website hosting recommendations?

[frankief]

My current website host is closing his business and I have 4 weeks notice to transfer my business site somewhere else. Any recommendations of companies who will also do any technical stuff required? Site is very simple 5 pages and doesn't get much traffic, but is necessary for advertisement.

[Ice.Maiden]

What are you advertising?

[fo3nix]

If it's just a simple site, then I had success with web mania a few years back:

http://web-mania.com/

If you demand more reliable systems, or have much greater need (though it doesn't sound like it), then I can recommend my current hosts, Joyent:

http://www.joyent.com

Web Mania probably suffices though.

[Gromit]

I use

http://www.zen.co.uk/

http://www.zen.co.uk/about/awards.aspx

[frankief]

Thanks all, fo3nix - web-mania looks about what I need . Is the email address OK or usual spam bucket job?

[fo3nix]

I've never got spam from them, just the odd offer if they bring out some new service.

They're good, just not that expert. I had some issues with their servers not being set up properly, but I was doing things you probably aren't going to be doing with it. (Their PHP root was not the same as ther web root or something... probably fixed now.)

[Rollo]

Does your ISP not give you any free webspace?

[frankief]

In response to the last few posts:
re: a FREE hosting package - sounds too good to be true, are adverts included somewhere?
Does your ISP not give you any free webspace? - don't know, I am with orange (was wanadoo) will have to investigate - after all I just want a space to park my site, just not confident that I could do technical stuff to transfer.
it is far easier to have the domain name and hosting with the same company - I renewed my domain in June, I suppose it stays with the dormant company? Or will I have to pay again??

[frankief]

Thanks neildownx, i've checked with nominet and the site is registered to me until 2009.
So I suppose I could set up a free account with heart (nothing is for free - where do they make their money?) and ask for my old host to transfer the site over , he's quite cooperative?. Simple as that! Or is it?

[fo3nix]

The free web space is a decent offer. Only bad thing about it is the data transfer quantity of 100MB. But that should be fine for small sites like your own.

[frankief]

'before you transfer the domain you must backup all your site content webpages - ALL the content that is on your site will be lost once you transfer the domain name or hosting - this is normal, and will not come back unless you unload it again'
That's the sort of statement that worries someone like me - I remember when I set up the site (a friend wrote it) I was messing around downloading FTP freeware and then something didn't transfer right. Questions to the web host were met with derisive comments as if I was the village idiot! OK to you it would maybe be a 10 minute job and not cause any worry, but paying someone like web-mania �25/year plus to sort it all seems an attractive option to the layman.

[frankief]

I appreciate the advice and offer of help neil but I' thought i'd try it myself - not easy! I accessed my online control panel and found 'back up' option. Help menu told me about backing up ftp depositry , which anyway was not available as it had been disabled! An attempt to copy the http file needed a valid location etc. (not my C drive!) Anyway, I think I have the original site layout on floppy. I will have to use this and edit any changes