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User: fauxcrye

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  1. NPO Hosting on Ask Slashdot: What Should a Non-Profit Look For In a Web Host? · · Score: 1

    I work in NPO field exclusively and have dealt with a lot of hosting situations for different sizes of organizations. Since you are being tasked with finding a host and based on your description I am betting that the site isn't maintained internally but was outsourced and the org just adds content now. I would recommend you find out what CMS you are running. If you aren't running a CMS I would recommend you migrate your site to one of the major players that is well supported by its community and consultants. You will have vast pool of knowledge to pull from when things go wrong. Once you know what you are running you can then select a host who specializes in hosting that particular CMS. I personally use Drupal or WordPress (large sites vs small sites) for our sites. I went the BlackMesh route for hosting since I am a one man team and they provide exceptional level of technical support and troubleshooting if you stick to their basic guidelines. For example they will tune and troublehshoot MySQL but not MariaDB. I want to be able to take a vacation - and they will do the first basic rounds of troubleshooting with my IT Manager while I am gone. They can basically help recover the site from normal operation failures. But, I was fortunate that we had a budget for me to buy into their level of support. However, even a service like that isn't going to help you tune your code and solve complex issues in your site. But, there are several good medium tier VPS and hosted solutions that will run $20-$150 that will serve your purposes quite well. None of this will be helpful to you until you have looked closely at what you will be hosting and know the specifications needed to host that site for normal operation and projected stressful traffic patterns. There are some good tricks you can do with caching software and smart practices to take with mass emails that will reduce the strain on your site as well. I would step back and identify your problems and what the current solution you have in place is exactly. I would also recommend you find a consultant who has experience in evaluating website platforms. They will be very helpful in sorting this out for you. This is not a consumer level decision you are making. But, one that will require an amount of technical expertise and knowledge of platforms. From that you can figure out how to fix the problem with a solution that also has room for growth moving forward.