I remember, when looking for an alternative company to host The Red Balloon Craft Junction, that I was presented with a myriad of hosting options from different companies, both local and abroad.

My thoughts were divided: host with a local South African service provider and support local business, or choose a company abroad that offered more for less.

Red Balloon's first loyalty always lies with local service providers, but I did a lot of research and for various reasons (which I'd be glad to share with you via email) in this instance we felt that the more appropriate hosting provider was Lunarpages, a large provider in the United States.

Below is a table of roughly what the hosting plan that we use consists of. I initially found it really intimidating to read and try to understand all the jargon, so I've tried to explain each point in as much non-computer-speak as possible. So, unless you're an uber-geek ;), then perhaps this will help you!

Just a disclaimer: The information below may be out of date by the time you read this page, so I would encourage you to visit Lunarpages to take a look for yourself. This said, however out of date it may be it should still give you a reasonable indication of what is provided for $6.95 per month. Click here if you would like to visit Lunarpages to see for yourself.

Yes, you caught us out, it is true that we earn referral fees from Lunarpages if you click on our link and sign up for one of their hosting plans. But no, I'm not just saying that they're good hosting providers - they really have been the best of the four we've had so far. That said, again, if you intend to sign up please do follow our link.

If you would like more information, you are welcome to contact me at paul+hosting@redballoon.co.za. If you would like to read more or sign up, click here:

