Hawthorne is approaching its second birthday, and the CRAZY idea of getting Hawthorne off Invisionfree and onto its own board as the ultimate present to Persephone, the site's creator and owner, simultaneously popped into the minds of the other admins. The three of us had a big powwow over it, and decided we wanted to do it. After gathering a bunch of information of our three big choices for systems (IPB, SMF, and phpBB), we posed the choices to first the staff, and then the members. So far, it's looking like we're going with SMF.

That's not really my point here, however. The next step is to find a host. As we're a rather large site, we're looking at getting our own hosting and not burdening someone else. We're looking for something that's reasonably priced, reliable, has plenty of space, and can supply the requirement SMF has (which are HERE, if anyone wants to look at them) .

So, tell me your stories, horror or wonder. What are some good hosts? What are the ones to steer away from? And the ones to run away from screaming? What problems have you had with it, and how good is support?

Thank you ahead of time.

I've never actually bought any hosting plans, but a long time ago I was doing research on it, and this site was pretty helpful.

Hey, for SMF, I'll provide you hosting. I'll even throw in some free support, since I use SMF so much, I probably help you out with most of your issues.

I've got a reseller account, which allows me to set up a your own account for you.

I've got some pretty reasonable prices (I think), but feel free to check them out. http://devira.info

From personal experience, all I can advise host-wise is stay away from Bluehost. Their technical support sucks.

The best webhost that I have used is 1and1.

My site on 1and1 has only experienced very limited down-time, it's very affordable, and it comes with alot of stuff :3

I can host a subdomain for you off of dreamsofstone.com.

Go to http://www.dreamsofstone.com/hosting.php

I host for free. =)

I'm surprised o.O While the obvious choice is a forum you don't have to pay for, what size quote did you get for transferring your database from IF to IPB? Otherwise you'd lose 2 years worth of material o.O

Hosts, I use Lunarpages. Affordable, small% of up time and you have forums and a heldesk to track any potential problems or questions you have. I always find forums MOST helpful because you have a lot more people looking at your messages and are able to help usually.

I won't lie--I have just experienced about an hour's downtime yesterday because of a problem with their network. However they were straight with me, kept us updated every 10 minutes and nothing was lost. That's the first time I personally have noticed a loading problem but maybe a member will tell you different. It is impossible to guarentee little to no downtime. Fact of life is technology is not faultless. It may be worth contacting your potential webhosts directly asking when the last time they had downtime was, what it was for and what safeguards/processes they have in place to take care of it. I find talking to a person much better than a vague FAQ page.

I also pay a little extra for nightly site backups just in case.

Accepting that shite happens I am happy where I am, but that is basing it on the fact that I have not hit any major roadblocks. When I do, that'll be the deciding factor on staying or going. You're shot without a strong support team and quick/effective processes to help you solve issues.

LP certainly comes with all the nick-nacks required. Scripts, databases, phpmyadmin, the lot. It also comes with an SMF forum too; not that it's hard to setup without one, of course.

BTW, there is a crawl converter for IF to SMF (not exactly efficient or accurate, but it's better than losing all your posts).

Also, most hosts with cpanel also have Fantasticoo, which is a fast way to set up SMF, but Fantastico's install has a very big problem with setting the language to UTF8 without having the database in UTF8 format. Which screws up a fair few forums.

I owe my hosts some recommendation!

I love Dreamhost. gives me 500 gigs of space and an extra 2 gigs every week. I paid 119 in advance for a year. Their tech support is fast and they have diffeant levels in which you can have the explanation of what to do given to you (ranging from 'I have no fricken' clue' to 'I probably know better than you do') I have 5 terabytes of bandwidth too!

And if you go with them, i have a promotional key... Erida ...It'll give you more space!

There's an option to do that? Where could I find that out, please?

Last I heard, IF is pretty stringent on who they'll give out their databases to and how much they'll charge. It's usually quite a bit, and it tends to take a while.