Slicehost customers will be given the chance to move onto the Rackspace Cloud Servers platform. The pricing is good, though. You can get the equivalent of the “256 Slice” plan for a little more than half the price, excluding bandwidth.

Of course, there are still other options for affordable VPS plans. Linode is a popular choice, and I’ve been using VPS.net for awhile now.

Rackspace to Shut Down Slicehost [The Next Web]

Page.ly aims to be “Easy like WordPress.com with the Freedom of WordPress.org.” The general idea is to provide a basic web hosting plan, with a domain included, that comes with WordPress pre-installed. (As a matter of fact, they won’t host anything except WordPress.) Their custom setup takes care of most of the techie work, leaving you to run your site.

You can install any theme or plugin that you want, several popular ones of which are pre-included for you. They also offer “theme packs,” which include many major premium themes, from sources such as WooThemes and StudioPress, at a discounted price.

It’s not for serious web geeks, but it’s certainly a great platform for people who want to put up a serious site without too much hassle, while retaining much more control than WordPress.com offers.

What exactly is VPS.net? They are a provider of Cloud Virtual Private Servers. You can affordably purchase as much hosting firepower as you need, and have full control over the management of it. VPS.net isn’t like other providers though. Their unique “cloud” twist makes things a bit more interesting…

What makes VPS.net different from other services? Instead of simply partitioning a physical server into slices and selling them as virtual servers, VPS.net has what they call a “Virtual Private Server Cloud.” They break their infrastructure into “nodes,” which are blocks of resources (256MB of RAM, 10GB storage, 250GB transfer, and a certain CPU share) that you can pool together in various ways to create custom virtual machines.

Suppose you need a server with 512MB of RAM, 20GB of storage, and 500GB of monthly data transfer. Just order two nodes, create a new virtual machine, and assign the nodes to it. Press the switch to boot it up, and then you can choose one of the many OS images to install. (Ubuntu, CentOS, Gentoo, Debian and Turnkey Linux are are distros available at the present.)

What if you’re experiencing unusually high traffic? Just add another node and assign it to your virtual machine. It will reboot gain access to the new resources. (You can even purchase “temporary” nodes on a $1/day basis, which work great for handling short-term traffic spikes, or creating a temporary development test server.) I really like this concept. It’s very nice to be able to pay for the resources you need when you need them, instead of being stuck upgrading from a $50/month plan to a $100/month plan with a traditional VPS.

The service has seemed stable thus far, and customer support is truly awesome. I’ve rarely seen management so actively involved with their customer community. If I had a pre-sales question, all I had to do was send a quick message on Twitter. Ditlev Bredahl, CEO of the UK2 Group, which is the parent company of VPS.net, participates actively in the VPS.net community forum, along with the rest of the people at the hosting provider.

The servers are speedy, though your mileage will depend on your skills at configuring Linux servers.

I would definitely recommend VPS.net to anyone who has outgrown shared hosting. Between their flexible resource node model and their customer service, they’re definitely worth considering.

Affiliate link: VPS.net.

I came across the two hosts by chance, by reading an up and coming design blog (Usability Post). Noting the fast load times, I decided to see who the host was. There was a little Slicehost logo in the footer, so I clicked through.

The Slicehost homepag loaded quickly, and the clean theme greated me. The page advertised affordable VPS plans, ranging from $20/mo to $280/mo, along with a list things included in every plan. Slicehost promises

• Full root access
• The ability to reboot the VPS
• A selection of distro choices
• “4-core servers running Xen virtualization instances”
• RAID-10 Array
• “Guaranteed CPU share and more when available”

The starting plan, at $20 per month, offers 100GB of transfer and ten gigabytes of storage, with 256MB of reserved RAM. Their numerous packages increase fairly slowly in price (the second level, with twice as much of everything, is only $18 more per month than the first plan), and have plenty of options to suit your needs. Need 4GB of RAM and 1.6TB or transfer (with a full 160GB of disk space)? It’ll cost you, but you can have it.

So I decided to do some research into Slicehost, to see just how reputable they were. I did some Googling, and checked Webhosting Talk, like anyone should do to get an idea of a host’s customer satisfaction. While I was doing that, I came across Linode.

Linode is a similar service to Slicehost. Their site didn’t come up quite as fast as Slicehost’s for me, but respectable nonetheless. They have very similar offerings to those of Slicehost, though Linode’s plans are different. Their base plan has 360MB of RAM, 12GB of storage, and 200GB of transfer; all for $19.95/month. Linode even tells you how many of each plan are available at the moment.

Both companies look really good, and they seem to have fairly clean track records. I’ve had problems digging up any dirt on either. The best I’ve really found is that Linode’s achille’s heel is disk usage; apparently disk access is the real slow-up on their machines. And really, it doesn’t seem all that bad. Their VPS rigs seem snappy enough for most purposes. Both companies have loyal followings, and pretty good customer satisfaction.

I think I’ll probably be going with one of these services when 1&1 decides I’m using too much of what they sold me. I’ve considered Media Temple, but they don’t offer quite as much. I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll have plenty of time yet to decide.

A word of caution: Slicehost and Linode don’t offer any graphical control panels like cPanel or Plesk. They have something for managing the VPS, and that’s about it. They expect you to make use of your root access to do what you need to do (though you could install cPanel if you were to buy a license). Hopefully I’d be up to the challenge if I ended up on one of their servers.

This is not a list of hosts, but a guide to help you find the right one for your site. Aside from naming your website, choosing a web host is one on the most important decisions to make when starting a website.

