Web Hosting Review - Worst Web Hosts for Webmasters & Why

Web hosting review of what doesn't work for webmasters when it comes to effectively installing, configuring and using common web applications or web scripts such as CMS / Content Management Systems, forum / discussion boards or blog software.

COMMON WEB APPLICATIONS:

Examples of common web scripts / applications:

• vBulletin
• phpBB
• Simple Machines Forum
• Invision Power Board
• Wordpress
• Subdreamer CMS
• Joomla
• pMachine
• Nucleus
• Drupal
• GeekLog
• Typo 3
• PHP-Nuke
• DragonFly CMS
• phpWeb CMS
• php Web Site
• Site Frame
• Xoops
• ETC!
  
  There are so many more,,, including free and commercial scripts that serve special requirements such as ecommerce, project management, image galleries, document repositories, and so on. Pick any niche topic or specific requirement of a website and there is a popular web script or two specifically for that purpose.... any we want those scripts to work!

BAD WEB HOSTS!

While some big name companies offer reputable services and fancy bells and whistles with all of their products and offerings.... sometimes you just wish they would leave web hosting to someone else.

The problem with most of these companies is that they do not trust the general population of webmasters to secure their own web space, which is fair... as these web hosts typically are targeting (preying on) naive small businesses, newbie webmasters, etc so you can't blame them for the extra security measures.... but because of this, they essentially lockdown their servers. These companies at least need to advertise (print BOLDLY rather then finely or not at all) the restrictions that they have in place so that webmasters to be or small business webmasters, etc, hoping to install and configure a desired script, don't end up at a dead end with hours of development time wasted any money spent. This would be a big disappointment to spend the money, set things up, configure and customize applications, prepare project plans, etc only to find out later that you would not be able to run the web script without limitations or perhaps not at all.

All of these web hosts are on my NOT recommended list!

• Yahoo
• Godaddy
• Crystalhost
• Freeservers
• Brinkster
• Netfirms
• 1and1
• Networksolutions

These web hosts are known to severely limit your ability to run different web applications / scripts / software. Server configuration settings are limited and restricted... added security restrictions are in place... .htaccess files are often not allowed, scripts requiring creation of temporary database tables are often not allowed.... URL rewrite techniques are usually not allowed... max upload sizes are restricted and other settings that can affect performance of your scripts are all usually limited... and many more technicalities surely exist. What a pain.

Note that these companies may or may not offer other services worth your while, for example, I use Yahoo for many things including my Fantasy hockey pools which of course I am super addicted to and I use Godaddy for managing a massive portfolio of domain names and they do a fine job.

Final advice; any webmaster preparing to configure a web script should consult with the vendors documentation or other users to see what web hosting configuration works best before deciding on a web host.

My webhost of the last 5 years, for dedicated and VPS solutions has been Servint.net

For shared hosting I recommend Thinkhost. Become an affiliate  /  or Signup for hosting

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