they have to do), from which I can build and test my website in the 'virtual' domain that I have created and then I just have to figure out how to back up, transfer and recover files/complete projects between the virtual and live domains.

Assuming you mean UWH, someone will need to upload Joomla2.5 to your server and run the install script there. They don't need to allocate any memory (it's unlimited!). You will need a new MySQL database setup, but this is pretty straight forward to do.

Don't be downheartened - stick at it and it will fall into place. Other than the MySQL database, the web site is simply a set of files sat on a computer somewhere. It is definitely worth using something like Filezilla to log on via your FTP account and having a look around to see the file structure in place. Changing a file remotely is just like changing a file locally - just you have to get it to change it and upload it once it has changed!

 

[Naboo32]

Thanks again for the encouragement, Andy .

I will indeed 'stick with it', as I'm so close to getting exactly what it was that I set out to get in the first place (i.e. a top class, affordable hosting service and access to free and flexible web building software), that there's really no turning back now .

I am just waiting to hear back from UWH about getting a second installation of Joomla set up (they have already created one for me, pointing at the live domain). After that, it's just a question of learning how to take the files/content from the test website and transfer them into the live website .

At the end of it all though, I should be able to build a website which will address all of the complaints about my former website (primarily that it was too big on the screen, making it hard to view on notebooks) and will have much greater flexibilty to change around the layout and add features in the future. Joomla is a godsend .

 

[talkmacintosh]

Ive used Lunarpages and Justhost and Lunarpages are better for changing things for free such as primary domains etc but just host are better in my opinion for uptime.

Matt

 

[Naboo32]

Ive used Lunarpages and Justhost and Lunarpages are better for changing things for free such as primary domains etc but just host are better in my opinion for uptime.

Matt

Hi Matt!

Welcome to TP !

Yes, JustHost's uptime was never really an issue for me, but as I don't run a commercial website, service, support and price were bigger issues for me.