I have more than 40 sites on shared hosting. They are clients who couldnt justify the cost of virtual servers themselves, because the web site is only an adjunct to their business, not the main sales outlet. I have some on CF8 and some on CF7 still.
The first experience with CF8 was that nothing changed. Immediately, I was concerned that as we migrated to CF8 that nothing would break. And nothing did. All the CF8 sites worked just as they did previously. My life would have been misery if i'd have had to rush to fix problems on multiple sites that suddenly appeared when the version changed. So I've been able to progressively do new things that utilise the new features of CF8 as development tasks come around. I've never used any of the CFPresentation features, and don't ever anticipate doing it either. But i have lots of PDF applications - and there are lots of new opportunities with the new PDF features that I'm gradually moving to use. CFIMAGE and its related functions would be my most used new feature. Disruption from other users has decreased markedly on the shared hosts I use. It's a fact of life in shared hosting that you're going to have a few mintues here or there when the site is unavailable but in the last decade, i've rarely had more than a few minutes at a time when my sites are not available. Nowadays shared hosting environments have monitors that watch for problems and a lot of the issues that arise on a daily basis can be solved with a restart of a service or at worst, a restart of the server. For most of my clients, having the site down for 3 minutes at midnight isnt an issue. Yes, you dont want the site down at all, but the real-life experience of my clients has been that the reliability of their sites isnt a problem that they fret about much. Things like spam exercise their minds far more. And in any case, it's hard to tell if slow performance of a web site is caused by other users on the server doign something dumb with coldfusion or any of the myriad of other factors that might cause it. Some people make a big issue about reliability and disruption from other users. Yes, it's true that to have your own server to yourself, and full console access etc is better, but life without your own server isnt all that bad. After all, for most things, the live server remains untouched from day to day and all your work is done off line on the development environment. All you ever do on the live server is upload your changed (and tested) files and check the changes work properly on the remote server. Which is exactly what you do when you have your own server anyway. In short, i wouldn't worry about reliability and performance issues on a CF8 shared host. If you can cost-justify your own server, great. If not, you'll get by. Your biggest issue is going to be access to things, not reliability and performance. The biggest annoyance from being on a shared host is not being able to do things like use SQLServer replication or do administrator level things on the database. But in those cases, a quick support ticket and it's fixed in 15 minutes by the support guys anyway. There is nothing i have wanted to do on any of my sites that I cant do because it's shared hosting. Some things would be easier or better, that's true. Hope this helps. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month > > > > Since my hosted web sites are only for my after-hours activities, I may be > moving to shared > > hosting again, as it's hard to justify spending more then what I am at ahp. > > > > Thoughts? > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;160198600;22374440;w Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:300016 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
