I was on a typical starter shared web hosting plan for many years.  When I brought Backup Central to the new wold of Web 2.0, with this blog, forums, and the Wiki, I moved to a virtual private server at LiquidWeb.com in January of 2007.   That worked well for a while, but as the forums got bigger and bigger, the system got slower and slower.  I needed my own server.

Today backupcentral.com has moved to its own dedicated server.  It's on a 3 GHz Intel box with 1 GB of RAM and 120 GB of disk space.   I don't know about you, but it's performing 10 times faster for me.  And, as I often tell me wife -- it's all about me.

Of course, the new server costs me just over 3 times what the other server was costing me, so help a guy out, would ya?  (I do pay for this with my own money.)  Buy some consulting, or books or something, will ya?  Surely your backups are all screwed up and you need some help, right?  

I do have to say that after one unsatisfying experience after another with other hosting providers, I am as happy as can be with LiquidWeb .  The prices are reasonable, and their support is awesome.  It's so nice to be able to call someone 24x7 and not have to admin my box.  I say things like "hey, I need PHP upgraded to the newest version.  Can you take care of that for me?"  Voila.  PHP is upgraded.  They've even got integrated, automated off-site backups of servers they manage.  Like I said, I couldn't be happier.  If you're in the market for a host, they've got basic virtual web hosting for $15 a month, virtual private servers (where you have root) for $60/mth, and dedicated physical servers from $129/mth.  You can start with the lowest level plan and migrate up as you need to, and they'll migrate you each time as part of the setup.  (That's what just happened for me, where they moved my virtual private server up to a dedicated server.)  Give them a try!  (Yes, I will get a kickback if you do sign up.  But I really am happy with their service.)

Alright.  Enough of that.  I've got to go play with my new VMware server. Bye!