Best Hosting For Drupal

Getting the Best From Drupal Content Management Systems

Author: S. Reeves,morris.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/web-design-articles/getting-the-best-from-drupal-content-management-systems-440473.html

About the Author

Author bio:-This article was written by Steve Morris. Mr. Morris runs New Media, a drupal web design Company located in downtown Denver, Colorado (http://www.NewMediaDenver.com). Newmediadenver offers Web design denver, drupal web development , Web development, Internet marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. QUESTION:
   Best Drupal Web Hosting Company?
   Hi,

   I have decided to go with Drupal as a CMS and website builder. I want to know which is the best company (I am not looking for general referral links, or how cheap it is, or how good the overall customer service is) in terms of support for Drupal (installation, upgrades, customer service for drupal questions, drupal theme management etc.,).

   I am evaluating site5, dreamhost and siteground. Which is the best among these. Any other that you recommend.

   Thanks,

   Ajay.

   • ANSWER:
     I use Dreamhost and don't have enough good things to say about them. I consider them the best LAMP-based hosting company, period.

2. QUESTION:
   which is the cheap and best hosting for dynamic websites?
   please tell me the cheap and best hosting for dynamic websites where the technical support is absolutely fine and 99% up-time. I need to design in Drupal etc.. Please help me if i host in hosting companies outside India, what would be the support.

   • ANSWER:
     Hostgator has 99.920% uptime and his customer service is impressive
     Dreamhost is another reliable company with 99.533% uptime and good support.(Also i have a promo code: BESTHOSTREVIEWS . This is for the 12 month plan only and you save )

     Lunarpages is another good and cheap company, they start their plans from .95 for a starter plan.
     I think there are many good companies out there, if you want check my source for detailed statistics and some useful articles before choosing hosting company

3. QUESTION:
   Drupal web hosting?
   I've made a social networking site based on drupal and now i need to find the right hosting for it. The site has a pretty good chance to become very popular, but also a chance to pose no interest.

   I was thinking of finding a webhosting company from where to buy a shared hosting or vps or something and then upgrade to a dedicated server.

   My budget for now is 100$, but if the site is successful i can invest more. The hosting must have mod_rewrite and imagemagick. mcrypt and mhash are a plus but not required.

   What would be the best way to handle this issue and what hosting company do you recommend?

   • ANSWER:
     I can fully recommend Hostgator Web Hosting.

     I have used Hostgator as my web host for over two years now and have been very very impressed with them. Firstly they're very cheap but still give me more web hosting space and bandwidth than I'll ever need, the ability to host unlimited websites, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and great customer support.

     For less than a month you get:

     600 Gigs of Web Hosting Space
     6,000 Gigabytes of Bandwidth
     Host UNLIMITED Websites
     99.9% Uptime Guarantee
     45 Day Money Back Guarantee
     CGI, PHP 4 & 5, RoR, Perl
     MySQL, SSH, SSL, IMAP, POP
     cPanel Hosting
     24/7/365 Upgraded Support

     You can find them at http://www.webhostgator.info

4. QUESTION:
   Best Content mangement?
   Hi im hosting a site with manga and anime, and stuff like that not ones that are licened though, and i was wondering what is the best content manager for this. I will be hosting videos that you can watch and of course download.

   Drupal
   Geeklog
   Joomla
   Mambo Open Source
   PHP-Nuke
   phpWCMS
   phpWebSite
   Post-Nuke
   Siteframe
   TYPO3
   Xoops

   which one would work best with me?

   • ANSWER:
     Use vbulletin rather.

5. QUESTION:
   yahoo web hosting and site builder?
   Does anyone know how much it costs for basic web hosting by yahoo and use of their site builder? I'm currently with godaddy and their "sitetonight" web page builder only allows 5 pages at /month or 10 pages for 9/month. I think I'm going to need probabablly about 15-20 pages and the next level with godaddy is like for 99 pages.

   I've been using drupal (before I was using joomla), and I'm to the point where a drag and drop method is probably best for me....

