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Web Hosting Sites w/ Database Capability

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thePITman's avatar

thePITman

Senior Member

3,867 posts
May 17, 2012 9:08 AM
For my site, www.ohiobasketball.net/canton, I have used DiscountASP.net ever since I converted it to a data-driven web site with MS SQL backend. However, they recently upped my annual fee to $255/yr. I might get $100 every 2 years from AdSense, so I was fine with paying the old fee 'cuz I was doing what I enjoyed. But $255 is considerably more.

Does anyone have any recommendations for where I could switch my hosting service that supports MS SQL (so I don't have to change my Database)? Or do you have any other suggestions? A friend of mine recommended learning JSP (I already use it at work a little bit), converting my web site, and hosting my own server (w/ Amazon web services). The cost is considerably lower for this, but the start-up is large with finding a dedicated machine, learning/converting to JSP, creating new DB, etc.

Any thoughts and/or recommendations are appreciated! At some point I need to make a financial decision of whether or not it's worth running my web site anymore, even though I know lots of people depend on it.
May 17, 2012 9:08am
M

MontyBrunswick

May 17, 2012 9:29 AM
http://www.geocities.com
May 17, 2012 9:29am
ZWICK 4 PREZ's avatar

ZWICK 4 PREZ

Senior Member

7,733 posts
May 17, 2012 9:33 AM
[URL]http://www.*************/forums/showthread.php?t=268539[/URL]

This thread might help
May 17, 2012 9:33am
W

WebFire

Go Bucks!

14,779 posts
May 17, 2012 9:56 AM
thePITman;1174049 wrote:For my site, www.ohiobasketball.net/canton, I have used DiscountASP.net ever since I converted it to a data-driven web site with MS SQL backend. However, they recently upped my annual fee to $255/yr. I might get $100 every 2 years from AdSense, so I was fine with paying the old fee 'cuz I was doing what I enjoyed. But $255 is considerably more.

Does anyone have any recommendations for where I could switch my hosting service that supports MS SQL (so I don't have to change my Database)? Or do you have any other suggestions? A friend of mine recommended learning JSP (I already use it at work a little bit), converting my web site, and hosting my own server (w/ Amazon web services). The cost is considerably lower for this, but the start-up is large with finding a dedicated machine, learning/converting to JSP, creating new DB, etc.

Any thoughts and/or recommendations are appreciated! At some point I need to make a financial decision of whether or not it's worth running my web site anymore, even though I know lots of people depend on it.
Hosting your own server isn't going to be cheaper. Unless you are referring to something other than a dedicated server. How much traffic does the site get? Most web hosts can handle your site no problem.
May 17, 2012 9:56am
thePITman's avatar

thePITman

Senior Member

3,867 posts
May 17, 2012 10:01 AM
WebFire;1174096 wrote:Hosting your own server isn't going to be cheaper. Unless you are referring to something other than a dedicated server. How much traffic does the site get? Most web hosts can handle your site no problem.
Bandwidth is not an issue (roughly 100 people per day during basketball season). I'm just looking for the cheapest place that supports MS SQL, which is what my database is currently in. Some recommendations I've received from Facebook are www.justhost.com and www.fatcow.com. Others?
May 17, 2012 10:01am
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 10:28 AM
Nexigen has windows hosting starting at $7/month. Bonus, it's an Ohio company. Negative, the guy that runs the place is named JJ. Bonus, he's cool.

Link
May 17, 2012 10:28am
W

WebFire

Go Bucks!

14,779 posts
May 17, 2012 10:47 AM
I know people bitch about GoDaddy, but I've had a couple clients use them and we have a dedicated server with them at work, and have had no problems. They have MSSql plans starting at $5.99
May 17, 2012 10:47am
thePITman's avatar

thePITman

Senior Member

3,867 posts
May 17, 2012 11:34 AM
CALLING ALL WEB DESIGN GURUS! Please read the following (end-state, best-case for my web site redesign)

I'll try to give some background and work towards where I want my site
to be in the end.

My web site is www.ohiobasketball.net/canton (and /wooster, which is
the same as /canton but a for different district). Right now my site
is data-driven with a MS SQL Database that has some tables for teams,
games, etc. Every year before the season starts, I track down complete
basketball schedules for over 80 boys basketball teams, and take a
week to enter them all in by hand (over 1,600 games).

Then during the season, I track down scores every game night. I have
to go into Microsoft Visual Web Developer (where I house/modify my
DB), update the scores, exit VWD, connect to my FTP site, copy the MDF
database file over, log into DiscountASP interface, and "attach" the
MDF to the server. Then the scores are all updated. This is a hassle.
Also, sometimes I have the same game entered twice in my DB if both
teams are ones that I cover, so when entering scores, I have to find
both instances of the same and and enter the same scores.

Ultimately, I want to have some sort of username-based online entry
system where I (or those I authorize, such as coaches or media) to log
into my web-based interface to either enter schedules/games or update
scores. This would save me loads of time! You'll see each team has a
schedule (http://ohiobasketball.net/<wbr>canton/archbishophoban.aspx) but
there's also a page with all the scores I'm missing
(http://ohiobasketball.net/<wbr>results/missing.aspx). I'd want both to
have the option, depending on the user's security, to update scores.

