Choosing a server question

Not sure if this is the answer you were hoping to get, but here it goes anyway

Getting your own server is likely going to end up giving you more pain then pleasure unless you have resources available (namely money, and people) to deal with a larger scale project.

The reason I say this is because if you have to ask, you’re probably not ready for all the other stuff that you haven’t asked about

I may be completely wrong, but I’ll assume that the reason you’re unhappy with your servers is because they couldn’t provide you with the bandwidth to support video streaming and file hosting (not without increasing the price substantially)

If that is the case, I may offer a simple and elegant solution that won’t break your piggy bank, and will solve your troubles:

Stick with the usual hosting suspects for your website, but place the files and videos on AmazonS3 server and embed them into your site from there. It costs pennies for terabytes of data, it’s fast, and the user won’t even know the file sits on the external server.

This is the service that Amazon itself uses, so in terms of speed and reliability, you’re more likely to win the lottery than experience downtime.

Not to mention that the 7-or-more-figure big shots in online marketing use this service for their megalaunches when they send thousands upon thousands of viewers to watch their sales videos.

That’s the kind of viewership that would likely put a serious dent into your own server reliability

Hope this helps

Man that was truly helpful. I previously contacted amazon about this due to the volume we expected but ended up actually suggested to this locally..yes a person at amazon actually got me off the phone without costing me money pointing me elsewhere. After that is when I started looking for servers. The situation with previous hosts wasn’t the bandwidth but the resources to run the site without flaw. I kept being presented with your package is on a 2.0 ghz intel this and that with 4 ddr ram..yet i’m down 80% of the time and arguing. I ran a test on the supposed server..actual results were so bad I almost ended up suing them for fraud. It’s always good for the first 2 weeks then i start getting choked out paying that much money for hosting per month dedicate server and being down regularly nearly destroyed the brand i was trying to launch. I’ll try amazon again tho, perhaps i just got a bad sales rep.

Amazon sent you elsewhere? Aw, geez [shaking my head]

Listen, here is something to make your life a little easier. I wrote a non-geek’s guide for using amazon S3 service recently as part of the launch I’ll be doing early next year.

I don’t mind giving it away for free, so as long as you don’t go redistributing it under your own name (that goes for anyone else reading this on the forum here)

It’s basically a step-by-step process that will get your feet hit the ground running. Follow what I got in there, and you’ll be up and running in 15 minutes

Best of luck!

Man I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help, after you mentioned them I started looking and found why amazon turned me away in the first place…was due to a chillingeffects report from (Redacted) which has since been resolved. Will certainly make use of your guide mate. Thanks a million.

Any time!

I just updated the guide to reflect some changes (step #1 – the Amazon S3 plugin has been moved away from the Firefox addon directory, so I changed the link to where the addon can be found). The link is still the same