Hosting packages - long possibly rambling post!

The Guvnor

Hi BK,

We plan to launch an e-commerce website this year - October sometime, all going well.

The site will not be big (data, bandwith) initially. Will have the usual contact us etcetera information and the products, 20-30 items at the start. A lot of the products will have multiple variations in pack size. In the most extreme case one product could have 4 flavours and 8 pack sizes in each flavour.

Now I've been on boards.ie for years and you guys keep getting the thumbs up not least because you are local and the same timezone.

I'm pretty much sold, however which package would be best.

I'm leaning towards the maximus package at €14.95/mo. I am open minded on what ecommerce solution to use.

One of the things we would like to do, aleit not initially is host multiple sites, not all related but all hosted in the one BK maximus package and using the one realex account along with suitable merchant account. These would have different domain names.

Is this possible? It seems like it might be but I am not sure how this would affect seo if all the sites had just one ip address which is what I would assume if just one hosting package?

We were/are thinking of using magento and some say these software packages can be quite slow to load - would this mean one would be better off on a different package, VPS etcetera?


You guys have a large application vault. I log into my cpanel is it easy to say get magento up and going - these are all preinstalled?

Thanks guys and apologies for the longish post!

mneylon

Well you've certainly got value for money in your post

In terms of the hosting plan - the Maximus will give you the added disk space etc.,

I guess the real question is with regard to Realex - if you are using SSL on each site then each one will need its own IP and its own webspace, though it can live on the same hosting plan

Magento - performance wise I haven't heard positive reviews, so I'm not sure if it's a solution we'd recommend.

The Guvnor

Thanks BK!
Value is important nowadays!:)

I think our plan would be to use the realex payment page. I think this would negate our need for ssl certs on the actual site(s). I'm going down the line here really as initially it'll be just one site and let's try and do this one right and make it a success and then expand.

I have a post on Irish SEO, Marketing & Webmaster Discussion in relation to the e-commerce package. However you guys have a few options in your media vault is there an ecommerce application that you would recommend or have heard positive reviews on?

I am also just looking at OfBiz and Modx.

Thanks guys!

mneylon

There are several ecommerce scripts in the vault, but I'd be lying to you if I tried to recommend one over another, as I have no personal experience of any of them

Due to the nature of our business we've always had to use specific packages that could handle domains and hosting etc.,

The Realex redirect could help avoid SSL to a point, but the SSL is always a good idea whenever you're exchanging personal data

The Guvnor

Thanks BK,

The advice on ssl cert makes a lot of sense even if CC details are off site as their address details etc. would be on site.

I'll do some more research on the various options in e-commerce and move from there.

Thanks!

AtaStrumf

The Guvnor it's been a while since you last posted. It would appear we have similar questions. What have you decided to go with in the end and where are you hosting it?

At the moment I have a test site set up using Drupal 5 + Drupal e-commerce module. You can have a look at it at http://www.shop.minor-ailments.com/ and play around, no worries nothing will be charged or sent out

The Guvnor

Hi Ata,

I have decided to use OfBiz and probably use it on a cloud setup.

OfBiz has far too many features for me initially but I plan on only using the ones that I need at the start.

I have a few other items to sort out first as in finding some designer with experience designing templates in OfBiz.

Nothing wrong with your site at all - how close are you to launch?

AtaStrumf

Interesting find there. Sounds a bit complicated though. Would definitely need help with that (or lots of time), where as Drupal I can work with myself.

As for the launch,... not close. Lot's of things to figure out first. I'm just playing with the website for now.

fcrossen

I was exposed to the Blacknight shared hosting package recently while implementing a client site.

The only thing I would ask is how Apache (the web server) is throttled on the shared hosting package. Depending on your usage it is quite easy to reach the limits set by BK. Unfortunately is is not specified anywhere what these limits are.

Perhaps BK could specify what these limits are for each package...?

As far as the Realex payment gateway goes, I coded this for a client recently and yes, it will work fine without an SSL cert. However as is quite correctly pointed out you need to be aware of the customer data you are transferring over a non-SSL connection and make your decision to SSL or not based on that.

mneylon

fcrossen wrote: »

Perhaps BK could specify what these limits are for each package...?

It's the number of concurrent connections on a webspace

I'll get the exact number and see about getting that added to the plan technical details page.

flamegrill

The limits are as follows:

Minimus: 50 concurrent connections / second per domain name.
Medius: 100 concurrent connections / second per domain name.
Maximus: 150 concurrent connections / second per domain name.

The main reason for not specifying these as most customers don't understand what they mean and 99% of customers never reach them. Primarily they're in place to prevent accidental or malicious http ddos attacks on domains names.

To identify if you're hitting this limit you'll see an error such as "vhost rejected=www.domain.tld" or similar. Obviously the domain name hitting the limit will replace www.domain.tld.

Paul.

The Guvnor

I don't really understand this but hazarding a guess it means if I run the maximus package the most users who can browse onto the website at the same time is 150, more than 150 at exactly the same time would I assume briefly exceed the capacity?

fcrossen

flamegrill wrote: »

The limits are as follows:

Minimus: 50 concurrent connections / second per domain name.
Medius: 100 concurrent connections / second per domain name.
Maximus: 150 concurrent connections / second per domain name.

The main reason for not specifying these as most customers don't understand what they mean and 99% of customers never reach them. Primarily they're in place to prevent accidental or malicious http ddos attacks on domains names.

To identify if you're hitting this limit you'll see an error such as "vhost rejected=www.domain.tld" or similar. Obviously the domain name hitting the limit will replace www.domain.tld.

Paul.

Thanks Paul,

Can you also tell us:

• which MultiMPM is used (prefork?)
• what the other relevant httpd.conf directives are?