ColdFusion - Budget Hosting Experience

First of all, I'm a cheap sucker. I'll spend more time trying to get something working than I'd be willing to pay for it. Despite this pattern, I find it is often worth it to investigate these options for things that will be used over and over again. At least this way, I'll know whether a more pricey option is worth it or not so that I can get over my initial cringe when I see the bill.

I looked around for what seemed to be the best deal for the best features, and well, for ColdFusion hosting, nothing really looked to be in the budget market I was looking at besides Hostek.com's CF hosting solution. So I went with it purely on the budget factor when choosing them initially as it really is the make or break point for me on using cf for more than just internal/private projects. Lots of good options, decent bandwidth and storage for the price, plus they have CF9 now... I went with their bronze package, for those doing comparison shopping. (http://hostek.com/hosting/coldfusion/coldfusion-hosting.asp)

Ok, so my experience after using them for about a year is mostly good. The only thing I wish they would do better with is giving me some more credibility when I email their support staff. I know I'm a nub, and it isn't like they ever scoffed at a request or anything like that, they just tend to suggest things I thought I had said I had tried already until I word it in the way they are looking for.

Case in point, when I went to set up URL rewriting rules for my domain, they kinda seemed to be shooting in the dark for a bit until I got someone who knew what I was looking for. It took about a week of email exchanges to get everything working as I needed, then another round of emails to get it working on my sub domain folders.

It turned out to be a security issue on my folders and/or the .htaccess files or something, that is what they said anyway. I just think that a hosting company's tech support should have it pretty well figured out how to enable URL rewriting on their server when a user requests it and not take a week to get it done.

I am running into this issue again right now... I upgraded to CF9 recently(they did it for free at my request, so long as I backed everything up and let them just wipe the slate clean). Being a cheap sucker, I did that option. And now I am once again trying to get all my URL rewriting rules working...

It seems to be the exact same issue, it just seems like it is taking a while for them to do it. I'm already into email #6 this time around, and have it working on everything but the sub domains. It took 12 last time, so I am ahead this time, right?

In their favor, they always have a prompt reply to my requests and questions, and have even helped with my own nubishness on the many server issues(including URL rewriting). It just takes getting the write person sometimes and I feel like I have to craft my emails in a specific way to get the help I need because it seems like every time I get something done, I am saying the same thing over and over again only slightly different. And it seems to me that I am saying the right things... of course I'd say that though. ;)

The other issues I've had are also security based issues. Their CF hosting is all operating in a shared sandbox mode(I think) and as such has extra security settings enabled. Things like getting the CF9 ORM and even the Adobe provided functions for working with CF services in the cfscript notation didn't function throwing security errors until I went through a round of emails with them. Hopefully the CF9 stuff was just because it is all new.

Anyway, despite these flaws, I am thoroughly impressed with the service as a whole, and even their support. They have always responded within a day or so, even sometimes within minutes. I hope they get these CF security issues figured out, and make sure their staff knows what a user is asking about when they start wanting pretty URLs and how to enable it across their site(s) ideally with just one request.

Once they get to that point, I don't see a major need to go anywhere else for a while. I'd recommend them to anyone that just needs FTP access to a CF server and a database to dump things into. One more thing, if they'd offer a way to mount the remote drive(SMB/webdav) I'd love them forever. Right now I use FireFTP + conTEXT to do my site maintenance... I want so bad to use Eclipse but it's FTP support sucks rocks and isn't worth the overhead of even opening it up to do most things with if I can't FTP my stuff up easily with it.

FTP is pretty much the only option with any budget hosting though. So, can't really complain about that one.

A FireFox plugin is leaps and bounds ahead of where any eclipse plugins I've found yet. Something is wrong with this picture... or is it? Maybe I'll have to put my JS coding skills to use and make an editor in the browser... fireFTP + browser based editor... The ideal cheap mans solution! I think I'm on to something!