Question from Paul: I have three blogs (each in a different niche) that currently receive anywhere from 4,000 to 20,000 visitors per month. The two largest blogs have started loading really slow.
All three blogs have been hosted with Godaddy for about four years now. I know it’s time to move them to a dedicated server but the cheapest plan I can find is way out of my budget.
My question is do you think it would be a good idea to move them onto my own server? I have a spare Gateway DX4860-UB32P with 8Gigs of RAM that I can install Red Hat Linux and Apache on. I also have a 60 Mbps Internet connection with Charter.
Do you think this would be a good setup to replace my Godaddy hosting? I make a couple of hundred bucks from my blogs each month but I’d like to eventually make it full time and quit my job so I don’t want to make a big mistake.
Rick’s answer: Paul, most any blogger (myself included) would love to be able to host their blog(s) on their own web server and save a bunch of money every month, but it rarely works out for the best. I don’t really recommend running a private web server, for the following reasons:
1 – Most consumer grade PCs aren’t built to handle the load of hosting multiple high-traffic websites, and the Gateway machine you are planning to use certainly fits in that category.
In contrast, the servers used by all reputable hosting companies are designed from the ground up for handling heavy page load demands.
2 – If your machine has a hardware failure your blogs will be down until you either get the PC repaired or replaced. And if you have to replace the machine you’ll have to restore your blogs from a recent backup.
A reputable hosting company would have your blogs back up and running in as little as an hour if your server ever fails.
3 – A home Internet connection is inherently too unreliable for web hosting purposes. If your connection ever goes down your blogs will be down until Charter finally gets around to fixing the problem – which could possibly be days! And the same situation also applies to power outages.
Hosting companies typically have multiple redundant Internet connections to ensure that your blogs will stay up if one of those connections fail as well as emergency backup power systems to keep your blogs up and running during power outages.
4 – Your Charter Internet connection is almost certainly too slow to handle your family’s regular Internet usage plus thousands of data requests each day to your web server.
5 – If you were to move your blogs onto your own private web server it would be YOU who would be responsible for the timely installation of all software and security updates. That’s quite a challenging job, especially if you don’t have the skills and experience required to do it.
Hosting your blogs on a server owned and maintained by a reputable hosting company will ensure that your server will always have the latest updates and be protected from the latest security threats.
As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider before deciding to move your blogs onto your own web server.
Truth be told, I don’t think you really need a full-blown dedicated server at this point. Based on their current traffic levels I believe you should try moving your blogs to Dreamhost.
All of Dreamhost’s servers have super-fast SSDs instead of spinning hard drives which means the pages load a lot faster. I believe your blogs would load quite fast from a Dreamhost server even if you opt for shared hosting.
Bottom line: I strongly recommend that you avoid the pitfalls of running your own web server and choose a plan with a high-quality hosting company instead.
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