Finding a home for List Central

Finding a home for List Central was a difficult task. At the very beginning I hosted the development version of List Central on a ratty old machine in my apartment. I had trouble with the machine crashing due to cats running over the cables.

Next I had a cheap “dedicated server” from ServerPronto. I had this server for years. It was supposed to be located in Florida, but it was actually located in Panama. I had very different experiences with this server than my friend who had recommended ServerPronto. He got a server that was actually located in Florida. My Panamanian server was constantly crashing. I would have to contact customer service for a reboot and then wait. They would blame the trouble on their service provider. It grew to be quite frustrating.

As List Central got closer to being ready for release it became quite clear I would need a better hosting solution. After much research and review reading I decided to go with Linode, and boy, am I ever glad that I did! I absolutely love Linode!

List Central is built with mod_perl, thus I need full root, ssh access to my server to set it up properly, and have the ability to restart the apache server when ever I make changes to the code. My VPS (virtual private server) is a piece of a BIG server that Linode sections off and leases to me. Everything about it looks and acts like a dedicated server. Linode’s interface for managing your VPS’s is fabulous, letting you reboot your VPS from a web interface yourself. No more waiting for customer service for me! In addition they give you a few graphs to tell you about the recent load on your server. But the best part is the price! I now have 2 VPS’s from Linode, one for List Central production, and the other for development, with a few Wordpress blog on each as well, and I am paying the same that my “cheap dedicated” server cost me! Love it!

As List Central grows, my VPS can easily grow with it. For all these reasons, and more, I am likely to be a very long-term customer of Linode!