Whether you are a newbie creating your first website, or an experienced blogger who outgrew another host, this guide is for you.

Key Points

The most important things to consider when choosing a host are

• Reliability/Reputation – You want as little downtime as possible for your website, and you want quality hosting for your money. Everyone claims they have “99.9% uptime,” whether they do or not, so ignore this statistic. You want, if possible, a host that doesn’t oversell, though for a starting website you may not need to worry about this until the site grows. Pay attention to what others say about certain hosts, as reputation is important.
• Price – You may get what you pay for, but try to get as much as you can for what you pay.
• Bandwidth – Unless you plan on storing huge video files on your web space, storage won’t be too big of an issue. What really matters is “bandwidth”, or more accurately “transfer volume”, which is the amount of data that can be transferred between your server and other computers in a month. You will need as much transfer volume as you can get (but don’t fall for overselling!).
• PHP – Make sure your host offers PHP. PHP is a scripting (programming) language that is essential for modern websites. PHP has many uses, and is required to run many popular software packages, like blog software and photo galleries.
• Databases – You will need at least one MySQL database. A database is used for storing data for later usage by PHP scripts, like WordPress, if you are starting a blog, or SMF if you plan on having a forum. Make sure you have at least one database.

The above points are the most important things to consider when choosing a host. Other things are worth considering, like the number of email accounts you get, but they’re nowhere near as important.

What Type of Hosting?

Shared? VPS?

If you’re just starting out, you probably want either shared hosting. This means you are renting a small chunk of a server, and the machine is shared with dozens of other websites. Shared hosting is fairly cheap, and will serve you well until your website’s popularity explodes, bringing you thousands of daily visitors.

VPS hosting is similar to shared hosting, though you’re sharing the server with only a couple others. If you have a popular website that’s outgrown shared hosting (or you’re developing a processing-intensive web app), you need a VPS. They cost significantly more than shared hosting, and they offer much more power.

Next-up the list are dedicated servers. If you’re reading this, I doubt this is what you’re looking for. “Dedicated server” means you are renting an entire computer for your website. It’s not cheap either costing at least $1000 per year.

Finding Hosts

Where do you find reputable web hosts?

• Hosting directories, like the Web Hosting Talk directory.
• Google searches – Search for hosts, hosting directories, and recommendations by other bloggers. Brainstorm plenty of search terms.
• Other bloggers – See what everyone’s talking about. Find the hosts that get plenty of positive reviews, and keep an eye out for paid ads in sidebars. Note that you need to find as many reviews as you can. Some hosts, like DreamHost, are shamelessly plugged by bloggers for their cheap rates, seemingly large offerings (oversold heavily, of course), and of course their affiliate program (a commission for referring new customers). DreamHost, though you’ll find plenty of people “recommending” it, has a pretty bad track record, earning it the nickname “NightmareHost.” They oversell, they have major downtime, and they’ve twice accidentally billed people thousands of extra dollars.

Make a list of possibilities, noting their names, URLs, and anything else you want to remember. It’s time to dig-up some dirt.

Researching Hosts

Take your list of hosts, and pull-up your tools of the trade — Google.com and the Web Hosting Talk Forum.

Using Google, search for reviews of each of the web hosts. Search for “NameOfHost review,” and anything else that may pull-up important information. While it may be a good idea to search things like “NameOfHost sucks,” I wouldn’t necessarily trust the information found nearly as much. If someone wrote that, then they probably wouldn’t be very objective. Take note of anything that may help you decide.

Web Hosting Talk is the best location for finding hosting discussion. Use the search tool to find posts about the hosts you’re considering. Ask people what they think of the host. Web Hosting Talk is a large, helpful community, and is one of the most valuable tools for hosting research.

While you’re looking at peoples’ thoughts about webhosts, keep this in mind: Old reviews may not be accurate anymore. While someone may have penned a negative review two years ago, the host’s quality may have improved. Of course, the opposite is true as well.

Some Good Hosts to Get You Started

Here are a few well-thought-of hosts worth checking out:

• 1and1 – 1and1’s shared hosting is cheap and, while they do oversell, I haven’t had any problems with it to date. As I write this, I’ve had little problems with downtime (only a few minutes over the year I’ve been with them), and they offer plenty for a starting website. I will probably have to move in the future, if WSC gets too big, but in the meantime 1and1 works great for me.
• Media Temple – MT is one of the most esteemed hosts on the internet. They host giants like Mashable.com, and smaller blogs like ProBlogDesign.com. They’re plans are a little pricey, but they have plenty to offer. Their base $20/month “Grid Service” plan splits the load of your website among several servers, in an effort to improve uptime and performance. Their more expensive Dedicated-Virtual (a.k.a. VPS) plans, and Nitro hosting, are beyond what most people will need. Their reliability and tech support are famous among bloggers everywhere, surviving the Digg Effect, and running lightning-fast. If you’ve outgrown your oversold shared hosting plan, give Media Temple a look. You can’t outgrow MT, as they can offer custom set-ups for those who need them.
• A Small Orange – A Small Orange offers cheap shared hosting (and VPS hosting as well) with reliable service. While they’re plans may look small at first, keep in mind that they don’t oversell. Their cheapest plan (“Tiny” at $25/year) is on the small side, but they offer plenty of other plans, like their $5/month “Small” plan which is more along the lines of most beginner’s needs.

Grab a pen (or a blank document in your word processor) and get to work. Find the right host for your site.