Important Things
Cost per month	$6.95 per month	Two-year contract, it's between $1 and $3 more expensive for shorter contracts.
Set Up	Free for 1 and 2 year contracts.	Once-off $30 for short contracts.
$700 Website-building Software FREE!	Free with 1 and 2 year contracts.	I downloaded the software. Let me know if you would like to know what was included.
Free Domain Name	Free only with 1 and 2 year contracts.	You can register your own domain name, e.g. www.mycraftsarecool.com at no charge!
Storage	350GB	For you non-computer folk, this really is a LOT of disk space. You would be able to have thousands of photographs on your website. 350GB is most likely several times larger than your computer's hard disk. Certainly larger than my 40GB one!
Bandwidth per Month	3500GB/Month	"Bandwidth" roughly translates to the amount of traffic allowed to and from your website. To use a metaphor, adding more bandwidth would be like adding another lane onto the N1 in and out of Cape Town - something we could really do with ;). 3500GB/month is much like having a superhighway into the city. You will literally be able to have hundreds of thousands of people visit your web site each month with this amount of bandwidth.
Add-On Domains	10 Free	Lunarpages allows you to use your account to host up to 10 more websites. This means that you can have www.mycraftsarecool.com, www.myfamilypictures.com, www.someothersite.co.za, etc. hosted for $6.95 per month! This is a massive saving if you are running more than one website. That said, perhaps I should register www.gilowey.com... then my email address could be paul@gilowey.com - or would that be too kitsch?
Parked Domains	Unlimited	If you take a look you will see that www.craftjunction.co.za will redirect you to www.redballoon.co.za. This is what is meant by "parked domains". We have reserved the domain www.craftjunction.co.za so that nobody else can use it. We'd feel cheated if somebody did!
Sub Domains	Unlimited	https://gazette.redballoon.co.za is an example of a Sub Domain of our main site, https://www.redballoon.co.za. We don't currently, but we could use this domain to store old versions of the Craft Gazette.
MySQL Databases	Unlimited number of databases. Yip, they really do mean unlimited.	Databases are used to store information. Most large web sites use database, as do many small ones. See this article to learn more about database.
PostgreSQL Databases
FTP Accounts	Unlimited	FTP is a way of uploading files (photos, web pages, etc.) to your website. You are allowed to create FTP usernames and passwords for any number of people. You can have an FTP account, as can your son, grandmother and cat - if he's clever enough :).
Online Statistics	Included	Lunarpages keeps track of who visits your website. They can even tell you how many visitors you've had from each country and city! It's really fun to see who's visiting your site!
Customisable Error Pages	Included	Sometimes, if you or your webmaster makes a mistake - like a typo, users may click on a link to a web page on your site that does not exist. They would typically get a nasty error message. We've been able to customise our error pages on Red Balloon. To see what I mean, try going to this page that does not exist: https://www.redballoon.co.za/noPageHere.html. Cool hey?
Support via Email	Free and always available, 24x7x365.	I've asked questions several times and always been replied to within a pretty reasonable time. The response has always been courteous and helpful.
Support via Telephone	Toll-free in the United States	I haven't needed to call them yet, so I can't comment.
30-day money back guarantee		We haven't needed to try this out :)
Programming Languages and Nice-to-haves
PHP	Included	PHP is a Web programming language; incidentally the language used to create this web site! If your kids are interested in writing web sites then PHP is a good way for them to get started. It's technical, but if you feel inspired then you can take a look at this article for some more information.
CGI-BIN	Included	CGI is an older method for running programs on the web server. There are still many useful free CGI scripts available today and this is why Lunarpages offers support for CGI.
Ruby on Rails	Included	Nope, unfortunately in this context Ruby is a programming language and not a free jewel. :(
PERL	Included	You guessed it, PERL is another programming language... alas, one that I don't know too much about.
PYTHON	Included	Yes, yet another programming language. What makes this one special for us South Africans it that it's the language that Mark Shuttleworth used to make his billions. Hooray for Mark!
SSI - Server Side Includes	Incuded	SSI is a way to have all (or some of) your web pages use the same HTML code, say, the same banner. This gives you the ability to change say, your banner in one place and have all of your web pages change automatically to use the new banner HTML. This can save a lot of time and trouble - trust me.
JSP/JAVA	Optional at 2$ extra per month	You guessed it, another programming language. The Resin servlet container, a popular alternative to Apache Tomcat, is supplied along with Java 1.5.0.
ASP	Optional at 1$ extra per month	ChilliSoft ASP is the last on the list of programming languages supported. It's a popular alternative to Microsoft's ASP language and is similar to PHP (mentioned above).
Microsoft® FrontPage® Extensions	Included	This a fairly technical subject, so if you don't currently know about it then the chances are good that you won't need it. If however you would like to read more, take a look at this article.
Dreamweaver Compatible	Included	Dreamweaver is an HTML editor that many people use to "make" websites.
Email
POP, SMTP and IMAP	Included	These are various email protocols. Outlook, for example, downloads your email from a POP server and sends email using an SMTP server. IMAP is similar to, but more advanced than POP.
Email Accounts	Unlimited	You can have as many email accounts as you like, one for each family member or employee.
Email Forwarding	Unlimited	This is a handy feature, albeit one that I haven't had the need to use. Email Forwarding would allow me to redirect all of my email destined for paul@redballoon.co.za to my other account, paul@yahoo.com. This way, I would only need to check one email account for all my mail.
Auto-Responders	Unlimited	This feature is often used as an "Out of office" notifier. Auto-Responders are like little helpers. You set up an email telling people that you are "Out of office" and should they try to email you, your little helper, the Auto-Responder will let them know that you're not ignoring them, but that you're just not there. You don't even have to have your computer on for this to work. It's awesome!
Catch-All Email	Included	A catch-all email account will catch mail sent to any other name for which you don't have an email account set up. For example bloober.scoober@redballoon.co.za and wally.woozle@redballoon.co.za aren't real email addresses, but if you send email to those addresses, our catch-all account will forward the message to us. This is handy for the case when someone misspells your name in your email address, for example, pauk@redballoon.co.za instead of paul@redballoon.co.za.
Web Mail	Included	Web Mail allows you to read your email when you're not at your own computer. You would, for example, be able to read your email at an internet cafe in Springbok or Singapore.
Spam Protection	Included	Lunarpages filters out a great deal of spam that is sent to Red Balloon. Man, do we appreciate them for that!
Mailing List	1 Free List	This allows you to send email to a large group of people. We use a mailing list to send the Craft Gazette to you!
Lunarpages' Network and Servers
99.9% Uptime		I don't think we've ever had this website "go down" since we've been with Lunarpages
2000 Megabit Connectivity		This is a really fast network. Lunarpages uses fibre-optics to provide a really highspeed connection between their servers and the internet backbone.
Tape Backup		The entire web server, your site included, will be backed up each day to tape. If for some reason the server were to crash, the backup version of the server could be restored reasonably quickly. This a similar backup technology used by most large corporates in South Africa.
Power Generator		If there were to be a power-outage in the US, the Lunarpages diesel generators would be activated immediately to supply electricity to the servers, keeping your site on the web.
Ddos Protection		Ddos is the nasty side of the internet. Bad people employ ddos techniques to prevent people from accessing web sites of their choice, typically to hold the owners to ransom. Online gambling sites have in the past been the targets of ddos attacks, where their big-money websites have been forcibly kept off the internet until they pay some kind of ransom.
Round-the-clock Monitoring		All of Lunarpages' web servers are monitored all the time for any kind of system failure.