Where can I host a Plone Website?

[eean]

Having chosen Plone to make our new school website and spend ages learning how to use the bloody thing, I've forgotten to think about where I will host it, which was a bit of an oversight.

We're just a primary school, so I don't have major bandwidth requirements, and I'm not sure I really want to go down the path and associated hassle of opening up ports etc on our RBC connection. (Although, would like this one day for a vpn).
Found only one specialist Plone hoster Openia but they're too pricey (£60 / month). I was really looking around the couple of hundred quid a year mark.

It's written in Python and runs ontop of zope (don't know much about either of these) - so is it possible to use other providers? Need to be UK based as they'll have to invoice us.

Any ideas or other options??

[CyberNerd]

try asking a local secondary school ?

[alonebfg]

if you have internet a lot of them will give you a free site. i know you do if you are with swgfl also bt isdn do as well

[plexer]

What are the requirements on plone, apache, php, mysql etc...???

Would help people to be able to suggest hosts I think.

Ben

[CyberNerd]

plone requires zope and python

[contink]

I've just taken a look at the requirements for this Plone thing and I can't help but think you've bitten off a bit more than you can afford to chew here.

This thing pretty much requries a VPS or at least a host who's willing to install Zope on their system and open up a port for its use with Plone.. There's also a lot of setup work to getting it all up and running, not to mention regular updates for the various components..

I was wondering if I might be able to help or even if it was worth considering for my own schools in a similar boat but this is pretty intensive.

[CyberNerd]

alternatively you just need a ubuntu/debian install and do 'apt-get install plone' with a weekly 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade'
Plone isn't that hard for a basic setup - it only get complicated if you want to turn the site into something like ebay (a plone site).
The problem you might have is that it does have rather high system requirements.

[contink]

alternatively you just need a ubuntu/debian install and do 'apt-get install plone' with a weekly 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade'
Plone isn't that hard for a basic setup - it only get complicated if you want to turn the site into something like ebay (a plone site).
The problem you might have is that it does have rather high system requirements.

You're not kidding... 70Mb memory + "reserves about 100 MB memory for a two small Plone site"

That's unlikely to be a cheap option..

[meastaugh1]

Would IngeiHosting suit? They seem to be within your budget.

[eean]

Thanks for all your help so far. It may look like I have to cut my losses and start over (again! - I already spent ages looking at Mambo before I decided that it's lack of ACLs was going to be a problem after all. And that was about this time last year. It would seem that a website is quite low on my list of priorities, but higher on my head's list of priorities. Which causes tension when he says "So how's the website going?")

@meastaugh1:
IngeiHosting look cheep but are French. Not being zenophobic (although I am) but won't that cause invoicing problems? (I can't claim back anything over £50). I will email them to ask.

Failing that, do I:
- Host it at school? - How hard is it to get a port opened (E2BN - Essex)? Do they simply redirect a public ip to one of our private IPs? Does this pose a security risk for the rest of the network? Do I, therefore, have to set up snazzy firewalls etc...
- Just start over? In which case: What CMS do you recommend? It must be:
-- Easy to host!!
-- Have ACLs, so the PE coordinator can't mess up the dinner menus.
-- Have workflow: so the PTA can update, but someone must approve it.
-- Have as much as possible through the front end (E.g. adding pages, or sections to the site).
-- Be able to put lastest news from the news section automatically on the front page with picutres.
-- Do the other normal stuff: calendar etc...

Thanks.

[eean]

Thought I'd post an update for the archive.
Found a provider who will host Plone: www.palepurple.co.uk

Do basic plone website for £120 (and gave me 10% discount). (1gb storage and 2.5 gb/ month download limit)

I think they're a small company but so far seem good: were quick setting replying to my emails and had it all setup within a day. Also the pages load quicker than they do on my local machine, so they're not scrimping on the server spec either.