   Oh, and please don't tell me to go to their web hosting site, I've tried and it's not letting me navigate very far without having to sign in and I don't have a small business account with them.

   • ANSWER:
     If you are creating may websites, may be you better go for "unlimited domain hosting" such as hostmonster, bluehost, webhostingpad etc....

     Yahoo hosting is also not bad for small business site.

     Webhostingpad is also good and they are offering over 70% discount.

     http://www.hostingcomparer.com/go/webhostingpad.php

     Read web hosting reviews as well.

     http://www.hostingcomparer.com

6. QUESTION:
   What is the best CMS for a website?
   I am in the process of building a website. Unlike my other sites I wan't to use a cms this time. In your opinion what do you think is the best cms. I have tried joomla and drupal and wordpress. Joomla seemed sluggish and the admin panel wasn't very good. Drupal worked great until I tried to convert my html theme to it. WordPress worked great! Really liked it but it is just to much of a blogging system. I wan't a website. I also tried surreal cms it was the best so far all I had to do was ad class="editable" to the divs and spans that I wanted to edit. The problem with it is the actual admin panel is hosted on their site. Is there anything like this that I can host on my own server. It would need to be PHP I am a linux dedicated server. I have no ASP support and I refuse to install the apache mods. Thank-You!

   PS For anyone wondering on how surreal cms works it hooks up to your ftp system.

   • ANSWER:
     I actually use WordPress as a CMS myself. We design about 3-5 sites per week for businesses and we always use WP.

     Say the site has 5 static pages, we simply make those as "Pages" on the front end and place all CMS type data in the back.

     I think it's your best solution.

7. QUESTION:
   PHP CMS and Open Source - Profiting?
   I have spent the last year and several months developing a content management in PHP. It technically was finished a long time ago, and I continued to go back and revise it, a few times from the ground up.

   I originally intended to use this for personal sites here and there, as most other CMS' I've used were large, bloated, and very resource intensive ( Joomla for example ). Though I loved Joomla, I just can't afford to use it anymore with more than one site on VPS hosting.

   The CMS I made now is kind of like a mixture between Joomla, WordPress and Drupal; all the best rolled into one much smaller package. So far from testing, it runs faster than either of the three listed and has most all the same features. It can be extended with components and plugins very easily ( like Joomla, but much, much easier ), supports SEF out of the box with complete control over URL structure, etc. It has alot of useful features I didn't find in either package as well; resources to create and maintain backups of site settings and database, etc.

   I have spent so much time optimizing ( about the last 6 months on optimizing alone ) and page caching. A cached page generates one database query by default, a non cached page generates two ( this is before or after logging in ).

   Not to mention, the CMS by default has alot of Ajaxed features. The admin ( in which you can rename and relocate for security ) has alot of nice Ajax for managing, adding pages, etc. It also has a forum component that natively integrates with the CMS, which too uses some good Ajax implementation.

   So far it runs REALLY good, I am thoroughly impressed with the final product. My question is, since I am in need of money and don't want to sell the script ( it WILL be open source ), what is the best way to make a profit from Open Source without making it a commercial product? Do ads like Adsense really do any good? Those interested probably will know exactly what the ads are and definetly won't click them, so how else can you make money from such a product?

   • ANSWER:
     You could slap a "Donations Welcome" banner across every page.

8. QUESTION:
   What tool to use to design a coure website?
   I want to generate a course website. First of all I would like to start with something like an online book. On the left side, the links to different chapters and sections will be displayed. As a user clicks on the link for a section, then the content of the section will be displayed. I should be able to put anything in the content - text, graphics, audio, video, animation, interactive tutorial.
   It should be possible to go to different pages by clicking on Next and Previous arrow buttons.

   What will be the best way of designing it? My hosting provider provides wordpress, joomla, and Drupal. Should I go for any of these? Or do you suggest something else?
   Thanks

   • ANSWER:
     There's a Content Management System (CMS) that was designed specifically for making online courses and it's in use by many educational institutions. Check out Moodle - http://www.moodle.org

     Good luck.