Something else I'd love, in a best-case scenario, is a game-entry
process that has auto-filtering. What I mean by that is, if I start
typing a school's name, it's searching the TEAMS table in realtime
(has all OHSAA schools), filtering on what I'm typing. Then when I
click the team I want from the list, it uses the team_id column. That
way if I can link two teams to the same game by their ID, I only have
to enter the game once and it shows up on both teams' schedules, and I
only update the score once, etc.

As far as I know, I cannot do this with MS SQL. And even if I can, I'm
not sure where to even start with Visual Web Developer. Do you have
any ideas or thoughts on how I could approach this scenario? If not,
that's fine. But if you do, any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
May 17, 2012 11:34am
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 11:53 AM
Looks like you need a CMS. I highly recommend drupal. A lot of the stuff you are looking for is already built in. I am switching the entire OC over to drupal in the near future. Working on it in the background right now.
May 17, 2012 11:53am
M

MontyBrunswick

May 17, 2012 11:56 AM
justincredible;1174257 wrote:Looks like you need a CMS. I highly recommend drupal. A lot of the stuff you are looking for is already built in. I am switching the entire OC over to drupal in the near future. Working on it in the background right now.

Does this "RuPaul" you speak of have cloudfare?
May 17, 2012 11:56am
J

Jawbreaker

Senior Member

520 posts
May 17, 2012 12:00 PM
I use php, jquery (for the auto filling - query the database while typing in form field), and mysql for the backend server. I used that for work and the school site I run.
May 17, 2012 12:00pm
F

Fred Flintstone

Senior Member

366 posts
May 17, 2012 12:01 PM
justincredible;1174257 wrote:Looks like you need a CMS. I highly recommend drupal. A lot of the stuff you are looking for is already built in. I am switching the entire OC over to drupal in the near future. Working on it in the background right now.
I agree that a CMS might be the best way to go. I played with Drupal and several things I could not get the hang of. I am currently using Fork CMS for the one site I do manage.
May 17, 2012 12:01pm
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 12:11 PM
Fred Flintstone;1174270 wrote:I agree that a CMS might be the best way to go. I played with Drupal and several things I could not get the hang of. I am currently using Fork CMS for the one site I do manage.
The learning curve on drupal can be a bit difficult, but once you get the hang of it it's fantastic.
May 17, 2012 12:11pm
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 12:11 PM
dlazz;1174264 wrote:Does this "RuPaul" you speak of have cloudfare?
Cloudflare is a DNS thing.
May 17, 2012 12:11pm
M

MontyBrunswick

May 17, 2012 12:24 PM
justincredible;1174291 wrote:Cloudflare is a worthless heap of shit

Fixed.
May 17, 2012 12:24pm
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 12:45 PM
dlazz;1174309 wrote:Fixed.
Cloudflare isn't, actually. The cloudflare "errors" aren't cloudflare's fault. They display when the server goes down.
May 17, 2012 12:45pm
M

MontyBrunswick

May 17, 2012 1:12 PM
justincredible;1174329 wrote:Cloudflare isn't, actually. The cloudflare "errors" aren't cloudflare's fault. They display when the server goes down.

Then they should show a cached version of the page instead of an error message
May 17, 2012 1:12pm
W

WebFire

Go Bucks!

14,779 posts
May 17, 2012 1:27 PM
Granted, it's been awhile since I tried Drupal, but I hated it at the time. It's been a few years since I was in the web business, so I don't really have a suggestion for a CMS to use.
May 17, 2012 1:27pm
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 1:36 PM
WebFire;1174375 wrote:Granted, it's been awhile since I tried Drupal, but I hated it at the time. It's been a few years since I was in the web business, so I don't really have a suggestion for a CMS to use.
What version did you use? D5 was kinda shitty but 6 and 7 are great. It's easily the best CMS I've used (Joomla, Wordpress). The number of contributed modules and the active developer community are also big bonuses.
May 17, 2012 1:36pm
thePITman's avatar

thePITman

Senior Member

3,867 posts
May 17, 2012 1:46 PM
So could someone basically use Drupal to combine a data-driven web site, user log-ins, AND a blog? I guess the Drupal web site is kind of confusing and doesn't really tell me much about it.
May 17, 2012 1:46pm
justincredible's avatar

justincredible

Nick Mangold

32,056 posts
May 17, 2012 1:59 PM
thePITman;1174396 wrote:So could someone basically use Drupal to combine a data-driven web site, user log-ins, AND a blog? I guess the Drupal web site is kind of confusing and doesn't really tell me much about it.
Yeah. With drupal and a couple contributed modules you can set up a site in a few hours that would allow for users to login and add whatever data you wanted. There is also blog functionality built in.

You'd basically need drupal 7 core with the following modules:

ctools
views

I believe those are the only two you'd need for what you're looking for. You would create a content type with fields that corresponded to the data you are looking to collect. Someone could login and create a piece of content with those fields. You'd use views to display your data in whatever format you want (assuming tabular).

I can help you out on it if you're interested in something like that. I use a great tool called drush (a command line tool for drupal) that allows me to get a site up and running in a matter of minutes.
May 17, 2012 1:59pm
W

WebFire

Go Bucks!

14,779 posts
May 17, 2012 2:04 PM
justincredible;1174382 wrote:What version did you use? D5 was kinda shitty but 6 and 7 are great. It's easily the best CMS I've used (Joomla, Wordpress). The number of contributed modules and the active developer community are also big bonuses.
It would have been old. Like I said, I don't do web anymore, so I'm kind of out of loop on CMSs.
May 17, 2012 2:04pm