Recommendation for hosting for site expecting lots of traffic

[chuckylefrek]

I am close to completing a site that if all goes well will have a lot of traffic. I would therefore like to ensure that I have adequate hosting to deal with large amounts of traffic. The site is a UK only accommodation search site.

Can anyone recommend a suitable hosting company and package? I am currently on a Heart Internet reseller package and am not sure this will be able to handle it reliably enough?

Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

 

[stevebrowne]

when you say "a lot" do you mean thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of page impressions per day?

What about database work? ie. how much database impact does an average page view cause?

 

[blacknight]

Without knowing what kind of site it is ie. what kind of backend and how many concurrent users you expect it's hard to say, but you probably want to look into getting a dedicated server

 

[golddiggerguy]

If it's just a general site with no client info been stored or not too important for speed.

Go for BLUEHOST, limits are huge but US based. They have served me well for mini sites with Wordpress.

I know you said UK only but worth a try!

 

[chuckylefrek]

The site is basically an accommodation search site. Kind of like laterooms.com.

I have no idea how much traffic it could get but would rather be prepared than have to change hosts once it is up and running.

Basically the site involves doing a proximity search which queries the Google Map API and then calculates the distance for every hotel in the database.

Currently the backend is MYSQL database and PHP written very bady probably

I would like the site to be able to handle say 10000 queries a day - a man has got to dream

I don't know much about dedicated servers so certainly don't have any technical knowledge. Anyone recommend a reasonably priced one in the UK. My current host (Heart Internet) gives me unlimited bandwidth but I am concerned it may not be able to handle too much traffic considering how cheap it is.

 

[blacknight]

Php + MySQL can scale well IF the code is written sanely and you tweak the DB settings.

I have no idea how Heart operate, but I know that we would recommend someone in your position to look at getting a VPS or dedicated solution, as your resource usage could easily impact on other users.

Just my two cents

PS: The idea sounds cool

 

[tobemenow]

I recommend you start by using shared hosting and as your needs grow bigger I guess so will your expectations so then switch to a dedicated server.

Dedicated servers are more expensive and harder to maintain and configure than the shared hosting packages. Considering this plus the code issue you should consider on hiring a technician that is also good and web developing.

He should help you take care of all unforeseen and expected problems.