Website Hosting

[caffrey]

To save costs, I'm considering moving the school's website to be internally hosted - we have decent b/w namely a 300/300 leased line. What are the pro's / cons of this? I was thinking of a VM and putting that VM in a DMZ, is this possible ? Would help with recovery.

[unixman_again]

We host our own, but SMT are looking to host it externally, "in case our internet goes down and people can't see our messages about snow closures". We've had one closure in the 5 years I've been here and that was on a day that everyone was in. It's going to cost a fortune that we can well do without spending for almost no gain.

[Shadow_Walker]

We paid £150 for 3 years hosting and support at tsohost which you cannot complain at!

[Guest MD5T]

Do schools still get a domain name free or is that only if you're with LEA?

[pcstru]

One thing to look out for is the load on the webserver and the configuration that might be required to support that. We do host our website internally and as a result I now know a lot more about Apache configuration!

[caffrey]

I don't normally get involved with the website so I'm unsure of load but I don't think it's a massive amount, it's based on wordpress as far as I know. The leased line we have has a backup and it's only ever been down once in the 4 years we've had it (and that's because accounts forgot to pay the bill....) I'd feel more in control if it was on site, especially in terms of uptime and easily recoverable if hosted on a VM

What hosts do people recommend ? And are they reliable ?

[HPlum78]

I would guess that you get some Azure web services for free (basically IIS) could you not just use that?

[HPlum78]

Or talk to MS and you will get some Azure web services for free!

[pcstru]

Hosts? I use Ubuntu server edition as a LAMPS base with wordpress. Hosted on a reasonable spec VM (6GB, 4CPU) which is a little over spec for it's needs. Overall, other than the initial tuning (out of the box Apache settings were not beefy enough), It has been extremely reliable.

[Guest MD5T]

Apache host with virtual hosts are probably the most reliable.

[howartp]

We host ours in-house on Wordpress.

 

It was Frog until summer, but the only time it ever crashed (at least three occasions) was when we were closed for snow and everyone in the world was hitting it to find out if we were closed for snow!

[caffrey]

Thanks for all the responses, are you putting your web server in a DMZ? Is this easy to do on hyper-v ?

[gshaw]

Or talk to MS and you will get some Azure web services for free!

 

I know they do this for students via Imagine Academy but is there something additional for production websites too?

[ITGURU]

We used to run our school website on our own web server 100mb symmetrical line, Only downtime was a quick restart installing windows updates. Other than that, no issues as it also hosted our HAP for remote files and Intranet, all on a single server instance.

 

Since moving to a MAT school, they wanted all schools to have the same website so the website got moved to being hosted externally.

We've had more website downtime since it was moved externally than we had when hosted on-site so as long as you've got a decent reliable connection your good to go.

 

Saves the hassle of sending emails to their support everytime it goes down, and can fix it straight away if anything went wrong. One of the reasons I still run everything in-house, Exchange, Files, etc. If something goes down, I cannot be doing with relying on external support.

[forkies]

External incase of a major incident that takes down the internal network such as power cut, leased line goes down or any other destructive incidents. We have hosted internally when rebuilding it, and we host other externally access services on our internal servers.

[rob_coles]

Hosted internally on ubuntu. Size of our website/moodle would make external to expensive. Loads of how to guides for lamp servers.

[ColinP]

ours is external, part of our DR recovery plan

[ITGURU]

We prefer external Web hosting service , easy to manage dont have to use much resources inhouse... If we can get a better provider it dont feel having external web hosting provider is any issue.

 

Much preferred it internal, more control and design flexibility without being charged for wanting changes. Also had better uptime on a single server on-site than with our new external provider.

 

Cost no more to run on-site as use the server for other external access

[DavR]

We have ours hosted externally as part of our support contract, despite us having free hosting with our ISP. Not my choice, I would have taken advantage of free ISP hosting, but it makes it someone else's problem.

 

Here's a bit of light relief for you though... A few years back we ran into a school hosting it's website internally, on an old laptop, sat in the bottom of a network cabinet! It ran like a dog, and the laptop itself was red hot to the touch. Don't do that!

[Edu-IT]

Much preferred it internal, more control and design flexibility without being charged for wanting changes. Also had better uptime on a single server on-site than with our new external provider.

 

Cost no more to run on-site as use the server for other external access

Charged for changes? Sounds to me like that's a company managing your website as opposed to external hosting which will give you full access to do what you like with your own website, for free.

[ITGURU]

Charged for changes? Sounds to me like that's a company managing your website as opposed to external hosting which will give you full access to do what you like with your own website, for free.

 

Sorry to clarify charges to the template changes. Free to edit the content but any major template changes they wanted payment as with being a company all websites loOK the same just different content which is where I didn't agree with the 5 grand cost for their website!

[GrumbleDook]

Do schools still get a domain name free or is that only if you're with LEA?

Your .sch.uk domain is free from nominet (previously paid for by Becta) and new schools pay a nominal fee for a new .sch.uk domain.

 

The domain is owned by the school *not* the LA.

 

Other cTLDs have to be paid for by the school.

[caffrey]

I don't normally get involved with any of the website stuff, but due to budgets the way they are we are just looking for savings across the board. I was forwarded the quote for the hosting \ maintenance contract and it seems high for what it is especially when we have talent at school that can deal with the website.

 

So if I wanted to put the site in a Hyper-V VM, would I just create a virtual switch using a physical NIC port that only the website VM uses that is directly attached to a router ? I'm just trying to separate it totally from the internal LAN if it was to go ahead

 

Or should I not worry too much, and just NAT to it like you normally would

Edited April 21, 2017 by caffrey

[Shadow_Walker]

TsoHost is dead cheap for hosting and support is brilliant. For the sake of £50 a year for there premium package you can't go wrong. Some of there packages start at £15 a year. I get trying to save money but it's £50..

[Matt_Renato]

I don't normally get involved with any of the website stuff, but due to budgets the way they are we are just looking for savings across the board. I was forwarded the quote for the hosting \ maintenance contract and it seems high for what it is especially when we have talent at school that can deal with the website.

 

Remember you've got to factor in the cost of your time to manage the server, if you have it on site you'll be responsible for updates, backups etc.