general questions about php server

Question

i'm a newbie to php - planning to rent a server for php hosting and have some general questions about which hosting requirements i should be looking for:

1. ability to host several domains on the same webspace (therefore being able to do the dns-admin by myself)
2. i need to run more than just one database
3. my domains should be able to access global data (databases + folders) - so it must be possible to create virtual directories
4. own mailserver (optional)

currently i'm running a windows 2003 server but it's not very reliable - eg. it hangs after reboots and seems very instable and slow. i've installed php+mysql on it for testing purposes, resolving a test-domain with a simple test-page takes several seconds :( so i think using a windows server is a bad idea for php hosting.

one important thing: reliability. the server should be running save and in case of problems the whole thing shouldn't be just down like with the windows system - i'd need at least some kind of backup system which should keep up the hosting.

and yes - i'm looking for a german provider.

thanks!

Answer 1

i would advise getting a vps or if you willing to spend money getting a dedicated server i can suggest: http://english.keyweb.de/dedicated/index.shtml and if you are german http://www.keyweb.de/keyweb.shtml

They are a very reliable provider i have tested there VPS solutions and very happy with the service I received. If you are only familiar with Windows and dont want to learn linux then you can get a windows server from them and install php by going through some tutorials.

If you would like to learn more about linux then i would advise a linux web server is the way to go. It very reliable and once up and running you should never have any problems again. Only problems i have had with my linux web server is i upgraded some of the software and some how Apache lost the configuration so it did not load all the correct mods. But other then that indecent i have had no problems with it. If you want to be double secure i would advise dumping your database to SQL files and then using a service like Amazon S3(simple storage service) sync all your data to there servers its fairly cheap even for huge amounts of data.

if your question is more specific to howto get a webserver up and running i will happily point you in the right direction.