Webhost Recommendations

Since I having been trying to use more Urdu on this weblog, I have run up against a number of issues related to Perl 5.6.1’s support for Unicode, which is the version installed on my web host’s servers. I asked them if they had any plans of upgrading Perl to a more recent version (5.8.x) but Dreamhost has no such plans in the near future since the current stable release of Debian Linux includes Perl 5.6.1. Until Debian 3.1 is released and installed on Dreamhost’s servers, I am out of luck.

Therefore, I have two options:

  1. Install Perl 5.8.6 in my user account (without root access). I have heard that this is a hassle and I am not sure what sort of problems I could run into. Plus would I have to maintain all Perl modules that I need by myself as well? If you have any thoughts on the matter or can point to an installation guide for non-root users, please let me know.
  2. Change web hosts to one which has Perl 5.8.1 or later installed. Please suggest reasonable web hosts.

Currently, I am on the Dreamhost Crazy Domain Insane plan which costs about $120 per year. It includes 2.4GB disk space, 120 GB/month bandwidth, 1 free domain registration, 3 domains and 15 subdomains hosting, unlimited MySQL databases, video streaming, lots of email accounts, etc. I am currently using about 415 MB of disk space and 3 GB/month bandwidth.

My requirements would include at least 1 GB of disk space and 20 GB/month bandwidth. I have 4 subdomains right now, so at least that number should be available. I would need at least 3 MySQL databases as well.

Currently, the major use of my web hosting is with Movable Type and WordPress. I am also posting lots of photographs and some videos (streaming) online. So obviously a new web host would need to support these.

What do you think are the pros and cons of the two options I have listed? Which do you think would be better? Please note that other than the Perl Unicode support issue, I am satisfied with Dreamhost.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Categorized as Internet

By Zack

Dad, gadget guy, bookworm, political animal, global nomad, cyclist, hiker, tennis player, photographer

10 comments

  1. Dreamhost is quite good regards bang for the buck – there aren’t that many reputable hosts which provide so many features for the price. I am using icdsoft – but that provides a lot less space/bandwidth, but otherwise they are rock solid.

  3. I am also using icdhost. They are rock solid because you are severly limited in your actions. They offer, as to my knowledge, and that is after an exchange of many emails on different issues, only shared hosting. That is why the server uptime is remarkably high which is 100% in most cases, since years.

    However below are the (basic?) things I tried to get and was denied:
    (i) GRANT command on my own database.
    (ii) CRONTAB (for cron jobs)
    (iii) SHELL Account (of any kind)
    …more to discover.
    Their support is EXCELLENT. Within minutes you get the response and provided they can give you what you’ve asked for, you would get it running in about 10-20 minutes.
    Bottom line: icdhost is good but not for guys who like to play around with things. If it is only Unicode issue && everything else is fine && I am in your place, I would stick to my existing host (that is Dreamhost).

  5. Asif: OK, so icdhost is definitely out. Shell access and crontab are a must for me. Tinkering is also quite important.

  8. I ran into a similiar problem with a similiar script. I know that the current recognized stable perl is 5.8.4. And I know that my webhost (WEBSTER COMPUTING http://webcs.com) has that installed.

    I have a shared account there so its no problem cause they have it pre-installed. But a friend of mine wanted something wild installed that a shared hosting account couldn’t support. So they got a VPS with webcs.com which gives root access so he could install anything he wanted. But myself, I didn’t need to since 5.8.4 is standard there anyways.

    Hope that helps?

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