hosting websites from thailand

[thellie]

hi,
we are a non-governmental organisation in northern thailand. our current hosting company often drops our sites for extended periods. as a lot of our volunteers come from north america and europe, i am interested in hosting our sites in the west.

can someone give me any pros and cons to this idea?

also, i notice that thai language is not supported - is there an opportunity to offset fees if we can provide a translation service?

thanks

[Pazeh]

I can't see any cons to this idea! specially with a company like HG.

What do you mean by thai language is not supported? where you want that support? when communicating with HG?

If its on your site, Thai or any other language is supported, you need to know how to code the site (encoding) to show the characters. (pretty easy thing to do).

If it while communicating with HG, I see your English is very very good so you won't have any problem with HG.

[thellie]

haha, i hope my english is good - i come from the uk

i've been out in thailand for well over 3 yrs now, and worked with the foundation for nearly all that period.

i've had a subsequent meeting with our IT guys and they are happy for me to push ahead with this, at least in part...

i have to check a couple of things first:

1. because we're in thailand, are there any limitations that wouldn't apply to us-based resellers?
2. if we get problems, do hostgator maintain the servers? they mean viruses, malware, spam, etc... i think this is an obvious one, but i have to ask for the board to be satisfied.
3. related to the first point - are there any upload/dowload limits associated with being in thailand?

if we get satisfactory answers, then i have approval to buy a plan and move the first website over. if things go well, then the board is considering moving every site.

they haven't done this before due to language/communication worries, but are now confident that i will be around for quite a while (am now married and we had our first child recently), so are prepared to give it a go.

the thai language thing - i think i read it wrong... i was wondering whether the hostgator site wanted a thai translation - as i said we're a thai NGO, so money is not growing on trees, is very carefully spent, and every penny (thai baht) saved where possible.

[mrcycling]

I can't comment on the legalities or restrictions that might be in place for a Thailand based NGO (though I can't imagine there would be any).

But in terms of support and access from Thailand, there are no issues. I spend about 8 months of the year based in Chiang Mai and have had no problems accessing tech support through their chat system, nor accessing the server or email systems. I actually get quicker chat access, as when I am awake in Thailand, the bulk of HG customers (in the USA) are sleeping, so I rarely have to wait for a chat agent.

[thellie]

thanks for that. yep, i can't see why there should be any restrictions either, but i think they were worried that there could be limits on the amount up/downloaded per month.

well, not worried, just that they have never used a hoster outside thailand, and i guess are asking all the unknowns...

[Pazeh]

The upload download thing depends a lot on the infrastructure of Thailand's connection n how the "old" host was connected to it.

I mean if you have very high speed connection to your ISP & your ISP was your host too, it is highly possible that your upload/download speed w HG will be less than what it was.

You can use this http://support.hostgator.com/article...n-to-hostgator to test your connection to hg.

I do believe that HG did had a page where they listed some of the sites hosted by them, I can't find that one now.

[striddy]

Originally Posted by Pazeh

I do believe that HG did had a page where they listed some of the sites hosted by them, I can't find that one now.

Is this the link you meant Pazeh?

http://support.hostgator.com/article...sites-you-host

[thellie]

thanks for that

do hostgator take care of all maintenance, anti-virus, anti-spamming etc?

we have our own server based in bangkok (a day away from us), and the hosting company is very lax about even telling us if there are any issues, so it becomes very expensive travelling down there to do checks, repairs etc...

[mrcycling]

In terms of uploads, I often add large image galleries to our websites while I am Thailand and have never run into any issues over volume of data being uploaded.

All packages do have a bandwidth limit that is included in their cost, you would have to see what your server currently uses to determine if the HG packages fit that need.

From your last post it sounds like you are using co-location services in Thailand, which often have very basic service offerings (ie they keep the power turned on, you run the server you own). As far as I know all HG packages come with things like SpamAssassin for email filtering and I believe their dedi's are fully managed, but a sales person could answer that question more completely (we use their reseller package).

[thellie]

thanks for that. i'm in chiang rai, by the way...

i'm looking at the reseller pack too - start with aluminium as a test, and if we're happy move up the scale and drop the rest of our sites in, and host other ngo sites too.

i'll do some more research in the morning about fully managed machines etc... i have a family demanding attention now