9. QUESTION:
   What is the best PHP Guild Management software?
   I'm looking for some PHP software to manage a website for my World of Warcraft guild. I'm not looking for a hosted (someone else hosts the software) solution, I'm looking for a PHP application/script to run on my own webhosting. The software needs to be able to handle membership applications, members lists, a forum and pretty much whatever else we might need in the future.

   I'm not looking for a roll-your-own solution like Drupal, Joomla or PHPnuke, I'd like something made specifically for guilds that integrates with itself well.

   • ANSWER:
     I know you're looking for ones you can host yourself, but do check out http://www.enjin.com as it handles membership, applications, members list, forum and everything else you're looking for, Not sure if it's a big difference if it's hosted by them or not.

10. QUESTION:
    I want to develop a website, but do I do ?
    I want 2 options, host my site on my own server and hosting it online.

    With hosting at home - how do I exactly host my site at home, also with my own domain name and email.
    With hosting online - What are the best deals and are there any free ones ?; what are the best for them ?

    I was thinking about using WordPress as a starting point (or Joomla or Drupal), but i would like to be able to host them on my own server/computer and/or host it online; also, what are the best deals for that and are there any free ones/offers.

    Please I need help. Once I get this down pat - I wish to go on and develop my own webapps.

    • ANSWER:

11. QUESTION:
    Help choosing a content management system?
    Ok, I've got my hosting set up, and I've got my design put together in photoshop -and I was trying to figure out how to make a forum and blog to go along with it.

    I found content management systems online that are free (after a lot of digging around on the web), but I was wondering which to choose. They all seem to have good reviews, but I can't tell which one would be easiest for me.

    I've looked at Joomla, Mambo, Drupal, and WordPress. Are there more, or are these my best options? I don't know much about PHP, so is this going to be hard for me to set up? And which one would be easiest for me to keep my design? Also, are these the best ways to get a forum and blog, or is there an easier way? (I don't want some group online service like flikr or something -I want my own site).

    I'm not exactly a tech wiz, but I can follow online tutorials pretty well. Any ideas on which to go with would be appreciated.

    • ANSWER:
      Joomla is fairly easy, and has the largest and cleanest online help resources.

      I use CMS made simple for most projects, mainly because it's easier on design, and easier to integrate your design into. The help resources are there, just as with Joomla, but they're a little hard to stomach (but they are sufficient). The set up is also easier with CMS made simple, and the overall file size is smaller. (size of the whole system).

      As far as it being your best option -yes, I think it would be.

12. QUESTION:
    Which Content Management Program to use?
    Which program to use? I have a bookstore website that has product links to amazon.com.

    In the past, I have revised the website using MS Excel and MS Word to enter the link and product data and output HTML using mail merge. I then cut and pasted the code into my webpages.
    This was a slow and tedious way of doing things.

    I have access to a few different Content Management Systems through my web hosting provider. (see bottom) I don't know which to choose, though I have reviewed them. I need some guidance to find which will work best for my purposes. It needs to take info from a spreadsheets or databases and output html code (full web pages that will include the template of a basic page and specific website page and books data).

    ===== What I need to be able to do =======
    The database will have many different columns of data. Some for book info and some for sortable categories to determine which books go in which page or section and some for file name etc.
    Each book will have categories such as:
    Series book #
    Language
    Format Type (hardcover, paperback, audio, etc.)
    Copyright Year
    ISBN/ISSN #
    Amazon link URL - text ad
    Amazon link URL - graphic ad
    Purchase Price
    Shipping Discount
    Sale Price

    I will have pages that list various combinations of data:
    English versions of book 1 in order of format
    All English versions of the books in order of series # then format
    All Series #1 books in order of Language and then format
    All Hardcover books in order of Series # then Language
    All Hardcover books in order of Language then Series #
    ============

    My goal is to end up with a system that will take a database of info (book, webpage, and html template code) and output the full site .htm files whenever I wish to update the database. Each page will be output with a proper title, metadata as well as the exact folder/filename I specify. If I have to set each page up individually, that's fine; but I want to be able to update the all the data on all the pages without having to redo the setup work.

