blogmaking.net

How many Megabytes in a Gig?

Kitty — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 05:55:40 +0000

Debbie Gillespie does a good job of explaining what are KBs, MBs, GBs and TB in When Size Does Matter. There are so many ways of representing storage and bandwidth that you really need to know what they are so that you can compare apples with apples and not think you’ve got an orange.

So today I was comparing between Site5 and AN Hosting (Mid-Phase owned) and Site5 has a plan that gives you 55GBs storage and 5TBs bandwidth while AN Hosting (Mega Plan Plus) gives you 300,000MBs storage and 3,000,000MBs bandwidth. Arghhhh!!!

Here’s the decoder…

8 bits = 1 byte.
1,024 bytes = 1 kilobyte (KB).
1,024 kilobytes (KB) = 1 megabytye (MB or Meg)
1,024 megabytes (MB) = 1 gigabyte (GB or Gig)
1,024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte. (TB)

But often hosts will forget about the 24 part so you might need to replace all the 1024s above with 1000. It’s also a little simpler on the maths.

Staying correct with the 1024, I worked out that the AN Hosting Mega Plus Plan offers 293GBs storage (compared to 55 at Site5) and 2.86TB bandwidth (compared with 5 at Site5). So I guess it’s a question of what’s of more importance to you, hosting or bandwidth? Normally, I’d choose bandwidth but in this case I’m looking to set up some off-site private backup of some of the junk on my hard drive so the mega amounts of storage are actually looking pretty attractive.

Costs and number of sites hostable are some more important factors. Site5 with $5/month and 55 domains beats AN Hosting’s offer of $9.95/month and 30 domains hands down this round. But you have to pay 24 months upfront to get the $5 Site5 deal whereas AN Hosting’s offer only requires 12 months prepayment (and I have a 2 months free code: AN-SUMMEROFLIGHTS-0202 ) so the upfront fee is pretty similar (though of course this buys you an extra 12 months with Site5).

But I’d say the biggest factor is reliability and performance and I’ve heard very good things about MidPhase/AN Hosting, including this glowing review from Chris Pearson (aka Cutline fame).

I am a little bit of a hosting junkie so I will probably check out the Site5 offer some time soon, but for the time being, I’m going with AN Hosting. Will let you know how it goes!

Getting your domain to point to your server (host)

catherine — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:33:31 +0000

If you bought your domain name from the same place that you have your hosting then this may already be set up for you. Otherwise, you will have to change your DNS settings at your domain registry and set up your domain name at your hosting services. This part is really dependant on the specific instructions of your registry/host so check out their help settings if what it is you need to do isn’t obvious. 1. You need to make sure that your domain name at your domain registry (if separate to hosting) points to your host’s server. In namecheap.com’s interface, you clickk on your domain name and then in the left sidebar you’ll find “Transfer DNS to Webhost”, if you click on that, you’ll be taken to a screen and asked to enter up to 5 DNS names. Only 2 are compulsory but sometimes your host will provide you with more. Nameservers usually look like ns#.hostname.com and most hosts will tell you what they are in your signup email (you can find them in the host’s support/help site usually too). For dreamhost, I’d enter 3 nameservers:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

For godaddy.com domain registry, you’d click on the domain and then on “nameservers”, then click on “custom nameservers” and add your DNS names as instructed. If you went with micfo then the nameservers would be:

NS1.MICFO.COM
NS2.MICFO.COM

2. Once you’ve set up your server info at your domain registry, you need to actually set up your domain name on your hosting plan. Some hosts ask for this information (ie your domain name) right at the beginning on signup and so this may already be set up for you. If not, each host will have its own specific instructions. If it gets too confusing or something’s not working then don’t be afraid to send off an email to your host asking for help. I had to do that with Micfo and found out that they needed to set something up which they did quickly. For DreamHost, you’d go into their control panel and click on /Domains/Manage Domains and then there will be a link that says “add New Domain/sub-Domain” click on it. Fill in your domain name and there are a few options, I chose PHP 5 and Extra Web Security and for both http://www.domain.com/ and http://domain.com/ work. Then I clicked on “Fully host this domain now!” and that’s it. You might need to wait a few hours (they say up to 48 hrs but it never takes that long) until the DNS updates itself, but usually can go with installing stuff, you just won’t see anything when you go to the web address. For Micfo, it’s a little more complex, you have to create a package in your www.domain.com/whm and then create an account assigned to a package. It’s probably best to read their instructions.

Finding a domain host

catherine — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:33:14 +0000

There’s so much cheap hosting around these days, it’s hard to know who’s good. One good tip is to look up the host’s name and “reviews” or “problems” in google and see what you can find. Many hosts have support forums and it’s worth looking at what problems are raised and whether (and how) they are dealt with by the host. If no problems are raised then look for signs of censorship because even the best host will have the occasional hiccup. The two I use are Micfo and Dreamhost and they’ve both been reasonably reliable, if I’ve needed to contact the staff, they’ve been friendly and they offer great deals. What I particularly like about both is they let you host as many domains as you want on one package. Micfo uses a cpanel interface to control your domains and let’s you set up a separate cpanel for each domain which is great if you are setting up domains/sites for other people because you can give them a login/password and then they’re in full control of their own site and you can keep access to your higher level web administration to yourself. The cpanel is a really easy to use interface that’s quite pretty. [screenshot] Micfo’s cpanel also gives you Fantastico which lets you do one click installs of a whole heap of popular web software like Wordpress, Drupal, bulletin boards, mailing lists etc. It’s heaps simple and definitely recommended if you are new to this and/or like pretty interfaces and/or are lazy. [screenshot] Dreamhost is not so pretty or as easy, also all your domains are managed from one centralised interface which is probably more convenient if all the domains are yours because it’s all in one place. Most of the cpanel options are in the Dreamhost interface and are probably actually simpler, it just seems harder because it just looks more hardcore. They also don’t have Fantastico which sucks but they’ve developed their own one-click installs for a few programs including WordPress. Anyway, installations are more reliable if you do them manually apparently. The other great thing about Dreamhost is they give you heaps and heaps of bandwidth and it increases by 16GB a week which is more than most places give you in a month. It’s employee owned and the people who own/work there all seem pretty nice. They have funny newsletters too. They are also quite happy to point out when they suck which is refreshing. This site’s being built on Dreamhost. Some other hosts that might be worth checking out are:

BlueHost

lunarpages

living dot