WebHost suggestions

[gottimd]

So I am finally thinking of taking the plunge and getting my own site so I can use gstelmacks programs and automatically upate using the DbUpdater the NAFL files and create player cards.

We currently use 1an1 I think and I can't seem to connect to it plus the storage size is too small for the amount of data. What is best site to use to start my own SQL DB in terms of space and cost?

[gstelmack]

One thing I just discovered is that many hosts seem to be dropping remote access to MySQL databases for shared hosts for "security reasons". Not sure if some security hole in MySQL has been found, or if they're just tightening up, but I've found hosts with instructions on how to do this who no longer allow it. Seems to be a shrinking set of hosts willing to let you do this.

I had a thread asking this just recently: Web Host with ASP/PHP/MySQL w/ external access? - Front Office Football Central and there were some suggestions for new hosts, all of which looked good. Some of the hosts there still allow remote MySQL.

If there were some folks interested, we could look into pooling funds and getting a VPS account that a few leagues share, where we have more control over things like remote access to databases. I've just recently opened an account with LiquidWeb (who in just a few days seems to live up to their reputation for good support), and their VPS runs about $60/month and we can set up remote access to the MySQL databases. Not sure how much interest there is in that, though.

I will also say that this issue has me considering an update to DBUpdater where you put two PHP files on your server, and DBUpdater reads one to get some information on the current state of the database, FTPs some files to your host, then launches the second page to do the updating, so it's still one-click, although likely to take a bit longer to run.

[gottimd]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

If there were some folks interested, we could look into pooling funds and getting a VPS account that a few leagues share, where we have more control over things like remote access to databases. I've just recently opened an account with LiquidWeb (who in just a few days seems to live up to their reputation for good support), and their VPS runs about $60/month and we can set up remote access to the MySQL databases. Not sure how much interest there is in that, though.

I will also say that this issue has me considering an update to DBUpdater where you put two PHP files on your server, and DBUpdater reads one to get some information on the current state of the database, FTPs some files to your host, then launches the second page to do the updating, so it's still one-click, although likely to take a bit longer to run.

Would the $60/Month cover multiple sites or would each league need to contribute $60? If the site could handle the traffic, I would think that if 15 leagues paid $4/month, it would be more cost effective than paying a host 5x that amount. But I don't know about the capacity of the site you are talking about.

As for the DbUpdater, would this work on a 1and1 site? I'd really like to utilize more of your (gstelmack) data and get player cards going in the NAFL. But due to our site limitations as noted in my prior post we can't do that. I actually have to individually FTP files in csv format and I had to split the years up because the tables grew too much in size for it to handle.

[Flasch186]

smart idea and brainstorming here and maybe something the webmaster could help the USFL be a part of too. I dont know if it's possible.

[gstelmack]

Originally Posted by gottimd

Would the $60/Month cover multiple sites or would each league need to contribute $60? If the site could handle the traffic, I would think that if 15 leagues paid $4/month, it would be more cost effective than paying a host 5x that amount. But I don't know about the capacity of the site you are talking about.

Multiple sites. With a VPS, we can run as many sites as the server can handle. For the $60/month, it's 20GB disk / 200GB/month transfer. $100/month doubles the disk and goes to 350GB/month on transfer. I suspect handling 3 or 4 leagues would not be a huge deal based on WOOF traffic (which never really came close to this kind of a limit, but it's hard for me to get exact numbers as the new setup at the host I'm leaving thinks I have 1.97 MB of disk used and haven't used ANY bandwidth...), but we're also not that old a league. 15 leagues might be overkill, but I'm not that experienced with this stuff.

Originally Posted by gottimd

As for the DbUpdater, would this work on a 1and1 site? I'd really like to utilize more of your (gstelmack) data and get player cards going in the NAFL. But due to our site limitations as noted in my prior post we can't do that. I actually have to individually FTP files in csv format and I had to split the years up because the tables grew too much in size for it to handle.

I have no idea on 1and1, you need to ask them if MySQL can be accessed from a remote host. That's the biggie that's starting to trip me up. As I said, unless the VPS thing works out, I'll have to give DBUpdater one-button control over FTP-ing and running a remote script to do the database updates.