Another question for the seasoned vets of web design…  PXlated?  How is my tab doing?  I swear I need to start paying your consulting fees.  The check is in the mail! 

I have had a VPS account for a while and along the way I have picked up hosting for some friends as well as some commercial sites.  Now that I am doing web design on the side I am probably going to start hosting my clients sites as well as the clients for a few associates that also do web design.  The VPS provider is really great and it is just as easy to keep all these people under my wing so that I have easy access for maintenance.  It is also nice to have the flexibility to make the changes we need to the server.  I have absolutely no intention of joining the web hosting provider circus, I just thought doing something like this might be a better service for the client.

Does anyone else host their clients sites or is this generally too much of a pain?  Any horror stories out there on this practice?  I am thinking that once you get to a certain point it may be more of a headache than it is worth.  In any case, I would like to get the opinion of others.

By the way… I would love to use PMHosting but the service is just not flexible enough for me.  I have much respect for the PMHosting way of doing things, and this is probably the best option for most commercial sites.  The expertise of Nevin and the solid backing of Enterprise Redhat provides a solution that is about as good as you can get.  I may consider doing this for my commercial clients.  For my personal sites, the PMHosting plan just does not scale very well.  I like the freedom of creating or deleting a domain whenever I please, and to pay for my accounts by resources rather than by domain name.  I might have ten website that combined use maybe a quarter of the resources of the basic PMHosting account, but I still have to pay for ten different accounts with at least 20 times the resources that I actually need.  This dilemna is met perfectly by a good VPS plan.

In any case, the hosting plans provided by PM is targeted for people that need rock solid hosting rather than clowns like me.

Thanks ahead of time for any advice!

Even though I run my own local development servers, I have no interest in taking care of the “real” hosting even for myself so I’d never do it for clients :-)
—————
Filed under “lack of interest”.

More sage advice… thank you.  I am sure the time will come when I will curse the day I ever thought hosting clients might be a good idea.  I will probably just set them up on PMHosting.

PXLated is right (of course Hosting is something best done by dedicated specialists. Now, as my hosting account is big enough, I do resell parts of it to friends (who basically are interested in stable webhosting only), but running my own hosting server? I just see too much pain ahead.

For $10/mo per client there’s no way I can begin to provide the same service as pMaching hosting.

Plus…for me that side of it just isn’t fun or interesting.

The thing with the pMachineHostings of the world is they usually give you four things…
1) Name Servers
2) Web Servers
3) Database Servers
4) Email Servers
All are a different specialty and require the Nevins of the world to always have their beeper on. Since the web is 24/7/365, so is the server admin. Keeping the Email server with all the spam controls, etc. running and efficient would probably drive me insane

Keeping the Email server with all the spam controls, etc. running and efficient would probably drive me insane

probably?  probably?!? <insane laughter>

Oh… sorry, got caught up in my own mind for a minute there.

(Back to working here with staff on some cool things that will be coming in 2006 at pMachineHosting.com)

1) Name Servers
2) Web Servers
3) Database Servers
4) Email Servers

Hmmm.. and…
Firewalls
Intrusion Prevention Systems (and the monitoring of countless security web sites/mailing lists)
Storage arrays (NAS/SAN)
Managed ethernet switches
Loa…

Oooohhhh… almost gave away part of the 2006 news

Can I buy a vowel?

I totally know the answer!

Loaves of bread.

Yes.  Because servers need food, too.

...d Balancing?

Lisa - 21 December 2005 12:37 PM

I totally know the answer!

Loaves of bread.

Yes.  Because servers need food, too.

Lisa J ladies and Gentlemen!  *applause*

And that concludes our wonderful night of stand up comics.

Maybe if we are lucky she will give us an encore!  :D

Ingmar - 21 December 2005 12:41 PM

...d Balancing?

If you think that would be exciting 2006 news you need to get out more. 

Nerds!

Nevin Lyne - 21 December 2005 12:19 PM

Loa…

Oooohhhh… almost gave away part of the 2006 news

Mauna Loa Volcano !!!

WoW! Lava Linux 1.0. . .

How’d you get that in the server rack? . . . . and how big are your heat sinks?

Mauna Loa Volcano !!!... How’d you get that in the server rack? . . . . and how big are your heat sinks?

You got it!

Of course PXLated lives around here, he would know the answer as to how we cool stuff off in Minnesota 6 months out of the year   (hint: My OS X weather widget shows that current temp is 9 degrees (-13c) currently outside, its 2 in the afternoon.

9 degrees, balmy, t-shirt weather…-11 the other morning when I was out for a walk.

Ahh my point exactly

Geeez….. I remember those kinda days back in Boston . . . University, no money to even heat the house ( save for a bit of rum and the many bodies living there and lying about the place ), and the pipes freezing.

Today is the first day of summer here on the shores of the Southern Ocean . . .

S’gonna be 20 deg C today (68 deg F) and sunny . . . might even go cross the road for a dip at the beach!

Hope that new Lava Linux server is keeping you guys warm?!

-13 celsius!! That is insane.

Thomas…You’re making me even more homesick. 

I’ll be moving from London (a comparatively sultry +2 degrees) to the sunny south coast of New South Wales, Australia in 4 weeks. After 4 dreary, winters here, the first thing I’ll be doing is heading for the beach.