I am trying to get started with some SQL software. I would like to know the best webhosting provider to go with. The software is called “OS Commerce” its quite terrible but I am used to working with it from work. It needs C-Panel and so on. Any recomendations?
The official documentation can be found here
5
Answers
WebHostingTalk.com. It’s the best discussion forum I’ve seen where people review and talk about the various web hosts
osCommerce should run on any LAMP stack so pick whichever host you feel comfortable with.
You could run it on your own computer for private development (XAMPP is popular). If you still want to find a host, look for one local to you and keep regular backups!
The requirements for OSCommerce are here http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/osCommerce/Installation_and_Upgrades/46 all that is needed is php and access to a mysql database.
right now im using http://www.justhost.com/, things seem to work fine.
I’ve used ASmallOrange in the past, give them a try if you want. Everything worked great when I used them.
Pretty much any webhost which runs *AMP (Apache, Mysql and PHP) will be able to run osCommerce.
When choosing a webhost I’d reccomend you steer clear of any host that offers any kind of “unlimited” bandwidth / diskspace. If you read the small print you’ll see that it’s not actually unlimited, so chances are they’re overselling their resources (Cramming as many people on to one server as possible).
When I’m looking for a host I always check to see if they have a public forum, and if they do have a look around to see the attitude of the community & how quickly (if at all) staff respond to support requests. As Stephane said, Webhostingtalk.com is also a good resource for finding out a host’s reputation.
Another good technique is to google “COMPANY_NAME sucks” or “COMPANY_NAME downtime”. The results can be very interesting.
I’ve personally had good experiences with Unitedhosting.co.uk & webfaction.com
Stay away from 1&1, Godaddy etc. 1&1 are notorious for their poor support and it’s very hard to cancel a contract with them.
EDIT: osCommerce won’t require cpanel – pretty much every host will provide you with some sort of interface for managing databases etc.
EDIT2: Also, from what I’ve heard the original osCommerce project is no longer maintained properly, you might be best going with the new osCommerce project