Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello.

How many times can a forum play host t ths question before they arrive at a consensus.

OK, so I want a .com domain - only one condition - cheapedy cheap.

I also want to find somewhere to host it - two conditions - cheap and decent. It only needs to be basic.

This is all.

I used easily.co.uk for my domin name... does it have to be .com? as others are cheaper

I was recommended, and have had no problems at all with flump.net.

Massively excellent customer service as well. About £8 for a .com

http://www.flump.net/hosting_comparison.php

I always recommend 123-Reg for domains (and not only because I used to work for them). They're not always the cheapest, but you'll have less hassle if you ever need to make alterations to the DNS, etc. Plus they actually have people you can speak to on the phone if you're in trouble.

I've been using Flump for my hosting over the last few months. Although there were some teething problems setting up my account, they've been absolutely bang on ever since.

is it easy to move from easily to flump?

Yeah, do want it to be .com and I will get the .co.uk too, but definitely want .com for the moment. I was just looking at 123.reg a I have used them before, just wanted to check in case anyone else had a preferred alternative.

Flump, though, I have had no end of trouble with. They host a site of mine and have been unhelpful, unwilling to even try to help with what turned out to be a problem at ther end and downright rude at one point, so I'm looking for somewhere else if I can find something decent.

It depends how easily (guffaw) you can get them to unlock your domain for transfer. I find some companies are a complete arse for this.

I have a year before i have to resub

You cannot transfer a domain which is expired or due to expire within the next 90 days, so you should be ok. I can't comment on how good Easily are with letting you transfer away. Check their FAQs or send them an email.

Kovacs, you might not need to transfer your domains out. All my domains are registered through Easily, but I host the domains on another provider (Memset). I just used Easily's control panel to point the domain's namservers to the Memset ones.

thanks i will look later

Sorry, I assumed he was talking about transferring his domain to a new provider, not the hosting. If it's just the hosting you have three choices: a) transfer the domain to the new host; b) keep the domain with your current provider and change the nameservers; or c) keep the domain and nameservers with your current provider and get them to amend the DNS (A, CNAME records, etc).

Option b is my personal favourite as long as your hosting company has good control panel facilities.

My web hosting seems to have vanished and left the site with a holding page. Great. Can anyone recommend me a reasonably reputable and easy to use new one, and is there anything I need to know about transferring the domain etc?

Merged with Sunday's topic.

Oh I didn't see this one, soz.

What do you think for 123reg for web hosting as well? I can't really be arsed with dealing with two different companies for details of half a dozen sites..

It was still on the first page.

Yeah I probably have a blind spot for boring threads about web domains
Ahem.

It depends what you need it for. The 123-reg hosting is very basic (doesn't support PHP or MySQL; only CGI/Perl), but it ultra-reliable because of it (no kiddy scripters, etc).

If you need PHP/MySQL, and want to keep it together, the Webfusion hosting packages are good for that (they are 123-reg's sister company).

Cheers. Maybe I'll go for the simple'n'basic approach.

Did anyone happen to think of a decent host that wasn't Flump, by any chance?

Webfusion are pretty good.

-edit- or if you want something extremely basic and simple, 123-reg is perfectly fine. Basically just see the advice I gave Kalmar.

What about Memset and Webfusion, as recommended in this very thread? Note that I know nowt about no web hosting, using as I do the free stuff on my ISP account. I just read teh thread, like.

I'm still perfectly happy with Fasthosts, though I know others haven't been.

I was just coloured by so many of our customer complaining at how shit Fasthosts were, that I couldn't ever recommend them. Sorry.

I remember once they changed the IPSTAG on about 1,000 domains to ours in error, then faxed us asking them to change them all back again. Fun times, and queue loads of customers ringing us up demanding why we've stolen their domains...

I've started the process to transfer to 123-REG. Unfortunately the original host seems to be all but dead - their web panel tried to charge me ten pounds to transfer out the domain and then fell over, and the support ticket hasn't been answered.

So I'm just hoping a friendly tech at the parent "group" will stick the tag in or whatever needs to be done and let me fuck off.

What's the domain?

If you don't mind I won't give any details just now in case things get tetchy and they happen to google it.

How much effort is actually involved in doing this IPS TAG bollocks anyway - is it reasonable for them to be asking for that much (possibly 25 quid plus VAT) per domain?

No effort at all, really. It's usually just an automated PGP-encrypted email to Nominet.

Unfortunately a lot of companies dress up these deterrents as administrative fees - it's basically to make you think twice about moving and keeping your domain with them. It's legal to do so, however, so there's not much you can do.

Of course, from what I remember, it costs £5 to transfer into 123-reg, but they don't charge anything to transfer away.

123 seem to be offering a free transfer in for .co.uk, I went for it.
Thanks for your help. I'm going to try to get out of paying for it but OTOH I don't want to lose my domain names again (got held to ransom for 90 quid last time) :?

Yeah, 123-reg do offer free .uk transfers sometimes. This must be one of their offers (unless they've changed it in the two years since I left).

HostGator can host multiple sites for you under one account and are cheap.

Their customer service is probably the best that I've experienced in any industry, and I do not give endorsements lightly.

I talk about them here:

http://tinyurl.com/858lac

If you sign-up using the links on that page I get 5p, or something.

I do not have teh satisfactions

At what point can I go directly to nominet on the basis that they're not releasing my domain? Or is that a world of pain?

Not really. It's much easier than getting a .com/net/org unlocked. They usually send an instruction to your domain provider demanding they change the IPSTAG. If it's ignored they'll do it themselves.