I’m looking for a reliable web hosting company that will let me upload and maintain my website’s files via a version control system such as SVN or CVS, for mostly personal usage without branding.
Please, do NOT debate what version control systems are better. Any such comments will be deleted. I just want a website that won’t carry any branding or content I don’t control.
I only have a few other requirements:
- PHP support, with short open tags off. They’re such a pain.
- The ability to add content-types as I see fit (mostly XML content-types).
- The document root of the website should be a subdirectory of a top-level directory I can have read-write access to with the version control client.
- A good working relationship with the host. This may mean I ask for services to be added to the website, and the webhost says “okay, we’ll set it up for you, but it’ll cost you this much.”
Whether I need services such as MySQL or Perl, I don’t know yet. I may also ask for FTP access, but primarily for a staging area (so I don’t have fifteen billion commits while I debug things).
In case you’re wondering, yes, whatever website I develop with such a host will very likely carry a good volume of technical articles. It may even replace this blog (and don’t get me wrong, mozillaZine, I love this blog you’ve provided me for free). But at times there will also be articles which have nothing to do with Mozilla and will be oriented for a different audience entirely.
I just want complete freedom to do what I want on the web, with an audit trail, and without hosting the website myself.
Mozilla-related hosts will get preferential treatment. XULPlanet? MozDevGroup? Are you listening? 🙂
UPDATE: Wow, I feel like I’m on the receiving end of one of those “When banks compete, you win” commercials. 🙂
A few people have suggested the requirements I list are a bit onerous. Typically with .htaccess the first one is dead-on simple, a one-line change
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. I know because I’ve done it many times. The second is probably just as easy, and I think .htaccess can help with that too. The third is a pretty standard practice even with FTP-based hosts, and the fourth is non-technical.
As for setup and maintenance: I’m sorry, folks, that is one thing I specifically do not want to do. Honestly, I could run my website on my own machine if I wanted to do that. That’s why the fourth item is there.
Seeing as theres no other comments yet: I’ve heard good things about Dreamhost from others, (but I don’t use them myself so I’m not after a finder’s fee). They do CVS, PHP4+5, shell access etc, on Debian. There are some moz related sites over there already (bonsaibugs.org, squarefree.com, burntelectrons.org, steelgryphon.com and reputedly caminobrowser.org?)
My webhost, http://www.site5.com, have been excellent, bending over backwards to answer whatever queries i’ve had.
I can’t be 100% sure they do all the things you need, but there certainly worth a look as there one of the most flexible webhosts, while certain things aren’t turned on by default, if you need it, they’ll turn it on.
Try godaddy it’s cheap and if you get a virtual or dedicated service you can do anything you want. with dedicated you can even put whatever OS you want on the machine.
Get a dedicated server 🙂
Given how specific and non-standard your requirements are I would suggest getting a VPS (Virtual Private Server) and setting up your own software. This may require more effort than you expected, but it’s probably the only way to get the flexibility and range of services you’re looking for. Prices start around $10 a month and range all the way up to dedicated hosting costs. I use the linode.com $20 a month plan, but I’ve heard decent things about quantact.com, corevps.com, and provps.com. Those are all true server instances (using UML or XEN), but you can also look into Virtuozzo VPS’s. They tend to be cheaper but it’s not a *true* server. You don’t have complete control of the configuration because it’s really just a chrooted shell with some other magic to make it look like a *true* server. For your purposes however, that may not be an issue.
I’ve been looking into switching over to a “virtual server” hosting solution. The two that I have been considering are openhosting.com and unixshell.com. You get root access for your own virtual server so you can manage it however you like. But you do have to keep it up to date and stable yourself.
Pretty specific requirements!
Do you really need an _integrated_ revision control system? Why not host your own version control system somewhere, and just export the current HEAD/trunk to the website itself? (With Subversion, either via a periodical ‘svn export’ and rsync, or via server-side commit hooks, if you want the website to be updated automatically).
[or I guess you could pay someone else to host the version control server]
Malcolm
(From Alex: I have a pretty bad habit of losing things, like files. Especially when I switch from one system to another. I simply think an external repo is a better idea for me. Besides, from the replies already gathered, it seems I’m not the only one to request it, as I once thought.)
I second site5 – been with them for over 5 years, and they have great support and answer any email within an hour usually.
They have cvs and subversion installed running
textdrive offers your own (unlimited?) svn repositories, shell access, php 4 and 5 with your own php.ini, .htaccess or your own lighttpd instance proxied through apache, and I think they’ll set up anything reasonable for a low fee.
There’s a great community in the forums and all support tickets are answered by highly knowledgeable people. Often you get a response in minutes, generally in hours, occasionally you may wait for a few days.
I have a lifetime account with them and am greatly satisfied.
I have a client on dreamhost too and they are also nice, but don’t seem to offer svn, just cvs. Plans are more generous, the panel is saner, but changed take some time (minutes, hours) to effect.
What about sourceforge.net?
(From Alex: It doesn’t seem appropriate to use sourceforge for hosting my personal stuff, which isn’t an open-source project.)
I use Subversion just fine on Dreamhost.. and loving it. I actually installed it by hand as at the time they didn’t offer it by default, but it was easy to do with the shell account they give you :D.
you can even compile stuff via shell on there system. They are awesome!
I’m another happy site5 customer, they have 1,2 and 3 and I’m sure they can probably do most things you require…