Zach Holman

With the new version of Good-Tutorials, I've gone from two dedicated servers onto one virtual private server. It's pretty cool. Saves down on costs, and the site's actually faster (although I think I'm going to have to add another virtual private server here shortly to handle peaks in demand, but that's still going to end up being cheaper than before).

It's a bit interesting, something I haven't done before. The idea behing a VPS is that you get a small virtual server to yourself, although that small piece of your server is on one beefy server, much better than my two individual boxes that I was running on before.

I'm using Slicehost, a small, developer-focused web host. (Disclaimer: there's a referral link there, more on this in a note at the bottom of this post.) I've had a few issues along the way (mostly due to my initial inexperience with setting up a full blown Rails stack), but I'm pretty overwhelmingly positive about Slicehost.

I think I decided that the developer-oriented aspect is what I really like. It's built by developers who know what hosting should be like. Likewise, the tools they offer are pretty slick. Automated backups (daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots) that I don't even need to set up or config other than one click, easy rebuild functionality if you want to wipe your slice and start over (oh, I made use of that a number of times during setup!), reboots and console access through their control panel, and so on. Cool stuff, and it's really straight-forward to access (I've used a number of other hosting control panels with a billion options and a billion clicks to wade through before you can do something meaningful).

They're new, too, which has its pros and cons. The good factor is that they're on the move: they're pushing out new tools pretty quickly (they added a "rescue" feature last week that lets you temporarily boot onto another slice to let you fix startup woes, then they also added some DNS features and prepayment stuff earlier). Apparently they have some other stuff in store shortly, too. On the bad side, well, they've gotten popular fast, which is kinda troublesome in a capital-heavy business. That means they did have a wait list to get your own slice (although I think they've sorted this out and should be resuming normal orders shortly). Also, they're still working on growing out their community, which would really help with setting up your initial slice and associated software. But they're getting there.

The community is actually pretty cool right now though, even if it does have plenty of room to expand. They have a Wiki which is a godsend for common tasks like installing software. Their live chat is reasonably decent; if you can't snag an employee, there's some smart guys hanging around in there from time to time that'll help out. And their support, from my limited experience, has been pretty solid.

They are a VPS provider though, which means it's on you to troubleshoot, install, and so on. You'll get limited support there. But if you know your stuff (or at least know where to ask), Slicehost could really be a boon if you're in the market for hosting.

That's my little spiel for Slicehost. They're a very interesting and active company, something which you don't see too often, so I figure I'd give them a plug. So far, so good on this end; I've been really happy having Good-Tutorials hosted with them. If you're interested, give them a look.

Along those lines, as I mentioned above, here's my referral link if you're interested (I get a couple bucks off hosting if you sign up):

https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/signup?referrer=30668976

If you're not as interested or if you just feel the evil hands of a pyramid scheme going on, here's a straight link for you to check out:

http://www.slicehost.com

And for the link-happy:

http://wiki.slicehost.com - Their user-contributed Wiki, which I highly suggest checking out if you're not even a customer; there's some really good guides for setting up a server there. http://forum.slicehost.com - Their user forum. Like the Wiki, also a pretty good source of information. http://blog.slicehost.com/ - Slicehost's blog