Web Hosts, A Journey

I had been wanting to move my personal web site on a server that supported both PHP and MySQL for awhile since I started working with the two technologies. After talking to a friend about it, he suggested I find a host and do month to month billing until I am satisfied with the hosting company. My first stop on the hosting journey: TowerHost. TowerHost had great prices and good plans, but horrible support. Ex. They offered IMAP mail, yet do a search in their support section for IMAP, nothing. I filled out a support form, and it took over a week to get back to me. I need customer service. Zip files, move on. Next stop: AMX Host. While their web site is a bit shady…hardly any content, the support contact is often avaialable on IM and the plans/prices seemed again, right on. Things were going ok for the first few months then the servers got hacked, a CPanel vulnerability, and do you think I got notified other than going to my web site only to see a hacked index.html page? No. … [more]