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September 17, 2000 |
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Craig's World Moves to Interland |
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| You probably don't notice or care one way or another, but this Web
site has been hosted by Simplenet since 1996. Back then Simplenet was a
little Web hosting company that was doing something that nobody else
was: By simply filling out a few forms on a Web site you could have a
domain name and Web hosting in a few minutes.
I visited Simplenet sometime in 1997 and was told I was the first customer to ever visit them physically. They had just moved into a three-bedroom condo with dedicated lines connecting them to their servers, which I believe were located at an AT&T facility that was earthquake hardened, etc. Sometime in the last year or so Simplenet was acquired by Yahoo. Like other "dot-coms", Yahoo is trying to show profit through acquisitions. In the process they've lost track of the low prices and customer service that got them where they are. About a year ago I read a review of WIndows NT Web hosting services. They awarded Interland (www.interland.com) their top rating. Later I saw another review with similar comments. Moving www.craigr.com to Interland was straightforward. It can be done online but I prefer to talk to a representative. A toll-free call and no hold time and it was taken care of. Interland doesn't charge on a monthly basis, but rather charges you for 1-3 years in advance. The longer you commit to, the better your rate. One of the things I like about Interland is I get unlimited email accounts, and I control adding email accounts. I can set auto-responders, forwarding, aliases, etc. At Simplenet each email address beyond the first cost me a couple bucks. The other thing I like about Interland is that I'm hosted on an NT machine. That gives me Active Server Page (ASP) server-side scripting, which is very powerful. I also have access to SQL Server. This will let me put my book reviews and soapbox articles into an easy-to-maintain database instead of creating individual pages for each one. I also took advantage of this opportunity to move my domain registration from Network Solutions ($35/year) to BuyDomains.com (www.buydomains.com, $16/year). Doing so gives me cheaper annual fees but also gives me full access to the DNS entries for my domain. For example, since I run my own SMTP server it would be trivial to direct my email to my server instead of Interland's. Or set up my server at a lower priority than the Interland server so that if they're down my email can come to my server instead. I now have three domains at Interland and expect to add another in the next week or so:
At this point I strongly recommend the services of Interland and BuyDomains.com. (If you're looking for dirt-simple Web site design and hosting, however, you might want to check out Web Site Complete from GoDaddy Software at www.godaddy.com.) |
