The client wants video on their site.
Is there anything I should look out for when choosing hosting (bandwidth, speed etc)?
Does anyone have advice on the best format to use? What do most people have on their computers (apart from wmv - I’m not using that).
Thanks
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Jeff,
It does depend so much on how much traffic you expect the site to get. I notice on our reports, on sites hosted with us, using video or flash, have substantially higher monthly data transfer, duh, obviously 
. Which some of the more basic hosting accounts on the internet out there, just would not cope with. So you will have to second guess and calculate expected usage, (e.g how many videos to you have, what size are they, how many will be downloaded, and buy a hosting account to suit)
Of course, you could always checkout, what hosting we’ve got of offer 
On 13 Dec 2007, at 11:32, jeffstewart wrote:
Is there anything I should look out for when choosing hosting (bandwidth, speed etc)?
David Owen
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Sometime around 13/12/07 (at 06:32 -0500) jeffstewart said:
The client wants video on their site.
Is there anything I should look out for when choosing hosting
(bandwidth, speed etc)?
Bandwidth, as already mentioned. That’s really your biggest concern
if you expect a media-rich site to become even moderately popular.
I have a hosting account at Dreamhost.com (http://www.dreamhost.com/)
and that gives me a truly excellent bandwidth allocation (terabytes
per month) with no data throttling or ‘hosting reseller chain’
complications, plus QuickTime Streaming Server support. Take a look.
k
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As always - how long is a piece of string?
Obviously video is larger in terms of disk space and a lot larger in terms
of bandwidth - especially if popular.
So is this to be just a bit of video or a main functionality or aspect of
the site. (Busy site - less busy site?).
Is the video for download or primarily for online viewing?
Is it of a nature that needs or can justify the cost of streaming?
Are they freely available or paid for?
(I had problems when a PHP script used to give download links for bought
video didn’t work because the host didn’t fully implement PHP).
I offer QuickTime MP4 as well as WMV. Lots of PC users have issues with
QuickTime.
Flash seems best for online viewing.
As used by Youtube who can also host the media and take the bandwidth if
other factors allowed.
I think you’d get more useful answers if you spelt out more what is
envisioned.
hope this helps
regards
Brian
jeffstewart said recently:
The client wants video on their site.
Is there anything I should look out for when choosing hosting (bandwidth,
speed etc)?
Does anyone have advice on the best format to use? What do most people have on
their computers (apart from wmv - I’m not using that).
Thanks
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On Dec 13, 2007, at 9:01 AM, Keith Martin wrote:
I have a hosting account at Dreamhost.com (http://www.dreamhost.com/)
and that gives me a truly excellent bandwidth allocation (terabytes
per month) with no data throttling or ‘hosting reseller chain’
complications, plus QuickTime Streaming Server support. Take a look.
What has your experience with DreamHost been like? I have heard
horror stories from other members of my Ruby on Rails group, and they
all center around horrible behavior from the support people,
inexplicable outages or resource limits on the server, and lots of
other things that seem to point to the servers being oversold by an
order of magnitude or so.
I had a job this year that I turned away from DreamHost on the
strength of these issues. It would have been loads simpler to do it
on DH than the system we cobbled together in the end. There were 30GB
of files to serve, and I ended up putting them on a Bingo drive, and
writing a very elaborate proxy system that maintained a searchable
index of the files on a more normal Web hosting account at TextDrive.
So I’m looking for the counter-example here. Have you had good service?
Walter
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We can actually offer unlimited hosting and bandwidth (one caveat being it must be genuine web content… and apply to the rest of our T&C’s).
If anyone is interested is this, please contact me off topic.
On 13 Dec 2007, at 14:01, Keith Martin wrote:
I have a hosting account at Dreamhost.com (http://www.dreamhost.com/)
and that gives me a truly excellent bandwidth allocation (terabytes
per month) with no data throttling or ‘hosting reseller chain’
complications, plus QuickTime Streaming Server support. Take a look.
David Owen
Printline Advertising ::
Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains ::
http://www.printlineadvertising.co.uk/freeway/
Thanks for the help.
I don’t forsee huge traffic for the site, and it will only be a couple of videos that most visitors won’t watch. I’m still waiting to be told how long they are.
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Dreamhost etc oversell hugely, and have huge performance and reliability issues as a result.
Servers can only push so many bits per second, the pipes out of the data centres can only carry so much traffic.
Anything which is sold as “unlimited” (or ridiculous values)will have limits somewhere in the supply chain, but you have no way of knowing what those are.
– Finlay
On 13 Dec 2007, at 15:52, David Owen wrote:
We can actually offer unlimited hosting and bandwidth (one caveat being it must be genuine web content… and apply to the rest of our T&C’s).
If anyone is interested is this, please contact me off topic.
