[The Finman]

I strongly suggest that you take a look at VPS hosting.

The problem is that most people (especially those that run growing bulletin boards) usually have to start thinking about more space, bandwidth, ram, Etc as they quickly find that the shared hosting plans that sounded good when they started are now causing a drag on your site that is already needing more power.

Here is where people used to go into what I call hosting "purgatory", in so far as they can no longer endure the hell of sharing resources with other sites, but can't financially or technically make the leap to a dedicated server.

There really wasn't too much that one could do in that while at the precipice. Either start cutting back on features and other goodies as they acted like Scotty on the Enterprise trying to "hold her together" till they could make that big leap.

I have managed many large web sites and I found out that dedicated server heaven was an illusion as well. A friend of mine told me about VPS (Virtual Private Server). I honestly wasn't sure about it but the VPS he offered was an exceptionally good financial deal and the ability to free up some of my responsibilities as he was someone I knew and trusted. It was wonderful for several years, but he moved back to Czechoslovakia and sold his VPS company to another host, who in turn sold us to another host shortly after that. It went from bad to worse as with the third company, average response time was 72 (yes 72) hours...IF they got answered at all.

When they refused to upgrade their MySQL and PHP that were not only a few versions out of date, but several years that I had it.

I knew just how better having semi-managed virtual private servers could be in hands of a good company. I looked over VPS company after VPS company until I stumbled into an odd webhosting shop talk forum. Many of the people on there were employees and owners of webhosting companies (some big, some small). Anyway, I was curious to see what the people "in the trenches" of hosting had to say about their peers in the business. It was definitely an eye opener. But what I found interesting was a company that kept coming up in various threads. The review were so gushing that I wondered if those reviews were from "plants". But I was able to get in touch with some of their clients and after careful analysis I decided to give them a shot.

Even when I had a friend in the business I have never got the level of service that we have gotten through them.

Anyway, they are KnownHost.com.

I strongly suggest that you take a look at VPS instead of a dedicated server. You can read more about what to look for in a VPS company.

http://www.knownhost.com/services/vps.html

But don't take my word for it. Here is where I was when I first heard about them.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...ight=KnownHost

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/search...archid=1346285

No more warez and mp3 script kiddies sucking up your resources, just dedicated resources for you without the dedicated cost and headache. I've never had a support ticket go longer than 30 minutes tops with them (I was working on project at home at about 2 O'Clock in the morning on a Saturday and decided to see if they really had 24 support. I fired off a ticket and recieved an answer back a few minutes later. I needed a Zend Optimizer for another project and asked them which version should I download. I was hoping for some simple advice, their reply was

Hello,

I've downloaded and installed Zend Optimizer v3.0.1 for you, please check and let us know how everything goes

Thanks,
KnownHost support

Type their name in google and read the opinions and reviews about them.

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...en&q=KnownHost

Oh, and check out this review of their uptime.

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/compa...wnHostLLC.html

I couldn't be happier as this has been the best experience I have had with a web host, hope this helps.