10 tips to help you choosing the right hosting plan for your blog/arcade site

August 31, 2008 by Emanuele Feronato
Filed Under PROgramming • 19 Comments 

When you are about to create a blog or an arcade game site, the first thing you should consider is where your site will be hosted.

It’s something really important.

As your site popularity grows, your server will get more and more stressed, and this may affect the site itself.

An example: this blog generates about 10,000 pages/day, and every page is made by about 80kB html, 100kB images, 50kB files… that’s more than 2GB/day… not to mention all the MySql queries needed to generate every WordPress page.

The whole thing gets still more complicated if you want to set up an Arcade site: the average game ranges from 500kB to 2MB. Now imagine to serve 10,000 games/day (and that’s not an huge number…) and you’ll get an idea of what I am talking about.

It’s very important to choose the right hosting plan, and I am going to help you finding the one that can fit your needs.

Please note: These rules fit perfectly if you want to set up a blog or a small Arcade site (when I say “small” I mean 99% of the arcade sites in the world).

1) Forget Blogger.com, WordPress.com and all minor free offers

Having a domain name is the only way to look professional, and if you are going to try and monetize your blog/arcade, you must have your own domain name.

2) Hosting Vs Housing

There is no reason for having an housing plan until your hosting provider can’t handle the resources your site is asking for.

This means if you choose your hosting plan wisely, you won’t have to switch to an housing plan until you have a large amount of traffic (and revenues…)

3) Php Vs Asp

I hope this is an useless question nowadays, but there is really no reason for you to choose Asp.

Don’t listen to “programmers” saying Php is for small projects… NewGrounds is made with Php and if you aren’t developing next Expedia’s competitor you must choose Php

Moreover most of the most famous free resources (such as WordPress, Phpbb and so on) are made with Php.

So it’s time to choose…

4) Php version

Don’t trust hosting services that still offer Php 4.. it’s no longer under development nor will any security updates be released.

Php 5 was released more than four years ago… do you know how much are 4 years in internet? There is no reason why hosting services haven’t updated it until now… other than they will never update it.

So run away from Php 4 hostings. Choose a hosting plan with at least Php 5.2.2

5) Disk space usage: Don’t believe the “infinite” word you read on their offers: upload 10,000 DivX movies and you’ll understand what I mean. Choose an hosting plan with a specific amount of space, so you know that space is guaranteed. 500GB should be enough for a long, long time.

6) Monthly Bandwidth Transfer: In this case, look for “infinite” word. Again, it’s not true, and probably in case of big traffic the hosting company will slow down your site, but there is nothing worse than a “Oooops: Bandwidth exceeded for this month” when you land to a page.

Especially if that page is yours. Especially is it’s only the 15th day of the month and you aren’t able to upgrade your hosting plan in five minutes.

7) Email accounts: If you are an one man company, you will only need one email: info@yourdomain.com

I hate when I have to write to marketing@yourdomain.com rathern than support@yourdomain.com when I know the site is mantained by one person.

Let’s say five email address are enough, so you can give one email to your little sister and make her happy. Anyway, she will continue using HotMail

8) MySql Databases: Choose a plan where you can define the name of your databases. Having databases called “Blog”, “Arcade” and so on is way better than “34524″ and “gdfyrty_2″.

9) 24/24 customer support: Very important. There is an easy way to test it: open a ticket (or contact the support center by email) saying your can’t connect to your MySql database. It’s not true, but it’s just an “hello world” to see what time does it take for the support team to reply…

10) Memory management: From a cute little file called php.ini, that you won’t be able to edit, your hosting company can set an huge number of options such as memory management, maximum time to execute a script, and so on.

While only time (and traffic) will say if your hosting plan can handle enough work, you should at least be able to run the script published in Parsing MochiAds feed in a friendly way or you won’t be able to have your WordPress arcade site.

Where are you hosted? Are you happy? Do you need some more advices?

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19 Responses to “10 tips to help you choosing the right hosting plan for your blog/arcade site”

  1. Galaxian on September 1st, 2008 1:54 am

    I see that http://www.triqui.com is in the midst of some changes. I can’t wait to start playing there again.

    I made a checklist after one of my sites was shut down for a time. My problem wasn’t bandwidth, but server resources. I haven’t been shut down since, so I guess it’s working.

    7 tips to keep your site up, lol:

    1) Get rid of play/hit counters. 2) Read any random elements from a static file that updates from time to time. 3) Cache what you can. 4) Employ a simple load balancing, incorporating subdomains and external mirrors to serve game files. 5) Use a stylesheet for all graphic elements (old news). 6) Prevent hotlinking and embedding. 7) Don’t let pages expire too quickly via meta tags, eliminating the browser cache.

    I hope that helps. By the way, I’d like to hear about any other strategies.

  2. Rarykos on September 1st, 2008 1:08 pm

    10,000 games is a big number.
    newgrounds have some more, but let’s take kongregate. It’s a good site with 10,000 always connected but with 7000 games. So I don’t think any not-commercial site could get 10,000+ games, unless you want to create a site with stolen or sucky games :)

    But there always has to be the first time, when next not-commercial site becomes super popular

  3. Rarykos on September 1st, 2008 1:13 pm

    Galaxian I dont understand 6th and 4ht point, what for?