On 13 Dec 2007, at 14:01, Keith Martin wrote:
I have a hosting account at Dreamhost.com (http://www.dreamhost.com/)
and that gives me a truly excellent bandwidth allocation (terabytes
per month) with no data throttling or ‘hosting reseller chain’
complications, plus QuickTime Streaming Server support. Take a look.David Owen
Printline Advertising ::
Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains ::
http://www.printlineadvertising.co.uk/freeway/
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Exactly, and is so dependant on what else is being served on the network also, this is why I stressed, subject to our Terms & Conditions. Which in more detail, has to mention things like… “percentage of processing load”, and “being detrimental to other users”, “genuine web linked content”. There has to be some limits somewhere to maintain, and consider, fair usage for all. Short bursts of huge traffic, is going to cause problems anywhere. We don’t market directly with the word “unlimited”, even though we can offer this in an account, it can be so misleading. When the average site is maybe under 10mb, figures into the terabytes are meaningless. So reliability, service, cost, features, are probably in the minds of most buyers.
On 13 Dec 2007, at 16:22, Finlay Dobbie wrote:
Anything which is sold as “unlimited” (or ridiculous values)will have limits somewhere in the supply chain, but you have no way of knowing what those are.
David Owen
Printline Advertising ::
Freeway Friendly Web hosting and Domains ::
http://www.printlineadvertising.co.uk/freeway/
Sometime around 13/12/07 (at 09:23 -0500) Walter Lee Davis said:
What has your experience with DreamHost been like? I have heard
horror stories from other members of my Ruby on Rails group, and they
all center around horrible behavior from the support people,
inexplicable outages or resource limits on the server, and lots of
other things that seem to point to the servers being oversold by an
order of magnitude or so.
As Finlay said, Dreamhost oversells. But - scandalous concept coming
up - that’s actually a viable and acceptable business model! I’d be
willing to bet that any lowish-cost hosting service turns a profit
through some form of overselling.
The reality is that the vast majority of users never go anywhere near
their theoretical allowance limits. Just as virtually nobody ever
drives a performance car near its maximum speed or really eats all
they can in an all-you-can-eat restaurant deal.
→ But it does indicate certain things, which people should note.
Everyone should make their own judgement on this sort of thing, but I
would like to give my experience of DH so far, with roughly two years
of hosting multiple domains:
Support is based on email and web forms, not phone calls. If you need
or want phone support that much, for whatever reason, go elsewhere.
However, I have been in touch a numkber of times over different
issues… including one I fully expected to be ‘blanked’ on: how to
work around their particular standard PHP behaviour setup that
prevented certain kinds of operation because of security issues. In
fact, the result was a calm, clear and personal explanation, followed
by a set of instructions on how to compile my own installation of PHP
on one domain so that I could run it in the required way. Far more
help than I ever expected, and the instructions worked perfectly.
I’ve had other helpful in-depth support replies too, although this
was the most impressive.
→ Other users may have different stories, but all my experiences
with DH support has been exceptionally good.
Outages should never be ‘inexplicable’, they should always be
explained. Downtime is never pleasant, but there’s always a reason.
I do appreciate that fact that this side of the DH operation is run
far more transparently than most; problems are acknowledged online,
explained online, and dealt with. It stands to reason that this
could make it look like there are more problems than if they
weren’t so open. Do they have more problems than most? I’d challenge
that; I reckon the only hosts with appreciably less downtime (the
final fractions of that 99+%) are the ones with massively redundant
infrastructure (emphasizing ‘massive’), and those - logically enough
I’ve just been through serious pain with Fasthosts, a seriously major
UK hosting company. Hosts are sometimes faced with problems, and
these frequently come in the form of external attacks. I don’t think
it is reasonable to expect any host to never have problems, so I
try to judge any problems by how avoidable the problem seems to be
and how the company responds to it, not purely the presence of a
problem.
Bottom line?
I’d recommend DH for those interested in experimenting and pushing
experimental boundaries. I wouldn’t be so quick to recommend it for
people who are technically uncertain about this sort of stuff, or for
very high-visibility, high-value sites.
Have-Host.com and PrintlineAdvertising.co.uk are both better for the
former, but for the latter I’d feel happier steering people towards
hosts that aim for corporate-level accounts rather than individual
user sites. Pay more, get more sleep.
I had a job this year that I turned away from DreamHost on the
strength of these issues. It would have been loads simpler to do it
on DH than the system we cobbled together in the end. There were 30GB
of files to serve, and I ended up putting them on a Bingo drive, and
writing a very elaborate proxy system that maintained a searchable
index of the files on a more normal Web hosting account at TextDrive.
So I’m looking for the counter-example here. Have you had good service?
Personally, yes, I’ve had consistently good service. But it sounds to
me like you chose the right sort of solution for that job. You
obviously had the budget, and you chose a solution accordingly.
k
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On 13 Dec. 2007, 8:24 pm, thatkeith wrote:
Sometime around 13/12/07 (at 09:23 -0500) Walter Lee Davis said:
There were 30GB
of files to serve, and I ended up putting them on a Bingo drive, and
writing a very elaborate proxy systemBut it sounds to
me like you chose the right sort of solution for that job.
I’d say Walter chose and executed an excellent solution for the job. It’s fast, reliable and the hosting is very cheap.
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