Vidahost, Magento and VPS

[PhillyDee]

Hello all, going to pick your collective brains a bit!

I currently have a 2 websites on the same advanced package (including SSL for each domain) with Vidahost. These use ZenCart and Opencart.

I have just created a new domain, with Magento CE, and I have found it struggles. The basic SQL is 20Mb with 10 test items (compared with 2 and 4 for the others with hundreds of products).

Now, I have been in contact with Vidahost, and I am tempted to move up to their VPS (business + account)

Currently paying:
£194 hosting per year (plus an extra SSL once site is running +£39)

The new site will have thousands of products, Currently the basic stuff I want on this is around 548 products (with 16 varieties on each product means 8768 products required - up to now!), now on a magento install, will this produce problems?

I can either split the new site off onto its own hosting which means a total cost of £348 including 3 SSL certs, or I can move to a VPS which is £499 per year. This would run all 3 websites, and I do eventually want to move the other 2 websites to magento.

Its a big step, but will it give a massive boost in performance, or is it just required for any large magento site?

Would I need to do anything else apart from what I do with hosting now via cpanel? I have managed a dedi box for games servers before, but that's just basic stuff.

 

[PhillyDee]

The 2 exisiting ones do, and the third is one I have hopes pinned on making even more.

Is this something you do as a business, spare time etc? I am pretty clueless when it comes to server side stuff (and not afraid to admit it) and cannot afford to pay a company the several thousands of pounds they want to build a polished site with all this taken care of. All the cheaper ones want to use their own software, where I require Magento CE as it interfaces perfectly with my inventory/order management software (which runs over ebay, amazon, zen, open etc) and syncs everything together.

DSO? APC? Really, I have no idea (I guess DSO Dedicated Server Oranges? )!

 

[PhillyDee]

Magento is a resource hog - what drove the move to it ?

I use order management software that interfaces with it much easier and a lot more streamlined than other solutions. I currently use ZenCart and opencart, and it needs far far too much customisation out of the box. To be honest, I do not like opencart, and zencart is also pretty complex, to the point I hhave made so many modifications to it over the years that I have lost control of the code itself. I may eventually move both of these to Magento depending on how this one works out.

You need to email Seb (rather than open a ticket) and ask him to move you to a server like Jamaica as it's a fast SQL box ... Also, Magento off the shelf is poorly optomized, you can speed it up a fair bit yourself from the admin panel.

The biggest Magento install I host at the moment has 1215 products and it's fairly speedy - trust me if you want the details

Cheers!

I went with the VDS offering on the Business+ hosting. It was not going to be much more than buying extra SSL certs to go with a cheaper VDS etc.

I am getting migrated soon, and it has to be said, Vidahost are fantastic helps, and great customer service.