Looks Like VPS In My Future

I've got a little less than a thousand ideas running through my head on creating content in meaningful ways on the web - the old KnowProSE.com became unwieldy and when there was an issue with the backup of the database, I didn't look back. I just decided to roll with it, to think about the new directions and spend some time planning out the next moves. Sure, I like writing - but there's a little bit more than writing when it comes to web content.

And a lot of it boils down to hosting. I've had fairly good luck with Bluehost.com shared hosting, though for really using Drupal I'd rather not have a shared hosting account - one blip and the Shared Hosting Gods become angry. I've suffered their wrath more than once when I enabled too many features on Drupal.

For the non-geeks out there, Shared Hosting means that more than one person is using a CPU, its RAM and its processor. While shared hosting works with smaller sites, it can become strained when your site grows too large - you're sharing the server with a lot of other people. A successful site on shared hosting is bound to have problems sooner or later.

Dedicated servers, on the other hand, mean you and you alone use a single server's resources. The downside of this is cost, especially when you're first starting out or when your business model doesn't include immediately large income.

I'm not ready for dedicated hosting. I've always been looking at something in between - not shared hosting but not a dedicated server. And that's a virtual private server - something that meets my requirements and allows the growth within a conservative planning framework. A virtual private server has:

• - Scalability: You can start small at a relatively low cost and grow as needed without having to upgrading servers (and thus spending more money).
• - Burstable memory on the server: there's RAM on standby to assist if your site gets the slashdot/digg effect. It always sucks when your server goes down because you're successful. Trust me, I know.
• - Server level customization, just like a dedicated server.
• - Lower cost than a dedicated server.

So by the end of the year, I expect I'll be consolidating my sites to VPS Web Hosting- perfect for me until I'm ready to get my own server.

You can read more about VPS on Wikipedia as well.