I'm moving to either verve or dreamhost. I think. And I just registered my second domain name. (Woohoo, not a virgin any more.) So one of you guys with multiple domains - is that what a subdomain is? Is there a reason why the verve 'starter' package is a bad idea for a little old lady who only plans to drive her web page on Sunday afternoons, but still wants two of them, damnit? (Or something - not a good sentence, I grant you.)

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

Answers

A subdomain (of which you have 5 available) is something like http://subdomain.booboo.com, where that URL redirects to http://www.booboo.com/subdomain.

You can do one of two things with your second domain. You can redirect it to your first domain, or you can redirect it to a folder on your first domain. For instance, I have two domains, the main one being blueletters.net. I have also registered la-di-da.com and it redirects into a folder at blueletters.net/ladida .

Through verve, there might be a nominal fee to have the domains redirect as you choose, but just drop christine an email and she'll sort it out for you if that's something you choose to do. The customer support there is outta this world.

Good luck!

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

Yeah, I just signed up with Vervehosting this morning, and they are on the ball. First I signed up gardengeekgirl.com, and they had the site ready for me to upload stuff in about ten minutes. But then I realized that I couldn't get to that domain because I registered it with an old e-mail and the registrar I used appears to be out of business anyway. A real live person at Verve responded to me almost immediately and I had gardengeek.com set up instead within five minutes. (Well, the domain's not live and I haven't put anything there, but they were on the ball.)

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

does verve offer shell access? i poked around on their site but couldn't find any reference to it. they're cheaper than dreamhost, but i need my shell fix.

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

never mind, i found it. hmm. looks like a pretty good package.

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

Other than some problems with mail routing between Verve and our DSL provider, Jeremy has been really happy with Verve for the last year or two.

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

Verve fuckin' rocks all over. I've sent tons of business their way, simply because I've been so impressed by them.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd pick them in a minute.

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

is that verve.com?

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

Verve is here. :)

-- Anonymous, August 14, 2002

I'm adding my love of Vervehosting, as well. I have three domains through them (one I host and my two.) Every time I've had any problem they've been right there to help.

They even helped me find a way to get through AOL's (when I had AOL for a couple of months) bullshit of not allowing smtp access to my mail.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

This is just to say "me too." Had a couple of bad experiences at other hosts, but Verve hasn't caused me any problem, and the tech support has been fast and great on the rare occasions I've needed it. I have three domains there, and I'm extremely satisfied.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

Jusgt adding my note to the chorus of "vervehosting is good", followed by a "dreamhost is good too, depending on what you need".

I host my smaller clients (i.e. the ones who don't need a shopping cart) on vervehosting, and the larger ones on dreamhost.com and am happy with them both.
Christine at Vervehosting is very helpful and very patient and very available for questions etc.

Something to suggest also. Gandi.net are a domain name registrar that I used for most of our domains. They charge $12EU (that works out about $12US) per year for their registrations, you get your own user name and password to a very user friendly webpanel. This webpanel allows you to use Gandi's DNS servers for free (i.,e. free parking) with the additional bonus of being able to forward your URL to anydomain.com/any_directgory/ any_file_name.html. Plus they give 5 free forwarding email addresses.

I've set up a couple of non profits this way, a church who gets free space from their Synod, but it's with a hideously long internal URL. So, they bought their own domain name for $12/year, and it forwards to their space, so their parishioners only have to remember the easy domain name. Plus their ISP lets them use their SMTP (Earthlink, v. v. helpful), so they can get and send email at that domain address also.


-- Anonymous, August 15, 2002

seconding the recommendation for gandi as a registrar. i moved my domain there after getting fed up with nsol's idiotic system. it's totally easy to use and cheap. i'm also using them to park a domain for my boyfriend--redirecting it to a page on my personal domain--and it works very nicely.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2002