webfusion.co.uk

I run a small website to do with 8-bit retrogaming, but recently the additions of the archives have gone above the 50Mb limit that the previous hosts, Lycos, imposed and the only way around it was to split the site into 4 (the site has around 180Mb of archives). This would have been messy and required a lot of work so I decided that as I had the domain registered I may as well get some decent hosting to boot. I had a look at a few hosts (including ...
...and finally settled on WebFusion as they're part of Pipex and I have Pipex as my ISP.

They have several accounts to choose from that start at an entry account (£7.95 per month *excluding* VAT) and going up to a business account (£19.99 ex VAT). The key here was choosing which account was needed.

Before I go any further then I'll give you a bit of advice. Read the specifications of the packages, but also consider free ... more

I run a small website to do with 8-bit retrogaming, but recently the additions of the archives have gone above the 50Mb limit that the previous hosts, Lycos, imposed and the only way around it was to split the site into 4 (the site has around 180Mb of archives). This would have been messy and required a lot of work so I decided that as I had the domain registered I may as well get some decent hosting to boot. I had a look at a few hosts (including one I'd had previously when the site was first conceived), and finally settled on WebFusion as they're part of Pipex and I have Pipex as my ISP.

They have several accounts to choose from that start at an entry account (£7.95 per month *excluding* VAT) and going up to a business account (£19.99 ex VAT). The key here was choosing which account was needed.

Before I go any further then I'll give you a bit of advice. Read the specifications of the packages, but also consider free hosting. If you your site is just a site of you and your family for your friends and family and all you want on there is a few snaps of your kin on holiday and some blurble about yourself then Lycos is a good bet and it's also free for basic use. If you need something a tad more professional then sit down with a piece of paper and write down what you want to do with the site. What is the purpose of the site? Do you need SSL to process credit card transactions? Do you need CGI access for custom scripts? How many visitors do you expect? Just little things like that. This helps as although you may know the functions you can begin to wonder when looking at hosting packages and end up paying over the odds for a package which you really won't utilise.

I knew that all I needed was about 300Mb of hosting with about 5Gb bandwidth limit and the oppurtunity to expand it if needs be so entry level was my choice. With this I get 600Mb of websace, a 7 Gb monthly bandwidth allowance (if you go over this then you get charged extra), 300 POP3 e-mail boxes, 1 SQL compliant database, 1 FTP account, 50 sub-domains, and scripting. What isn't mentioned is that it supports PHP and ASP and you can have FrontPage extensions added, althouth you have to pay for the FP extensions.

The signup procedure is relatively simple and your bogstandard make your choice, choose your domain name (i.e you www.whateveryouwant.co.uk address you want), enter the payment details and off you go. They do state that it can take 24 to 48 hours for the domain name to propogate across all the DNS servers on the net, but you can dive straight in as they give you a numeric URL you can go to start uploading stuff. The account is usually set up within 5 minutes and once you receive the e-mail notification you're ready to go. A nice touch is you have the choice to pay either monthly or yearly. You do get a small discount for paying yearly, but if you're on a tight budget then the monthly option may be your choice. You can also pay by credit/debit card or direct debit. This makes a change from the Visa orientated world we seem to be in at present.

Something to note here is if you already own a domain. It is possible to get the MX tables to point at your webspace (they'll tell you how to do this), but if you have a domain registered by 123-Reg then it's totally simple. You simply tell them the domain that you have (as long as it isn't hosted elsewhere) and they do all the work. This also means that the domain is up and running within an hour as opposed to the 24-48 hour wait.

So what's the interface like? For anyone who doesn't like using FTP programs or is just getting to grips with their own website they have a control panel. It's a MyServerWorld thing that has been built especially for WebFusion and although it does all of the things you want it can be a little confusing, especially if you're a newbie. I've been dabbling in site design for around 9 years and I'm fairly clued up as to what various things are, but some of these did leave me wondering. I think this is because WebFusion assume that anyone who registers with them for hosting is an intermediate user and has a general idea of what they're doing so they don't give as full an explanation as they could. While the instructions are pretty clear you may be wondering what is going on sometimes.

One of the first things you'll probably want to do is set up your e-mail. This is straight forward enough. You enter your user name, follow the set-up instructions for your e-mail client and off you go. One thing I did notice is an issue if you have e-mail forwarding if you have a domain, but not the hosting. I had a load of e-mail forwarding set up for people on my domain and when I went on to the hosting it automatically got dumped in the catch all admin box as opposed to being forwarded. It seems that once you add hosting you need to either register the e-mail address for a POP3 box or set up the forwarding again. Not a hassle, just a niggle.

When you're at the point of uploading your site I must really stress the importance of a decent FTP client here. They do have a filemanager which you can use to upload things, but it can be fiddly and very time consuming especially if you have a lot of files to upload and I found that an FTP client was more efficient. I used it twice and managed to lock two directories somehow and in the end had to delete them and upload the directory with an FTP client. Maybe it was a glitch, but I'm not chancing it any more.

You get a small amount of CGI scripts. These range from a search engine script for your site through to an auction and even a website e-card script. Some of these are useful and some are just fun and to add a bit of interactivity into the site. They're not ground breaking, but they are nice additions. The only problem I have with them is the fact that the indexer script for the site search ignores PHP pages. If your site is done mainly in PHP then this is going to cause a bit of a problem.

You also have the option to password protect parts of your site. This means that you can set it up for users or groups of users and have like a 'members only' sections. On the password front one thing I really do have a problem with is the password that is used for the admin and e-mail options. These are set by the system using random alphanumeric upper and lowercase letters and numbers. You really can't remember them and if you think the password has been compromised then you have to ask for a new one. The problem here is that you can't set your own password and usually end up writing the random password down somewhere thus obviously compromising it.

You also get webstats in the form of graphical, analogue and hits etc, as well as raw logs (useful to see if someone is having an attempt at hacking the site). I can't comment on the stats as I only use the raw logs to see whats going on

The webtools basically covers everything else you need from doing a back up of the site through to taking the site offline and setting up subdirectories or database. One useful feature in here is the bandwidth alerter. As mentioned you have a fixed amount of bandwidth (the amount of bytes that can be downloaded from your site) and with the entry level it's 7Gb. With the alerter you can get it to send you an e-mail when a certain level is reached. It usually defaults at around 75% of the bandwidth, but you can set it higher or lower if you need.

Finally, if your site really takes off and you think it's worth it you can upgrade your site and add more features (obviously shelling out more). I can't comment at present as I haven't yet reached the level where I'm becoming a real candidate for a dotcom millionaire, but from a glance it appears to be moving up to a more expensive account type etc.

Telephone support isn't too bad either. I had to call them about a minor issue with my site (that was self induced) and they were helpful. If it requires an e-mail though it seems to be a matter of waiting a day or so until they get back to you.

So is WebFusion worth going with? Once again this is down to what you actually want to do with your site. If it's just for you and your family then I'd recommend some free hosting, but if you're after site that looks professional with your own domain then it's down to can you afford it. There are cheaper alternatives out there and ways to do it on the cheap if you have an idea what you're doing, but if you want it hassle free then I would recommend them. 

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