The vast majority of shared hosting providers will not give you access to a command-line interface.
Also, most are running a control panel like cPanel. They don’t give you root access on a shared machine.
Your best bet for that is a VPS where you’ll get some fraction of a physical machine’s resources.
More and more folks are using proprietary control panels. I had a WHM/cPanel reseller account with Eleven2 for quite a while and liked them. But on Sept 2nd of last year, they suddenly, and without warning, switched everybody over from WHM/cPanel to some cPanel clone that had a lot of problems. I hear cPanel jacked up their costs, and I guess these guys didn’t want to keep paying them. They said it’s b/c cPanel stopped improving their platform and it was getting slow. They said this other clone had added a lot of new features that users have been demanding to see added to cPanel. Also, cPanel is written in Perl, and the clone one is in php. I paid for 12 months of cPanel hosting, and they had no right to just swap it out without any notice; after a month of headaches, I started looking around. I eventually did switch to WHW — described next.
I’m currently using WebHostingWorld.net <
http://webhostingworld.net/> simply because I was able to snag a great discount on Black Friday for a one-year deal on a Reseller type account (WHM/cPanel). They WILL give you rsh access on a given account if you ask. Their support is ok given how little I’ve needed it. The sites I’ve got there sometimes are slow to load, and I’m not sure why, but it’s not a big problem at the moment. They have servers in several cities and you can request a particular one, so if you get one in a place like Phoenix, you won’t have to worry about hurricanes. (Monsoon storms can be another matter, but usually they’ll fire up their standby generator to ensure there’s no power loss.)
I would not go with HostGator. I used them for a long time, but when they got taken over by that big conglomerate, their support went down the tubes and they started overloading all of their servers. In general, I avoid hosts that are with the outfit that owns HG, as they route support for all of them through the same place overseas.
NameCheap provides good generic cPanel hosting, although their policies are very “conservative”. They disable a lot of things that I use under the guise of “security risk” but I think it’s just to reduce support calls. I think they’re best for consumers who don’t really know what they’re doing, not devs. I felt like I was wearing a straightjacket working with them. But their hosting is fine for simple sites.
I have a Windows VPS at VirMach, and discovered they’ve been having problems for a while internally. They sell cheap hosting and push upgraded support plans by stripping out commonly configured stuff and charging you to get their Support team to reactivate them. Their support system sucks — they have an FAQ for really basic issues, and if you have a question outside of that, it can be challenging to post it. Their response times aren’t very good either. I can’t recommend them. But for what I’m paying for a Win VPS, it’s tolerable. (I’m doing dev work and I wanted a basic Windows server hosted somewhere that allows me to test out my software. At some point I’ll need a dedicated host or something with a more reliable vendor, but for now this is meeting my needs, more or less.
-David Schwartz
> On Jul 3, 2023, at 6:09 AM, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> For many years Troubleshooters.Com has been hosted by the spectacular
> Futurequest in Orlando Florida. Sadly, because of hurricanes, the
> pandemic, inflation, and insanely skyrocketing rents in Orlando,
> they're going out of business within a few days, so I need a new web
> host.
>
> What I absolutely need:
>
> * Reliability
> * ssh access
> * Already installed http, smtp, and firewall
> * At least 500 MB of space
> * Somewhere around 5 GB transfer per month
> * A reasonably effective way to get tech support
> * Ability to have Javascript in my web pages
> * A way to quickly redirect my whole site, such as .htaccess.
> I need this ability because I need to shut down before every
> hurricane. To see an example of what I'd redirect to, see
> http://troubleshooters.com/troubleshooters_during_ian.htm
>
> What I'd also really like:
>
> * A non-distopian Terms of Service
> * Ability to run server side scripts (Perl etc)
> * Ability to serve https
> * Ability to serve multiple domain names with one contract
> * Good mailing list software that doesn't throttle too much
>
> I prioritize the preceding over price. Price is a secondary concern.
>
> I used Bluehost in the past, but found them not good enough, so I'm
> hoping for somebody better than Bluehost.
>
> If anyone knows of any good web hosts, please let me know.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
> Autumn 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
> ---------------------------------------------------
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