I've been shopping around for new hosting for my website and I have a few questions. Normally I would e-mail them, but I figured maybe other people will have the same questions.

I'm an amateur web designer and I manage two websites. One for my father’s business and just recently my own personal site. I just switched my father’s website to a new service provider today (from one that had good service but was just too expensive since all he really needs is e-mail and a re-direct). The new service provider has similar hosting packages as Lunar for about the same price, but already I’m a bit nervous about the change.  Their control panel is an old version of the software, found out that there is no dedicated IP address, poor instructions on how to use the services, typos everywhere, and slow response to tech support e-mails (3 hours and counting)… they may end up being fine, it’s just not the right foot to be starting out on.

So for my website I’m shopping around a bit more and asking even more questions.  
I registered and purchased hosting through Earthlink (my dialup ISP) in January. They have been reliable with good tech support but are just too expensive and don’t offer much in the way of extras (ASP, sub domains, etc).  As I designed the site and decided what I want it to become, I realized that I want I really need.

It is and will be two things: 1) My online resume (which will include some streaming and downloadable media) 2) A reference site for film school students starting out in the film industry. Ideally, I’d like to have a forum exactly like this one available.

Now on to the specific questions:

Frontpage2002:
I know how to write html and I have a basic understanding of JavaScript but I use FrontPage 2002 to edit most of my pages. Currently I open my website within FrontPage as a network location or web location. I have NO interest is using FTP to manage my site. I want to make sure Lunar supports FrontPage 2002 and all its extensions.

FTP:
Though I don’t want to use FTP for web site management, I do want people who visit my site to be able to upload files. With Lunar, is it possible to set up a directory that anyone can upload to but not have access to the rest of the site?

IP Address:
With previous hosts I was given a dedicated IP address for the websites. Does Lunar offer a Dedicated IP for its domains? If not, is it really necessary? The reason I ask is the new provider for my father’s site does not, and I can’t view the website via IE or log on with FrontPage until the new DNS propagates

E-Mail:
I assume all e-mail associated with a domain is accessible via both http and outlook express (or Eudora, outlook, etc)? If so, what would the URL of the web mail be for my domain? Also, what would the mail sever URLs be?

I am considering offering e-mail to selected users of the site (and possibly selling e-mail accounts). Is the amount of e-mail that passes through the server and stored on the server part of the bandwidth and storage quota for the whole domain? Example: If I have a 20mb storage limit, I should only have 4 e-mail addresses with 5mb quotas each.

I have active e-mail addresses with my current domain. If I transfer the account to you I know it would take up to 72 hours before the DNS info would propagate. Could I set up e-mail accounts using the IP address so there would be as little e-mail downtime as possible?

Technical Support:
Do you offer technical support by phone? If so, what are the hours? What is the average response time via e-mail?

Hardware:
Are your servers physically located on the premises? If not where are they hosted and what is your relationship with your provider?

Backup:
Do you back up websites on your server? If so, how often?

Forum:
Do you offer this Forum software for use in my domain? Does it cost extra? I’ve downloaded the free ASP forum “SnitzTM Forums 2000” Would I be able to use this?

Database:
I’m not too familiar with forum programs, but I understand they use data bases (not too familiar with those either). I have Access but see that you don’t offer access. Is the converter reliable and how much does it cost? Do you know how much it would cost me to purchase MySQL?

That’s all I can think of now… I know this is long and full of grammatical errors and typos. And I know some questions may sound a bit silly, but I’m trying to be thorough.
I’d appreciate a quick response.

Thanks,

Ben
 
 [ March 06, 2003, 01:34 PM: Message edited by: ionad ]

Thanks for answering all my questions... I know it was a lot. And the fact that you did in under an hour really sealed the deal. I'll sign up after dinner.

Thanks!

Ben
 

Ben,

Don't forget the dinner fee.  Send any leftovers directly to the office!

We are also looking very seriously at LunarPages for hosting our own sites as well as for clients...

This may be a bit technical, but could be important for us...

- We have done a lot of work with Resin, servlets, and JSPs ... Resin has something known as "connection pooling" for database connections, which allows mysql connections to be pooled/re-used and avoid the overhead of opening/closing connections all the time, effectively allowing "more simultaneous connections" I believe...

- Do you know if your installation of Resin has this feature available?  We have an older developer installation running it .... I am not sure but I thought that to do this required a different mysql driver (jdbc-mysql.jar) vs. the standard one (mm.mysql-2.0.11-bin.jar)...

- In my installation, both of these are in resin/lib ....

Thanks for your help and if it's too techy, I can do some more resin research to perhaps ask a better question :-)

Thanks,
Dave :-)

PS. This is my 2nd post here and I had also emailed support  and gotten a fast response from Kevin on a different issue ... I am VERY impressed with all you guys are doing...

Keep up the great work!

Hi,

  I've never actually used the Resin pooling (i hate being tied to 1 specific Servlet Runner),  but I believe the features are available - not exactly what you need, but to give you a clue on configuring it:

http://www.lunarforums.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=46;t=000078

I personally recommend that customers use a 3rd party pooling library, maybe DBConnectionBroker or the stsLibrary (i use this one).

That's great Dave!