Mike Hughes

After losing my co-located hardware, I was forced onto shared hosting. I’ve put up with this for approximately one year now, however, just recently the restrictions of this have really been getting to me. Now I don’t need a dedicated server, so the next option is a VPS (Virtual Private Server).

A Company called BitFolk came recommended from a few people. BitFolk is a one man band, run by a chap called Andy. Don’t let this put you off, if anything, in my opinion, this is a good thing. Andy is very knowledgeable and approachable - he seemed happy to answer any of my questions via IRC before purchasing the VPS, and was very flexible on plans and payment details.

I opted for Debian Etch (Stable). From time of ordering to the VPS being ready for me to login, took approximately one hour. Upon logging in, I discovered everything was upto date, Andy had actually dist-upgrade’d as part of the setup. Another thing I noticed is that bit-folk operate their own apt cache, meaning installing stuff via apt is not only super speedy, but doesn’t soak your bandwidth allowance.

I’ve since managed to get most stuff setup - Lighttpd, PHP, MySQL etc. I opted for Lighttpd, mainly due to the low memory allocation surrounding VPS’s (Mine has a mere 120mb, which for the moment, seems plenty - currently using 30MB). However, after the experience I’ve had with lighttpd so far, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it on a machine with more memory available. I’ve also optimised PHP and MySQL for low memory usage. it’s posible, if I get time that I’ll write a little piece on setting up Lighttpd/PHP/MySQL and optimising them for the purposes of low memory usage.

Overall, I couldn’t recommend Bitfolk highly enough, with plans starting from just £8/m, it’s competitive with decent shared hosting, whilst giving you full control.

If, after reading this small write-up you decide on a BitFolk VPS, be sure to mention this site when ordering