Choosing a website hosting provider

[Davide]

Hi, I'm wondering if someone can share some opinion about website hosting providers you know about. I've been requested to create some websites but I'm new to using hosting providers.

I'm thinking about a hosting service which provides a CMS for creating the website and of course hosts the site and provides the DNS.

The best thing for me would be to just have to register the domain for the website at some registering service (maybe the hosting provider itself if it offers this service too), and create the website via their CMS. I don't need virtual machines, just the possibility to create some quite simple e-commerce website and having it hosted.

I've got a list and I'm going to check it (rimuhosting.com , www.openhosting.com , www.wedohosting.com , www.aceshells.com et al.), but it's basically a list of virtual hosting providers, and virtual machines are too much for my simple needs. Furthermore I don't know anything about these providers.

[Mark0]

I have no direct experience with hosting services with a CMS included.
By I have read some good things about DreamHost, and as I read they have Joomla included in their plans.
It may be worth a look.

This forum it's actually hosted on an NGI Virtuo Pro.

Bye!

[Davide]

Thanks for the hint about DreamHost, Marco. It looks good.

I had been pointed to we.register.it , and I activated a free 2-months trial with them for the project I'm working on right now; it's about making a few simple websites for some shops here in Italy, and the fact that it's an italian provider sounded good to my partners and might sound good to the customers too, who aren't technical guys.
Register.it offers a tool for making websites, which as far as I understand isn't an actual CMS but it should fit the simple needs of this project.

www.wedohosting.com seemed quite interesting too. However for possible future projects, which will probably be of more personal kind, I think I'll try DreamHost first.

[Davide]

I bought an hosting solution at Register.it; I used their tool to quickly make very simple websites ("Site Builder"), it works quite well, however the websites one can build with it are subject to considerable limitations.

Fortunately the hosting solution I got is a Linux one, and on Linux hosting they provide a CMS too (Joomla), so possible future needs of building "real" sites should be covered. On their Windows hosting solutions, I didn't see any CMS available.

In general, the options their hosting offer look to me satisfactory, and their e-mail support has been excellent even during the free-trial period. On the minus side I'd mention the interface of their control panel, which seems me a bit unclear and fuzzy. However so far I'm satisfied with them.