If I'm right, it's about this time of year (or possibly later, around September?) that Teh's hosting plan is up for renewal?

Do we still have any credit with EuroVPS and / or is it worth looking around for somewhere else (assuming we can get a refund on any credit we might have)? At the moment the Pound is stronger against the US Dollar than it is the Euro, which means it would make more sense to look for hosting away from Euroland. I've mentioned Linode before, just noticed they now do hosting in the UK (we'd still pay in USD), which would be a double win.

Not sure how much we pay with EuroVPS, but they have many different plans we can choose from and they can all be upgraded easily. Of course, things might change in a few months, but I thought it worth starting this discussion now and get people ready for donations :)

We have €150.44 credit remaining, so we'd need to raise just under €200 to make the €349.56 subscription.

Assuming the price is the same - they've re-done their website and have different plans, so no idea if they'd try shifting us to a new plan (and charging ~ €400+ by the looks of it ).

The current subscription has an end date of 7 Oct 2010, but I think they bill two months in advance, so I guess that means we need to decide by August. Definitely worth starting the discussion now though.

Okay, excuse the major delay in replying.

So we can pay EuroVPS a further ~£212 and stick when them for another year, or pay Linode ~£288 and get the site moved to the UK, have more control over the server, including getting rid of Plesk, choosing our Linux distro, choosing what servers to install, and more besides.

I know what I'd rather go with, but this ugly bunch ain't likely to want to spend more money just to satisfy little old me, are you darlings?

Hint: Anyone other than myself and Pete want to chime in, feel free.

I was considering getting a Linode to start up some paid Beehive hosting, which could be used to offset the cost of Teh, if we can find enough people interested in us hosting their forums that is, but that seems like some hair brained idea rather than a well formed plan at the moment.

I don't mind chipping in £15 instead of £10 which if teh regulars all chipped in would put us somewhere near the latter server's target.

What him up there said.

As per both above. I can get at least that pimping Mouse out to men with no taste.

With EuroVPS the problem hasn't just been Plesk (which is invisible to most of us) but the reliability. I know that no honest hosting company will guarantee 100% uptime, but what have you heard about Linode vs. EuroVPS in this context?

 

Other that that, add a fourth vote.

I think Peter has shown 'interest' in that regard. Which comes (I've no idea John) as a bit of a shock, but hey-ho.

I'm going to jinx us now by saying the reliability of the EuroVPS hosting hasn't been too bad recently. Reasonably nippy from here in the UK, and the server doesn't fall on it's arse as often, although that's probably to do with the watchdog service which checks periodically that MySQL and Apache are still running.

The big kick in the teeth, which I appreciate the rest of you don't get to deal with, is Plesk. It is a nightmare to deal with if you're more than slightly technically literate. I'm sure it's really helpful for managing a server if your knowledge is not on par, but while it tries to be helpful it also makes getting down and dirty and fine tuning things almost impossible what with it's tendency to overwrite (Apache) server configuration files with what it thinks is best, whenever it feels like it.

Linode gets some good press, and come highly recommended by a couple of friends. What interests me the most about Linode is the fact that you literally start with an empty VPS and can choose to install what you like on it and it's all your choice which software you install and how you configure it.

It's unlikely, but if we could get a refund from EuroVPS that would be brilliant, but I doubt they're likely to like that one.

I'm up for moving if that's a better long-term/reliable option.

 

EuroVPS have been fine lately, but given the amount of problems we had early on it doesn't fill one with confidence. And if we can hack on some beehive hosting for others for a small fee (or maybe do it for free but cripple some of the features and put some adverts in) then that would be cool too, though not essential.

 

I can probably chuck in 20 or 30 quid at some point.

Ahhh, that might explain why I couldn't find any information on number of MySQL DBs supported on each account! :$

I'm tempted to look at the lowest account level as a replacement to my current host. I'd like to play with HTTP authentication in PHP, but they don't support that. I rather suspect, though, that it might be more trouble than it's worth. :/

I will chip in extra if it makes Matt happy : )

Someone do something that entertainingly grabs my attention on Monday evening and make me remember to see what we've got in the Amazon referral bucket? I think I might struggle to know when I'm measuring from so also tell me when we last raided it if you can. I'll work it out otherwise though.

Apart from that, I'm game to try this Linode thing. I am seeing it as: we do this thing for fun. If Matt can have more fun by having a Linode server than he can a EuroVPS then let's do that. If that also means some other people can do stuff with it (maybe even us? what could we do?) then great. So I'm in favour of that idea, doesn't seem like it'll be much of a price jump when it's split between a bunch of us.

Same here.

What would be the situation with being able to offer hosting to Teh users if we move elsewhere?

 

I'm happy to put my bit in regardless but I pay about £30/year for my hosting (nethosted) and if whatever package we're looking at would cover a few users uses then I'd much rather give that £30 extra towards the server costs. Just a thought.

 

(That package is basically 250MB storage with 5GB bandwidth)

The EuroVPS renewal order has come through (yes, for 7th October).

So, have we confirmed that the plan is to not renew, and switch to Linode late September?

If so, I'll need to get them to cancel the renewal, and attempt to get the €125 credit returned.

But before that we'll want a complete backup, copied off server, in case they don't understand the "don't renew" part, and kill it immediately.

Are you able to get the backup done now?

Yep. All backed up and downloaded*. You may go tell them the "bad" news.

*Hooray for Remote Desktop to home.

Any views on my suggestion of using the new server for Teh users hosting? (paid of course)

I've just signed up to Nethosted for a bunch of additional hosting, but I'd happily swap over as soon as is feasible. However, we ought to take care to avoid saddling any of the possie with a sort of accidental server support role.

 

Madmodbankerscum>> Incidentally, I'm happy to chuck a brick into the hosting coffers as soon as or sooner than required. What's the account details? Is it Paypal?

I agree with not saddling someone (Matt or Pete I assume) with a server support role but I can't remember the last time I contacted NetHosted. As long as I have CPanel access like I do now then I'll be a happy bunny. I just think it's an extra way to fund the server.