Kevin January 13, 2008 at 2:08 a.m.

Thanks but I'll stick with WebFaction: they rock!

Aladino January 13, 2008 at 3:47 a.m.

"the only prerequisite is that you have a Grid-Service account"

Good to see that the folks at Media Temple are finally experimenting with Django but I can't open a paid Grid-Service account just to give them beta feedback.

When I pay, I want a full supported and stable environment for my django apps. In fact I left Dreamhost just for this reason and now I have all my django apps on WebFaction.

In my opinion, Media Temple should offer a discounted price or even a temporary free account to a limited number of serious django beta testers.

Ramdas January 13, 2008 at 9:46 a.m.

I agree with Aladino. Let them provide a month of free account.

If the product is good, I can invest into an account.

Vance Dubberly January 13, 2008 at 9:35 p.m.

If it's implemented as badly as their Rails hosting is I'd warn people to stay far far away.

kevin January 14, 2008 at 4:07 a.m.

just applied for serveral times, and waiting and waiting for their service to launch, but only got disponit from them.
not sure how good their host is, but it is sure that it's difficlut to have a test experience before buying.

Jimmy Sage January 14, 2008 at 7:50 a.m.

Beta feedback, experiments?!? Is it so difficult for a smart company such as MT to offer a decent shared hosting service with Django and Rails? I think the folks at MediaTemple should drop their troubled Grid-Service plan and buy WebFaction as their shared hosting division.

Bruce January 14, 2008 at 1:13 p.m.

"I think the folks at MediaTemple should drop their troubled Grid-Service plan and buy WebFaction as their shared hosting division": Not if that means WebFaction's servers start crashing like MediaTemple's... So much for all their "many servers, all redundant, really fast, really solid, etc." crap!

jay January 14, 2008 at 2:56 p.m.

how is slicehost? anyone?

Hugh Bien January 14, 2008 at 5:56 p.m.

@jay, slicehost rules (webfaction rocks)

matt January 14, 2008 at 10:23 p.m.

@jay, slicehost is fantastic. webfaction looks interesting, though, for smaller things.

Ian Smith January 14, 2008 at 10:44 p.m.

Currently in the beta, and I'm lovin' my (mt) Django. As far as the grid goes, I've had very few problems. When problems do arise they're quick on their feet (and extremely responsive, especially on the phone). I don't feel like playing defense so let me say this: Django on Media Temple is going to be fantastic. Once it's out of beta, I'm sure y'all are gonna love it once you try it.

Dave Rubert January 15, 2008 at 2:31 a.m.

I'm in the beta for one month. For the moment, the experience has been fantastic. They provide anything I needed: ssh, subversion, SVN version of django, chosing between PostgreSQL and MySQL, easy management tools... I haven't any complaints.

Bruce January 15, 2008 at 2:58 a.m.

matt: I run a relatively busy (1M hits/day) Django site with WebFaction and it runs smoothly so I wouldn't say they're limited to small sites. From what I see they also have dedicated servers (although I don't have one with them so I can't comment on that). For me having to configure and maintain my own VPS would be a waste of time I don't have. By going with someone like WebFaction it's all done for me and I can concentrate on actual development.

Charles January 15, 2008 at 3:01 a.m.

MT looks interesting and very professional... However I will wait the end of the beta to sign up.

Tom Watson January 15, 2008 at 4:47 p.m.

I've been using the beta for a while now, and while there are a few things that have bugged me, overall I've been quite pleased. I'm hoping they can fix a few of the minor issues. If so, I'd definitely recommend them as a solid option.

Patrick January 16, 2008 at 8:28 a.m.

I have been on GS from mediatemple for a little over a year, and I have nothing to complain about.Vance, I don't know what you're referring to,but I guess it would be good to know what problems you ran into.Their customer care is top-notch and friendly. Sure had some bugs, but it was addressed efficiently. The set-up is easy and I have 3 rails websites running on one container with zero problems outside of staying atop of rails evolution. Now that they're about to offer a django hosting, I am even more happy, because I withheld from trying Django because of hosting limitations on shared hosting. Now, I haven't tried launching a django app with anybody else, but their scheme is similar to Rails,with a ssh , except a lot faster to set up . I am new to Django, so I probably will run into bugs as I go further, but, so far so good.

Bruce January 16, 2008 at 8:48 a.m.

Patrick: How can you say MT hasn't had any problem on their GS when their blog is full of posts reporting problems: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/... , http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/... , http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/...

At some point it was getting so bad that they made a *formal apology* on their blog and *refunded 2 months to all customers*: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/...

MT, you can keep your refunds, I just want a service that stays up!

Edd Slipszenko January 16, 2008 at 2:49 p.m.

@Aladino
I bet your glad you left dreamhost now!

Patrick January 16, 2008 at 4:39 p.m.

Bruce. I did not say there was no problems on MT GridServer, but this was not related to the topic , ie container technology for ROR apps or in this case Django. This is what this beta testing is about.

Jay January 17, 2008 at 9:59 a.m.

Hello everyone, former MT, Rimuhosting and (very) soon-to-be former DH customer here. I've been looking at various packages for hosting Django and I think I've settled on one. Can anyone tell me what is minimium application memory needed to run a decent Django app?

