If you don’t understand the title I am referring to servers! A VPS is a virtually partitioned server or as Amy mentioned virtual private server, a dedicated server means its dedicated just to you.

A Dedicated server is great and its fun to have all that space and no if anything breaks on there it was your site only. There are a lot of pros and cons about having both and as you know I try to keep it fair and balanced and give you unbiased information, but I am going to give you the run down of my decision making.

I am opening up a free wordpress blog hosting site in expansion of Pajama Mommy now I am not made of money unlike other bloggers making 14,000 a month I envy you :P but I am not in the position to afford a managed or even unmanaged server.

Managed server means you pay extra to have the people (or outside company) keep an eye on your server since you can’t be around every waking minute. Unmanaged means you are going to go this road alone and I don’t recommend it unless you truly know what you are doing.

Having a VPS means you’re on a managed server generally, if you get a vps and its unmanaged it really isn’t worth it in my opinion but its up to you, if you’re new to this you definitely want managed I always want managed or hire someone to manage since I can’t be there all the time. and its split up between 2-25 different people on that server. It can be good or it can be bad. A lot of new web hosting companies happen to start with VPS’s, I started with one because I can’t afford 300+ a month for a decent server. So I went to ModVPS.com on the recommendation of a friend who owns 2 VPS servers through them. it is $44.50 a month for 30GB of space 300GB of bandwidth and 4 IP’s with cpanel fantastico etc. Which isn’t standard if you have a server.

Unfortunately if you have a server you have to pay extra monthly for your choice of control panel if you choose to have fantastico etc. So there was a nice little perk. The only thing that kinda scares me about the place is they have 20-25 VPS per server. To me its a little over sold, but then again I don’t know the size of their server. I would have stopped at 15. (You always need extra bandwidth and space ALWAYS.)

When you have a server or even a VPS you have to have a main domain with it, I would recommend unless you are hosting your own website on their or a web hosting company you choose a separate domain for which you can also purchase the .net and .org for, when you decide to have multiple servers. Some hosting companies choose NAME-#.com so they can identify which server, via number however you will need a name for your server.

I chose “Ruby”. I couldn’t think of anything else! I will have 2 DNS (domain name servers) assigned to this which I will have to set up the DNS on my end as well via my domain registration company (NameNova.com of course only $7.17 for my .com!)

All of these are standard through any server company. If you can’t afford a server but want to run programs that you need root access for a VPS is the way to go. I get a 30 day money back garauntee with ModVPS. So I feel I am in the clear. However you just have to do your research on the company.

I emailed them a dozen times with all sorts of questions such as, how many people are put on 1 server? Are there any restricted programs I can’t run? I want to run this program am I allowed? How is your tech support is there an emergency number? How is the upgrading process? Etc. These are important things you need to know. I chose to email each question one by one, to see how the staff responds to annoyance. I know I am evil but the point is, I want to see how well they respond to it. I’ve dealt with other hosting companies where their support was and still are idiots. But they were short and sweet with their responses. Not blooming with personality however its not that important as long as they actually answered the question in a timely manner.