    I have access to the programs:
    PHP-Nuke 8.0http://phpnuke.org/
    phpwcmshttp://www.phpwcms.de/index.php
    e107 0.7.19http://e107.org/
    Mambo 4.6.5 Stablehttp://mambo-foundation.org/
    Drupalhttp://drupal.org/
    MODx 1.0.3http://modxcms.com/
    Joomla 1.5.15http://www.joomla.org/
    XOOPS 2.4.4http://www.xoops.org/

    Will any of these programs do All of this?
    Will any of them do Part of what I need?
    Thanks for your time!!

    • ANSWER:
      There's no CMS that will do what you want by itself. (Even what Word puts out isn't real HTML.) Drupal, Joomla and Code Igniter will allow you to write a CMS that will allow you to do what you want. (Programming isn't "download it, click and it does what you want, it's download it - learn programming - and make it do what you want. You're not going to find something that doesn't take programming on your part.)

      Your best bet is actually the database on the site itself, and your pages generated by PHP code that draws data from the database. (And a program - in PHP, on the site - that lets you add, delete and modify data in the database.) But you have to learn how to use the CMS to create the code that will do all that (and that means learning programming. Or, if you want to limit your work and knowledge to selling books - and, having written sites for bookstores, I know that's more than a full-time job - hire someone to develop your site for you. (No, I'm not soliciting business - I have more than enough.)

13. QUESTION:
    Building a E commerce setup into an existing design ?
    Hi

    I have a friend who has an existing website, which was built using BT hosting templates. He needs to add an online shop, that can deal with around 300 products some in several colours, what would you suggest using?

    The key is the design needs to be the same so a CMS that you can add Ecommerce too, rather than say Os Commerce and a E commerce type 3 column structure.

    I have managed to replicate the design fairly easily with WP and added the WP-Ecommerce plugins, however I have been told and read that WP isn't really the best thing to use for selling online as its limited. If you have used WP as an Ecommerce setup and it works well please let me know.

    So anyway, my friends isn't wonderful on computers and will need to run this after I've done the setup, so it needs to be fairly easy to run.

    Drupal, Joomla, Magenta ?

    any ideas?

    Thanks

    Ash

    • ANSWER:
      I would recommend Magenta - its the most advanced open source ecom solution out there and has a small learning curve.

14. QUESTION:
    What should I call my new small company?
    It's mostly only myself, but I do plan to hopefully expand at a later date if I can get a partner or if I need to begin outsourcing work (which is highly expected).

    Right now, I am only planning to offer web development -- specifically for personal websites, WordPress, and Drupal setups. I might consider doing much more as I learn more technologies, or if I find another partner who can handle them. I also plan to do domain registration for clients and am considering doing hosting after building a client base. Am not concentrated on graphical design.

    Later (late 2011 at the earliest) I plan to break into non-web-specific programming -- in particular, I'm going to build my own small game-server and release a short line of multiplayer online roleplaying games and might lease the engine out.

    I also have an interest in doing app development for Windows Phone 7. (( I personally am not interested in iPhones, but I'm sure if I grew, I could find someone to cover that. ))

    So basically, lots of programming-oriented and tech-related services.

    I have a basic name picked out, but I'm not sure what to go with just yet. I can't leave it just as it is because there's another company also using the name in a different industry.

    So, what would be best suited? Would it be something like..

    [Basename] Solutions
    [Basename] Technologies

    .. or something totally different?

    • ANSWER:
      I like Solutions better. Technologies sound good too...or maybe Agency...

15. QUESTION:
    What tool to use to design a coure website?
    I want to generate a course website. First of all I would like to start with something like an online book. On the left side, the links to different chapters and sections will be displayed. As a user clicks on the link for a section, then the content of the section will be displayed. I should be able to put anything in the content - text, graphics, audio, video, animation, interactive tutorial.
    It should be possible to go to different pages by clicking on Next and Previous arrow buttons.

    What will be the best way of designing it? My hosting provider provides wordpress, joomla, and Drupal. Should I go for any of these? Or do you suggest something else?
    Thanks

    • ANSWER: