Introducing DotNetAtlanta.com with Forums

Introducing DotNetAtlanta.com, now with Forums also. My vision for this site is to provide a single community site for all .NET developers in the Atlanta area. We have several excellent .NET user groups already, and this is not intended to compete with them in any way. Instead, this site aims to highlite each of these existing .NET user groups, while at the same time adding other things currently lacking. These forums are obviously one such missing element, so I've taken the Microsoft ASP.NET Forums and installed them here. I've also seen many people interested in the Who's Who of .NET Atlanta, so I'm trying to create a list of leaders, MVPs, and bloggers. There are many other possibilities still, like a list of developers and their resumes, and maybe even an aggregated blog feed, so please give me your suggestions. Also, feel free to volunteer if you have the time, desire, and ability to either give this site a better look, or to code some of these other features.

5 Comments

  • Woohoo!!! Another forums installation -- very cool ;)

  • Take a look at www.dotnetpark.com web hosting. Thay are better than webhost4life and they install ASP.NET forums, DotNetNuke etc. for free.

  • I've looked -- webhost4life offers more for a lower price, and I've been with them long enough to personally know their great support and performance. Besides, you really missed the point -- I'm a developer and I do my own thing because I can customize it -- why would I want someone to install forums for me?

  • I've heard people making such blanket statements before, but it just doesn't really make sense to rule something out without looking into it. I know several people that run some pretty large sites on webhost4life, and they've never been charged extra or pushed off. In reality, if you are really going to be pushing that much bandwidth (unlikely 99.9% of the time), then you'll run into problems that have nothing to do with bandwidth. For instance, you'll probably need multiple dedicated servers just to keep up with the number of requests that will be causing that bandwidth. In other words, incredibly large amounts of bandwidth is really a symptom and not a problem, and charging more for bandwidth isn't going to solve the real problem at all -- it will just line the pockets of a shared host.

    So if you can accept that you shouldn't rule out a shared host that offers unlimited bandwidth without checking other things, then what does matter? Certainly we all want low costs for non-critical sites, which is what shared hosting is about, but is there really a big difference between $5 and $10 a month when there are other things to consider. For me the two biggest things, once you get to that price level, are support and features.

    Support for me includes uptime and the tools to do things yourself, as well as their responsiveness when its necessary -- and I've personally found webhost4life more reliable than other far more expensive hosts. I don't want to imply they're perfect, as they are not, but neither is no one else, and you can't expect that unless you're paying hundreds or more every month. My point is that I recommend webhost4life because all of my sites run on them, and do so very well or I wouldn't recommend them -- you can see them for yourself.

    As for features, I want ASP.NET, multiple domains and sub-domains, lots of space, MS Sql Server, and more. I also expect very good email including catch-alls, multiple accounts, aliases, forwards, spam filtering, and more. I'm sure there's more I've left off, but you get the idea -- I don't need everything, but I do need a heck of a lot, and webhost4life has more than I need. By the way, I used to host with M6.net back about 5 years ago and they were also good -- but they didn't get ASP.NET up quick enough for me so I left. On the other hand, I was hosting with ASP.NET v1.1 and v2.0 on webhost4life very quickly when they were available publicly, if not the first day.

    One last disclaimer, if you sign up with webhost4life using "wilson" as your referral than I do get a small commission. I would not however keep my own sites somewhere that did not work very well for me and give me what I expect. In other words, the small commissions are a nice extra, and you can get them too, but I would give them up and move somewhere else if webhost4life wasn't working great for me. As for the host you're thinking about, they may be equally great, but do you know anyone that is using it that can attest to that?

  • ok... sound good to me as well... i will rejudge webhost4life because of your testimonial. thanks anyway.

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