  4. Galaxian on September 1st, 2008 3:16 pm

    @Rarykos

    I’m trying to stay on hosting for a while so #6 means that no resources are used for people who will never visit and every visit is useful to the gamer by way of a relevant ad.

    #4 relates to server resources more directly. Instead of a single file with 50% of resources in use, served from two locations means two 25% files. And the difference, in theory, means not getting shut down. By the way, I’ve seen Jayis balance across 9 locations and other big arcades do it too.

    Cheers!

  5. Houen on September 1st, 2008 5:28 pm

    I would recommend Media Temple.
    1 Terabyte traffic, 100GB storage, load balancing to handle traffic spikes (at least thats what they claim) and optional external mysql access.
    To top it off, they offer subdomaining, so you can keep a test.yoursite.com to try out new things / updates

    I use it for http://www.999credits.com, and am happy with it so far

  6. Rarykos on September 1st, 2008 6:18 pm

    I wouldn’t recommend OVH as hosting company. They lie a bit in their offer, you have to search deep in documentation/help to notice you can’t run scripts in background. Right now I have a problem with database, I wonder if they can help me.

  7. RipeX on September 1st, 2008 6:44 pm

    @Galaxian

    Will this help even if I’m using a shared hosting plan?

  8. RipeX on September 1st, 2008 6:50 pm

    (I was thinking about the your 4th point).

  9. Galaxian on September 2nd, 2008 2:59 am

    @RipeX

    Really, I’m only talking about delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later you’ll need to upgrade. Try using multiple domains on a reseller account for more resources than on a regular shared hosting plan. Much cheaper than having your own server.

    But yeah, the stats report that shut me down showed usage/duration file by file, so it should be a sound strategy. How sound is tough to measure, though, because we don’t normally get access to usage reports, unless we go over.

  10. egdcltd on September 2nd, 2008 3:53 pm

    Support is very, very important. It’s worth paying more for full time, good support. On my site, with my previous host, for several days my site was down with a “Account Suspended” message suggesting I hadn’t paid my bill. Not true, and the site had actually been hacked. The host had discontinued there telephone support, had no support ticket system, and didn’t answer any of the hundreds of emails I sent them until three days had passed. Not even a courtesy one saying they’d received my email, what the problem was, and that it was being worked on. I didn’t send all the emails at once of course, only started doing it after no response several hours after the first. That’s why they’re my previous host.

  11. Tom on September 3rd, 2008 7:23 am

    After using several hosting companies I found that HostGator has treated me pretty well. as with any host there are sure to be some issues along the way and I had one also. They took care of the issue in a very timely manner. Found them from this site. HostingIncentive

  12. Galaxian on September 3rd, 2008 6:53 pm

    Yeah, http://www.hostgator.com is really good for hosting.

  13. JB on September 4th, 2008 4:33 pm

    After trying a few hosts, I opted for Lunar Pages:

    - 6,95$ / month comes with FREE domain name, UNLIMITED storage and bandwidth

    - No downtime, sites load fast

    - Excellent customer service + help from online community

    - Complete, Easy, Lots of free softwares for your site

    Check it out: http://www.lunarpages.com/id/jb2357

  14. Umer on January 25th, 2009 8:14 pm

    Hey you are just like me, I started programming when i was 10 and then progressed to css/xhtml. And mastered them. Now i am teen . I choosed php over c++,ASP, and some other wierd stuff. Once you learn any of these other becomes easy since all of them has similar functions and similar syntax. Like actions script 1,2. JavaScript, PHP they got almost same syntax.
    Oh one more thing i have reliazed is that you don’t have to remember everything, i was 15 when i first time i reliazed that humans have limited brain. I completed my Physic GCSe book Then when i completed to Chemistry book and look back on Physic That look totally strange person to me. GCSE is college level book and yes i fully understood them when i was 14. Cool huh. SO therefore there is no reason to be ashamed of Just get a cheet sheet in which you will find complete list of functions with syntax . It ususal to forget one programming after using other one for several years. Got it. Hope u liked my wisdom. Hey also since i have experince in physichs i almost made physic engine for myself in summer vacation, but then school started and i had to forget all the information i had learned and discovered, i am sorry on that next i will make sure i write it in a human language so i can progress from there not from a scratch.

  15. SG on January 25th, 2009 11:37 pm

    @JB

    Lol, that actually seems like a good company, but the way you wrote your rec, it makes it seem like you are advertising for them.

  16. Microsheep on July 14th, 2009 1:22 pm

    My current host just suspended my account due to CPU over usage.
    I have a shared hosting plan, and during the last month I had ~100,000 visitors and ~200,000 page views.
    My site runs on Wordpress.

    I was wondering, is it the time to move to dedicated hosting? Or can I do something to reduce the load?

    If it is time to move to dedicated hosting, what machine would you recommend on (CPU? RAM?)?
    Which hosting company?

    Appreciate any advice,
    Microsheep

  17. Andrew Wooger on November 24th, 2009 10:52 am

    It should be also noted that hosting reviews can tell you much about a host, its activity and reputation among customers. Before making any order study company’s reviews attentively.

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