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May 25, 2007
Technical Notes Update
Well, this is interesting: Apparently 1&1.com is about to institute a program in which it will offer one-click installation (and automatic updating) of various applications, including Joomla, Drupal, MediaWiki, PostNuke and XOOPS. Which is to say I won't need to try to download and install these babies myself. Well, when this kicks in this has the potential of making my life a lot easier, in terms of updating the look/function of the site. I think I'll hold up on making any major changes until this debuts.
Thanks everyone, however, for your thoughts on all the technical stuff; you gave me a lot to think about.
Posted by john at May 25, 2007 08:41 PM
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Comments
John Scalzi | May 25, 2007 08:56 PM
It's on their packages page.
Tumbleweed | May 25, 2007 10:02 PM
Yeah, that's what my hosting company (Dreamhost) does. I upgraded my WordPress installation with one click to install the new version, and one click to update the tables, and that was it - no problems at all. Very nice. Any hosting company that doesn't offer this really isn't worth the time, IMO.
Chris Kraft | May 25, 2007 11:20 PM
A lot of hosts use cPanel to control what customers can do with their account. So if cPanel supports it then its usually pretty easy to setup and install.
For a long time I was with "A Small Orange", www.asmallorange.com. They are really a great provider. I like them because they have very inexpensive, small, starter accounts. So if someone just wants to give it a try they can get started cheap. Plus they tend to not oversell their service. They even stopped taking customers for a while because they didn't want to overload their systems.
Anyway, if you want ease of support and setup of software find a provider that uses cPanel or something like it.
On the other hand what I found was that they sometimes lag behind what I want and so I ended up doing a custom install anyway and then cPanel stops being so useful.
For me the most important thing is having a provider that offers shell access because if you have shell access you can do almost anything as long as you know what you are doing, or can find someone to help you.
The ultimate solution is to get your own virtual server. Then you can do anything you want, on the other hand it can be a huge undertaking to get everything setup. Its pretty easy to get started but many people overlook installing security software like integrity checking, intrusion detection, strong firewall rules and spam filtering.
Chris
Jeri | May 26, 2007 01:13 AM
That's very cool! The very first open source web site I set up and managed used Joomla's predecessor Mambo, and for a new-to-open source-CMS person, the learning curve to just get it installed & configured was quite steep. (the docs were, back then, pretty cursory)
If you have one of those apps already installed and only need to configure, it should be a lot of fun for you to play with - they are very robust and flexible.
Enjoy!
Dave | May 27, 2007 10:26 AM
Word of warning: Sometimes, it's better to do a manual install, than a one-click install from Click & Build/Fantastico/etc. I'd suggest backing up your site before you upgrade.
John Scalzi | May 27, 2007 10:35 AM
No worries there. Also, I'll do the one click install on one of my other domains first (i.e., the ones you don't see) to see if I like it.
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critter42 | May 25, 2007 08:53 PM
Where did you pick up this bit of info? I use 1&1 and haven't seen any mention of that - but then again, I haven't been looking for any info either...