TIA, Jay

Eric January 17, 2008 at 2:50 p.m.

Is the 256slice on slicehost enough to run a decent django install?

Aladino January 17, 2008 at 3:25 p.m.

"Can anyone tell me what is minimium application memory needed to run a decent Django app?"

"Is the 256slice on slicehost enough to run a decent django install?"

I have a django app on WebFaction Shared 1 with 60MB of application memory. Please note that the 60 MB offered by WebFaction "is the actual memory available to your long-running processes (for instance, your Rails or Django processes). Unlike in a VPS, the memory used by the operating system, the main apache server and the database servers doesn't count towards your memory usage"

Jay January 17, 2008 at 3:34 p.m.

I read that part afterwards. Signed up for the 140MB option this morning and I'm already up and running. I'll also be able to consolidate my subversion account as well.

Once I get millions and millions of users, like a former boss used to say, I can step up to dedicated hosting, but for now this will suffice.

Poldus January 18, 2008 at 4:48 a.m.

Regarding the shared hosting/VPS dilemma, many developers hate VPSes because they don't want to waste their precious time configuring and mantain their own (virtual) server. However Rails developers can set up a production server in a few minutes with deprec, which install the complete Rails stack with a small set of commands. I can confirm that it works great on slicehost with Ubuntu Linux. In my opinion, the Django community should develop a similar tool...
http://www.deprec.org/

Ignazio January 21, 2008 at 3:48 a.m.

deprec for django would be a wonderful tool...

In my opinion VPSes easily configured with such tools as deprec or throught proprietary control panels are the best hosting solution for web developers using Django or Rails.

At the moment VPSes are too expensive comparing to shared hosting but if, as an example, slicehost would sell the 256 MB slice at just $15 they will attract many django developers currently using WebFaction.

Markus B. January 21, 2008 at 7:24 a.m.

The whole VPS/shared hosting debate is a little outdated.

Borders are getting blurred. Nowdays any smart guy, provided with a good tutorial, can set up his dream server in a few hours using a cheap service such as slicehost. And he gets all the freedom he needs.

If you're able to set up a development environment on your computer, you're probably able to set up a similar production environment on a remote Ubuntu server.

The only thing that really keep many people with shared hosting is price. At $20 the entry level VPS offer is too expensive for many developers compared with good shared hosts whose entry level plans are at $7.5.

In my view, MT's Grid-Service is a too rigid solution. Web hosts should be more agile to support any new web framework without any beta phase.

Dreamhost's and MT's troubles with new web frameworks are not a coincidence. Traditional web hosts are a thing of the past. We need a new breed of hosts: VPSes for non-geeks. You get a slice and a control panel where you can deploy a rails or a django stack in a few simple steps. Of course if you need max freedom you can use the commnad line.

I think that WebFaction and SliceHost are converging towards this model from two opposite starting points.

Moreover the RAM available is now the single most important factor in choosing a web host plan while disk space and bandwidth are so high that they are no longer a concern.

Tom B. February 7, 2008 at 7:49 p.m.

I've had hosting accounts on OpenHosting, Media Temple, Rackspace and Slicehost and I'm in the process of consolidating everything on Slicehost. Slicehost's price/performance is unbeatable and their service rocks.

Regarding Media Temple, I would be a bit weary of their Django grid service if it is anything like their Ruby on Rails grid. They "contain" all of the various services (servers, db's, etc) that significantly restricts what you can do. You would be much better off getting a VPS on Slicehost or some other provider versus getting Django through MT.

cbmeeks February 11, 2008 at 8:43 a.m.

My vote goes for Slicehost. They freakin' rock.

I was paying $80/mo for a dedicated machine at Cari. It was pretty good but I had a few problems because their network constantly is a target for DoS attacks.

So I almost cried with joy when I found that Slicehost only charged $20/mo for VPS (using Xen). Plus, Slicehost keeps the number of slices per machine pretty small.

sdotsen February 25, 2008 at 11:59 a.m.

@Markus B -

"The only thing that really keep many people with shared hosting is price. At $20 the entry level VPS offer is too expensive for many developers compared with good shared hosts whose entry level plans are at $7.5."

I understand what you're saying about the price but for developers who do hardcore coding, a VPS is much better than a shared host. Even if it's $7/month, you can't expect the same quality in terms of server load and features on a shared host like you would on a VPS. I have a few friends who are on dreamhost and godaddy because they were being cheap but I converted them to VPSes. They are so much happier now and they're willing to pay more for better performance and support.

ro60 March 10, 2008 at 6:11 p.m.

I agree, Slicehost is awesome. I have both a MT gs account and a 256 slice from Slicehost and there is really no comparison. To be fair MT will address your probs quickly and even comp you a month if there is an issue but for me it really comes down to A speed (mt MT gs account is god awful slow) and B flexibility. MT severely limits what you can do with your account. Slicehost you have full root control over your slice so you can install and configure whatever you want. The only thing about Slicehost is the slices come as a blank slate so if your not ready to get your hands dirty setting up your server it's prob not for you.