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Ask HN: Launching my first major site solo. Need advice.

1 points by curt ↗ HN
For the last couple months I've been building a site that has huge viral growth potential. Since I don't have any experience managing back-end systems (normally have assistance) I need to find a hosting solution that's really easy to manage and can scale quickly. I've been researching cloud hosting and looking at a few hosting companies. Since I'm bootstrapping the startup currently, I'm budget conscious. Any recommendations on companies or hosting methods? The site is entirely php, uses mysql, and I'm looking to add Ajax soon.

Additionally, can anyone recommend a good open source shopping cart? Looking mainly just for the back-end processing, I already created all the pages. Since I'll be selling physical products it needs to handle and process payment, address, and shipping information.

4 comments

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bpotter
Hi Curt,

I see two considerations for hosting: budget and technical ability. For example, using Media Temple's DV service is going to be inexpensive ($50/mo to start out), scalable, and simple to setup. Compare that to RackSpace Cloud Servers (http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/cloud_hosting_products/server...), which is even less expensive up front ($12 a month or so), but from what I understand requires a bit more technical ability to setup/configure the server (please correct me if I'm wrong folks, as I haven't used Cloud Servers yet, just talked w/ people that have). Either option will easily scale.

There are many other options, but don't want to provide "advice" when I haven't used solutions like http://www.voxel.net/ or others.

Other considerations - is this going to be a global audience? If so, look into using a CDN. You could use MT's CDN (http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/procdn/) if you use the DV service since it is currently only available for MT customers.

I don't have much experience with ecommerce platforms, but your needs seem pretty basic and should be covered by any opensource option out there. Can you think of anything specific that you'll need in the longterm spec - multiple pricing options for consumers or wholesalers, discount codes, etc.?

Good luck with your startup!

curt
Thanks for the answer, on the shopping cart I do have multiple prices, discount codes, and credits. Right now I actually was handling this myself, but if the cart can handle that, all the better.

Really just looking to learn from people with experience using them, normally one or two carts rise above the rest.

bpotter
Well hopefully someone with more experience in the shopping cart area can respond with some good advice for you (because I definitely don't have the background to comment). Good luck with your startup! ~Bob
us
I'm a huge fan of Amazon EC2. They charge base on what you use and most likely where you're at now, you can fit on a small server. The cost will vary depending on usage but I presume for where you're at, it should be under $100/month although that might be more than what you're willing to pay.

You can also go with some VPS for now until you're ready to jump to AWS