I haven’t been a fan of GoDaddy for quite a while for many reasons that I won’t go into – many of them are just personal preference and don’t have any significance technically. But, there are a few technical reasons that I don’t like their shared hosting.
The first reason is that they don’t allow you to have a private area. I’m only talking about their Linux hosting. I’m not familiar with their Window’s hosting. And I’m only talking about their shared hosting. I’ve used their dedicated servers with cpanel and, of course, I didn’t have this problem.
Most shared hosting that I’ve used gives you a folder up a level from your public folder. In other words, on cpanel, you usually have a public_html folder where your images, css, javascript, flash or any other public files can be stored. But, with cpanel, and many other hosting packages, your public_html folder is enclosed in a folder that is not available to the public. This folder can be used to keep any files that are not directly accessible to the public.
In my opinion, it’s good practice to keep your database connection code and much of your other code, for that matter, in your private area. Today, many websites are built using a Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern which allows you to store most of your code in the private area. This code is called from the main controller (usually your index.php file) as needed. This gives your code – especially your sensitive information – an extra level of security.
With GoDaddy’s shared hosting, I don’t have any area that’s not available to the public. I’ve only ran across one other hosting company that did this – Network Solutions. I don’t like them either.
Another reason I don’t like GoDaddy’s shared hosting, and the main reason for this post, is that it takes so darn long to get them to set up a MySQL database. One of my other posts showed just how easy it is to set up a MySQL database in cpanel. The database is created immediately. I don’t have to wait for anyone to approve it and go manually set up the database.
I set up a database for a client yesterday and several hours later, the database was still ‘pending setup’. In my opinion, that’s totally ridiculous for a client to have to wait that long for their database to be setup. But, since GoDaddy is so popular (I guess it’s all the beautiful women and racing in their advertising – what does that have to do with hosting??) most people think that’s the norm for shared hosting. You really don’t have to put up with that.
Yes, they are probably cheaper than most other hosting, but as with everything else, you get what you pay for. If you have a cheap website, put it on cheap hosting. If it doesn’t matter whether your site gets hacked, put it on cheap hosting. If it doesn’t matter how long it takes to get things set up and working, put it on cheap hosting.
No, I’m not just trying to plug my hosting. There are MANY GOOD hosting companies out there. Mine happens to be one of them, but there are many others. If your website is important to you, choose one of those good companies. If they don’t have a private area on your site, ask for one. If they refuse, find another company.
That’s my 2 cents. Take it for what it’s worth. 🙂
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It’s obvious that GoDaddy’s marketing tactics get under my skin. But, my personal feelings aside, I would say the same thing about any hosting company that had these problems. As a web developer, these issues can be very frustrating.