Gandi
I've decided to experiment with Gandi. I really wanted to avoid a host that uses cPanel.
It's a little quirky, which a slightly more attractive, but more complicated panel than WebFaction has.
Some pluses:
1. A free SSL certificate if you also register your domain with them.
2. I transferred a domain to them to test the above, and the transfer process went really smoothly. The transfer completed and DNS updated in about 18 hours. (I suspect part of that wait was me not knowing I had to press an extra button at my old registrar.)
3. Subdomains (I really like subdomains) are fairly easy to set up.
Some minuses:
1. You can't access your instance in a terminal without first activating the "Emergency Console" from the dashboard, and access expires after about an hour. Since I like to do most things from the command line, this is not something I like. I can learn to live with it, however.
2. My server is in France and I'm in the US, so doing things via sFTP takes a while.
Comments
I installed WordPress via their one-click. The process went smoothly.
I also moved an existing DokuWiki install via sFTP. Like I said above, it took forever, but everything worked fine without my having to tweak anything.
I installed Moodle from the command line (took me a bit to configure the moodledata directory, not because it was difficult, but because it's been a long day). I was pleased to discover I have root access to MySQL, which made creating a database easy. The installation went off without a hitch—Moodle gave me green lights at every step. It was, in fact, the easiest time I've ever had installing Moodle.
Off to bed. I'll work on MediaWiki tomorrow.
"with" not "which". Sorry !
Turns out, I couldn't quite figure out how to set my nameservers at DreamHost to point to Gandi, so I've given up on this route. I did transfer a registration there, and both the hosting and email worked great. For my own purposes, I would transfer all my registrations here and my hosting as well. The problem is that I have clients with their own registrars, and if I can't provide simple to follow instructions for pointing nameservers, it's a dealbreaker.
Thanks for the research. I had my hopes up for them, but only EU based datacenters is a deal breaker for me.
I believe Gandi is better known as a registrar/DNS provider than webhost, so maybe good move to keep your domains there at least.
@pete said:
Agreed. That's my plan for now. I'm going to transfer my registrations from DreamHost to Gandi over the next few days.
Well, maybe not. I've had a support ticket in since Sunday because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add two CNAME records for a couple of subdomains that point toward AWS buckets. That's two entire days, and the only response I've gotten was when I reached out to them on Twitter. This is how DreamHost used to do things, and one of the reasons I left them. I am less and less impressed with Gandi as time goes by.
Gandi charges 26.00 per month in CAD $.. way too pricey for me!
Ouch! That's really expensive.
This level of poor support is a deal breaker in my book. I don't need support that often - suspect most of you guys are in a similar situation - but when I need it I expect it fast. If not chat fast than at least within 12 hours.
Thanks for evaluating them. I'm going through AWS and Digital Ocean and have realized I don't have the patience for cloud/VPS platforms. Too much system admin and waste of time.