Confused about possible hosts

[MykMallett]

Hello, I'm hoping someone can help me as all the information I am currently reading is getting a bit overwhelming.

Basically im launching a website in the summer that would have about 20 wordpress blogs linked together and a seperate area of the site for people to upload and listen to large music files, have a profile etc, similiar to postbocks.com

Its mainly locally based around the city I live in, so it wouldnt grow enormously, but I do eventually want to expand it to cater for a wider market.

My question, what exactly do I need? I spoke to someone at postbocks.com about their hosting and they told that they get by now, after optimising, on just one private server on DreamHost. But im not really sure, after not recieving any replies to enquiries from them, and the negative reviews I keep finding, that I want to go with them.

Would anyone have any suggestions about what I would need?

At first, after launching, there would be approximately 40 users with about 5 music files each at roughly 130mb each. These would have to be streamable and downloadable. The wordpress blogs would be quite basic, just the odd bit of jquery and a calender plug-ins, but very popular and linked with social network sites. However, i would intend for that 40 registered users to become 200-500 within a year at the least. The number of registered users is not the site traffic tho, I would expect each audio file to get about 20 downloads a month, so basically a lot of bandwidth.


At first I expect to start small, so I would like somewhere that gives me room for expansion.


Any help would be enormously appreciated

 

[gotlivechat]

Well, it's never good for business when the biz doesn't reply to sales inquiries. But if you're sticking to a dedicated server you may want to check out Softlayer or FDCServers. Reasonable servers, cheaper at FDC but Softlayer pricing is competitive as well.
Unfortunately, you can probably find a negative review for every webhost out there (there will always be someone that doesn't like a service for whatever reason) so I can understand your confusion.
Good luck!

 

[handsonhosting]

Definitely sounds like you need bandwidth. Be warey of the hosts that offer UNLIMITED as pushing that much bandwidth will likely get you redflagged.

You MAY be able to look at a VPS for what you need initially and then upgrade to the Dedicated down the road.

What kind of budget are you looking at for Dedicated? That will determine what kind of dedicated server you'd be in the market for. Price is going to depend on the disk space, bandwidth and features (control panels, backup systems, RAID drives, dedicated IPs etc etc). So a little more information I think is necessary on this one.

It's a shame that their sales staff haven't returned the email to you yet. Maybe it was after hours for the sales staff and you'll have one waiting for you in the inbox tomorrow. Keep in mind that while many hosts are 24x7, that doesn't necessarily mean sales are 24x7. For us, our sales staff are 14 hours a day, 6 days a week (Sundays are usually much slower).

 

[MykMallett]

Definitely sounds like you need bandwidth. Be warey of the hosts that offer UNLIMITED as pushing that much bandwidth will likely get you redflagged.

You MAY be able to look at a VPS for what you need initially and then upgrade to the Dedicated down the road.

What kind of budget are you looking at for Dedicated? That will determine what kind of dedicated server you'd be in the market for. Price is going to depend on the disk space, bandwidth and features (control panels, backup systems, RAID drives, dedicated IPs etc etc). So a little more information I think is necessary on this one.

It's a shame that their sales staff haven't returned the email to you yet. Maybe it was after hours for the sales staff and you'll have one waiting for you in the inbox tomorrow. Keep in mind that while many hosts are 24x7, that doesn't necessarily mean sales are 24x7. For us, our sales staff are 14 hours a day, 6 days a week (Sundays are usually much slower).

Oh this was a long while ago, twice, that I emailed.


Well, to be honest I'm not sure on my budget yet. I'm doing it through my uni's business school and they can help with some funding. Other than that I will have to work full time to support it til I can get subsciption charges up and running.

What would you expect this kind of project to cost? I was thinking around the $300/month kind of bracket, but I'm desperately looking at ways to bring it down (optimising code etc). I would imagine that I would need about 500GB space for the media, rising as expanding. Would it be cost effective to host the actual website on a different server?

 

[gotlivechat]

$300 is probably reasonable estimate for the hosting. Though I'm assuming that doesn't include advertising (Adwords, YSM, etc.) If you want to advertise on those networks you'll need well over that to advertise sufficiently.

 

[MykMallett]

Well, the majority of the money coming in would be charging monthly for the wordpress blogs and quarterly for the user accounts. If I can avoid advertising on the site I will do so, otherwise it will mainly be local businesses, or at the very least something applicable to the subject matter.


Ive just realised you mean advertising of my site on other networks. I havent looked into that yet. At the moment because its aimed locally I am going to be using local magazines, radio, social networking and the network of some large promotors in the area.

Until I can get it running smoothly I won't be able to afford much more advertisement.

 

[handsonhosting]

A 500GB drive would be perfectly fine.

40*5*130MB = 26000 (26GB of stored data). That's based on the 40 users with 5 files each at 130MB each file.

Bumping that up to 400 users, you're still only looking at about 260GB of data, so there's no need to go looking for anything larger than a 500GB hard drive (at least initially anyway. Even a 250GB drive with the option to add a second would probably do you just fine.

The question comes in on the bandwidth, but even then, MOST places are offering at least 1TB of bandwidth and some even higher.

Check out some of the offers posted by other board members here at http://www.hostingdiscussion.com/vps-dedicated-colocation-server-special-offers/

And if the company you choose for hosting doesn't offer a backup solution, drop me a PM and I'll point you to a page on our site where you can buy even if you're not a client of ours.

Definitely get backup though - the forums here at HostingDiscussion have a backup system that backs up every 30 minutes and stores that data for 4 weeks. This backup solution has already been put to the test a couple times and works without any issue. Definitely a life saver for the forums and forum admins!

 

[gotlivechat]

Well, the majority of the money coming in would be charging monthly for the wordpress blogs and quarterly for the user accounts. If I can avoid advertising on the site I will do so, otherwise it will mainly be local businesses, or at the very least something applicable to the subject matter.


Ive just realised you mean advertising of my site on other networks. I havent looked into that yet. At the moment because its aimed locally I am going to be using local magazines, radio, social networking and the network of some large promotors in the area.

Until I can get it running smoothly I won't be able to afford much more advertisement.

Sounds like you're on the right track in terms of getting the word out. I have to think you'll get more subscribers focusing locally than trying national/international advertising (yet). Good luck!

 

[MykMallett]

Brilliant, thankyou very much guys!

 

[SenseiSteve]

Well, the majority of the money coming in would be charging monthly for the wordpress blogs and quarterly for the user accounts. If I can avoid advertising on the site I will do so, otherwise it will mainly be local businesses, or at the very least something applicable to the subject matter.


Ive just realised you mean advertising of my site on other networks. I havent looked into that yet. At the moment because its aimed locally I am going to be using local magazines, radio, social networking and the network of some large promotors in the area.

Until I can get it running smoothly I won't be able to afford much more advertisement.

The least expensive way to promote yourself locally is face-to-face. I just listened to a Webinar last week that, once again, reinforced that prospects don't buy products or services - they buy from people or businesses they know, like and trust.

I went to a Chamber of Commerce after hours event at a local pizza restaurant, and the owner/operator of a deli shop came over and talked our ears off about how his sandwiches were the best in the area. He was even wearing his chef's apron. This guy was so entertaining and knowledgeable that I promised myself to make it a point to stop by his restaurant to put his claim to the test. I have to say it was pretty darn good. Will I share this with my friends and sphere of influence - absolutely. Networking locally works.

It's surprising how barriers drop just by doing something as simple as eating lunch with prospect or prospective networking partner (like a designer or consultant).