Web-Host

Web

The author originally used bluehost.com first, then added arvixe.com for GNU/Linux-based web host services. When the BlueHost account came up for renewal, he transferred the bulgrien.net domain to Arvixe as they seemed to have the same offerings, but at half the price. When the rates doubled during the 2018 billing period, the Arvixe account was set to disable auto-renewal, a VirMach account was opened with a pretty sweet recurring Black Friday discount, and bulgrien.net and bestiecookie.com domains transferred to the new host.

Support from Arvixe historically was good, and responsive, but, in later years, no support was needed so it is hard to say when the change came about. At the time the Arvixe account was closed, support options were terrible. Though the account was set not to renew, and all domains had transferred out of the account, Arvixe attempted to charge the credit card on file for two more years of service anyway! There was no way found to delete billing information from the account! Many attempts to reach them occurred, but were foiled by the broken interface for billing/account tickets, and it was impossible to live chat any more. Multiple attempts to reach support were made over a month or more period with no success, so this author no longer recommends Arvixe!

A very inexpensive VirMach VPS was set up Thanksgiving, 2017 by way of an exceptional black friday deal. Since the VPS experience was positive, it appeared that VirMach would suitably host bulgrien.net, so, Thanksgiving, 2018 black friday deals were sought, and both bulgrien.net and bestiecookie.com were transferred. Two hosting accounts were obtained at less than half the cost of the one Arvixe account by way of black friday recurring discount deals. For that matter, adding the annual VPS renewal fee still leaves annual outlay less than than one hosting account at Arvixe!

Why (not to) Choose Arvixe or BlueHost?

• Offer both Postgresql and MySQL; This was nice because it let the author learn about MySQL even though all his experience was with Postgresql.
• Shell account. It was even possible to install Bazaar for version control, though it was a bit tricky to do so. (On the down side, they required a copy of a driver's license to set it up!)
• More reasons later...

  Nevermind, don't use either. They are both more expensive than necessary.

Why Choose Virmach?

• They have great awesome Black Friday deals with "recurring" low-cost services.
• Softaculous was available (used on Arvixe), so transition of site photo gallery and wiki instances were a piece of cake.
• On the down side, they didn't offer both PostgreSQL and MySQL, but, after all these years, having never actually fired up PostgresQL on the site, and since the author's current employer uses MySQL/MariaDB, this was deemed inconsequential.
• Shell account available without photo ID.

Software tools and applications

• Installing Bazaar on a web host system (Wikipedia:Bazaar_Software)

VPS

• virmach