Virtual Private servers are occasionally teh way to go but there is a lot more involved in finding a VPS host than most people think of. You have to find out exactly how many people will be on the server you on, and as much details about the server as possible. I just purchased a VPS on the recommendation of my friend who went with them and has a few through them, the server was slow and constantly as I would word bubbling. Where it would work really good then pop and be slow. It was highly annoying. I cannot be expected to run wpmu on a server like that, or allow my clients to be placed on a server like that. Ha I dont think so.

So make sure I know douglass karr has a free years worth of VPS hosting coupon on his site to check that out see if that VPS company is good I was going to mosey on over there myself. But really it depends on what you plan on operating on the site. Which programs you plan on installing will tell you if you should waste your time with a VPS or upgrade to a full server.

CPU can get overloaded with a program as well. I know a few people posted about CPU being overloaded thats what causes a server to go down correct. When you’re on a dedicated server the only person you have to blame for a bad script is yourself. But you don’t know if joe blow next door didn’t upgrade his security issues on whatever scripts he’s running and someone backdoored their way into your server, or if he’s running a bad program and all of a sudden it attacked the CPU. With CGI scripts they can suck the cpu right out of a server. I had many issues with that when I had my own server for my (no sold) webhosting company where so many people were still using GreyMatter and it would kill the cpu so I would have to suspend random sites until the server could breathe again.

Just remember that.

so on our new server, we had a PHP object cache software installed into Apache, so now the compiled PHP code is kept after the 1st execution, and served up.

Say what now?

This is one of the few things that concerns me when looking into a VPS or dedicated solution. I really hope I’m not expected to know this stuff on my own and that the hosting provider will be able to optimize the server for me based on the kind of site I run. Otherwise, as they say in ebonics, I be f—–…

Sorry, poor choice of words on my part.

Jennifer and I approached the server upgrade stuff this way: “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. We kept our $10/mo hostgator account until we outgrew it on one magical day.

Fact is, this’ll be different for everyone, depending on what plugins you use, what traffic sources you have, etc.

But one day – which would have been our highest traffic day EVER with estimated 50,000 visitors and projected $1,000 in revenue – we were down pretty much the whole day. Our shared hostgator account crashed hard in the morning and we were down all day until they got us migrated to a semi-dedicated server (don’t do that btw – go with a real DV anyday – that’s what we did).

So that’s when we decided it was time to move somewhere to a bigger server. But that’s got a lot of complexities of it’s own to deal with.

Ultra-techie-speak warning below this line…
Bloggers are particularly hard hit by performance limitations on servers because we’re all running WordPress. That’s written in PHP, which means that for EACH hit to your site, your server is literally compiling dozens of PHP files. LOTS of overhead. so on our new server, we had a PHP object cache software installed into Apache, so now the compiled PHP code is kept after the 1st execution, and served up. Basically cut our server load by 90%. But that’s the kind of stuff you can only do on your own server, whether dedicated or DV.

Have an awesome day!
Dan

You don’t have the option to re-allocate those, even with a hostgator reseller account – that just allows you to re-distribute disk space and bandwidth. I went through all that with HostGator, and even their “semi dedicated” $75/mo plan is susceptible to these issues and getting your accunt turned off for hogging resources. it happened to us.

When you start getting REAL traffic, it’s time to consider a dedicated server (going to be $150/mo minimum) or the much better interim option of a “dedicated virtual” (DV) server.

@ David,

It’s not apples to apples as it appears. As we just moved to our brank-spankin’ new DV server, we looked very closely at both HostDime and Media Temple before going with them.

Media Temple APPEARS to be cheaper – but gives you half the RAM. For $50/mo they give you a DV with 256 MB RAM. But HostDime gives you 512 MB of RAM for $60.

256 won’t be enough for very much, since this is a complete virtual system. This means you’ll be running your own Apache web server, your own MySQL database, and so on – all in your RAM alocation.

And to get 512 MB at Media Temple, you would pay $100/mo.

And watch out – MT DOES give you more disk space and bandwidth, but that’s not what you need more of – it’s the CPU and RAM. Even with our explosive growth the last months, we haven’t come close to reaching the HostGator bandwidth or disk limits.

What you have no way of knowing is exactly how much of the CPU slice you get from that large server… they can’t really quantify that for you.

Anyway, check both out and compare the points. We went with HostDime because it made more financial sense and they came highly recommended. And we recommend them to you guys.

Best of luck.

And feel free to ask us if you have any questions on the DV stuff and how it’s working for us; we’ll be happy to help.

Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer