I need some advice on web hosting in the U.S. I’m looking for a host that will allow access to the Virtual Host conf settings or has mod_speling enabled.

I know a access to the virtual host settings is unlikely because of security reasons, but I’d like to use mod_speling or RewriteMap to get urls to lowercase.

Any suggestions? Any hosts that you think should be avoided? Thanks.

Dedicated or VPS are your options. Shared hosting is limited and is meant for nothing more than the simplest tasks.

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You definitely pointed me in the right direction. Thanks!

I looked into VPS and I think that would fit best.

Does anyone have any suggestions / experience with VPS hosting? Maybe a recommendation of a host in the sub $40 range?

Linode.com - don't even worry about looking at the competition. Avoid Slicehost like the plague if for some reason you don't go with Linode, but I guarantee you they are the best bang for your buck, and they're also rated one of the fastest and most reliable VPS providers next to Amazon's Cloud (which isn't in the price range you suggested).

well after doing some searching I decided to give Linode's 360 month to month plan a try and so far so good. They seem to have a good community and documentation which is good for someone like me who is still very ignorant with linux and apache. Thanks for the suggestion delayedinsanity

I had multiple servers with Slicehost for over a year before I heard about Linode in a VPS comparison. I migrated one of my WordPress servers over, and by the end of the month had moved the rest of my web, email and database servers over.

Don't forget to look into their StackScripts and Library to make your life even easier. I've installed LAMP and LEMP so many times now that the StackScripts are of no benefit to me, but I did make use of their Postfix/Courier guide in the Library - Never been able to get IMAP working before that, and it's been a life saver when I'm on the road.

You will have to go with the VPS / dedicated server option sine all hosts don't make any changes to the original httpd.conf file on shared hosting.

If you are going with a cPanel based VPS / dedicated server I would suggest that you also enable Suhosin and suPHP in your EasyApache build and as well don't forget to enable backups :)

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Back from sysadmins to the programmers.

i would recommend that if you have a crummy old computer laying around just put it online and dedicate it to hosting with apache and buy a domain name

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"Stealing! How could you? Haven't you learned anything from that guy who gives sermons at church? Captain what's-his-name?"

I would recommend against that. You're going to piss off your ISP, and your latency is going to be through the roof.

Go with a VPS. If you can't afford $20 a month, you probably don't have time to run a web server since you should be looking for a better job instead. Oh and avoid Slicehost. They were going downhill before Rackspace bought them out, and they've gone retarded since the acquisition. VPS.net, prgmr.com and linode.com are much better providers.

I concur. Residential connections have extremely low upstream speeds, downspeed really does not matter. Using SBC DSL I get 2.5mbps up and .43mbps down. Keep in mind that mbps is megaBITS per second, 1/8th of a megabyte. This works fine for residential internet since it doesn't send large amounts of data out, but running a server would be impossible. You will need at least a T1 line to be able to host a server (which costs more than a good VPS).

I currently have a Windows VPS with Liquidweb and couldn't be happier. They are on the pricey side but the quality is unmatched.

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