"Family History Hosting" is a new web hosting service owned and operated by John Cardinal, a person well known for the software he produces: Second Site, a database modification tool called TMG Utility, and a calendar and anniversary utility called On This Day. I decided to take a look at http://www.familyhistoryhosting.com.
Disclaimer: I may be biased because I have known John for years and admire his work. Then again, that may be a testimonial: I have known John for years and admire his work. To view a video of a conversation I had with John last year concerning his other projects, look at: http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/12/video-an-interv.html .
Family History Hosting provides first-class web hosting services for genealogists and family historians. The site is owned and operated by a genealogist who knows what a GEDCOM file is and understands why it is important. With some rather unusual offerings, the hosting service also hopes to attract non-technical and semi-technical customers. The company's web site says:
We eliminate the technical hassles and barriers that prevent you from publishing your work. We know that you want to spend your time researching, communicating with members of your family, and breaking through brickwalls. Any time you spend wrestling with web-related challenges is time wasted.
We have designed a hosting service that is custom-designed to meet your needs. We don't provide the dizzying array of options available at some web hosts because frankly, you don't need them. All that clutter confuses the issue and forces you to learn about technologies that are not pertinent to your hobby.
Meanwhile, we are prepared to add scripts and features on a by-request basis for those users with particular needs.
Behind the scenes, we protect you from common web problems like bandwidth stealing, where unscrupulous people reference images from your site on their web pages to transfer the bandwidth load from their web host to yours. You may not even be aware of such schemes, but we are, and we're here to help.
Family History Hosting adds no advertising to your pages. Your visitors will see only the information you place there. In addition, you can register your own domain name and use it for your pages hosted at Family History Hosting, such as http://my-genealogy-site.com or whatever name you register.
The same site also proclaims:
Our state of the art datacenter is staffed 24/7/365. There are multiple sources for everything the datacenter needs: network connections, electrical power, air conditioning, etc. That means your site will be available despite power outages, network outages, or other technical difficulties. We can promise 99.9% uptime because our partners deliver better than 99.9% uptime to us!
Prices vary from $69.99 a year up to $189.99 a year, depending upon the disk space and bandwidth included. Those prices include unlimited domains, free set-up, and no hidden charges. Those prices are equivalent to $5.83 a month for a typical genealogy site up to $15.83 a month for a very large site and are very competitive with other hosting services that are not owned by genealogists. However, the only option is for an annual payment.
This looks like a winner for genealogists. I can vouch for the frustrations and challenges of dealing with web services, and I suspect many people will be happy to let Family History Hosting handle those complexities for them. If you want to post your personal genealogy pages or even your genealogy business pages on a service that understands genealogy, is owned and operated by genealogists, and guarantees 99.9% uptime, you might want to look at http://www.familyhistoryhosting.com.
If you are a present Second Site customer, look for the special offer being made only to Second Site users.
I have now been using John Cardinal's software since 1996, long before Second Site. Back then, I used his software to process IGI data. In these past twelve years, I can truely say John is one of a kind. His support of his products is beyond reproach. You need help, he is there. And his products are just fantastic.
Posted by: Donald Joseph Schulteis | July 26, 2008 at 01:46 PM
At first I thought the hosting plan said 250 *gigabytes* for 70 bucks per year. Then I realized it said 250 *megabytes* for 70 bucks. That's got to be a misprint, right? Assuming 1 MB per photo, that's 250 photos. Never mind about audio and video files. For seventy bucks a year.
You're kidding, right?
Posted by: Anon Y. Mouse | July 26, 2008 at 02:17 PM
It seems clear from their site that it's 250 MB. The other number to pay attention to is the bandwidth.
My TNG site is moving about 50 MB of data per day currently - so 1.5 GB per month - that's well outside the $70 per year plan's 1 GB per month.
I'm my own host, so don't pay a whole lot of attention to storage used and bandwidth, but these limits seem to certainly be on the low side of what's available, usually for less than $6 per month from places like simplyhosting.net, icdsoft,com, 1and1 etc.
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | July 26, 2008 at 03:03 PM
Tamura Jones reviewed this a week ago, and had some dry remarks about FHH charging per millibit...
Like previous commenters, she remarked that the prices are not very competitive, but the service may appeal to non-technical second site users. She also remarked that the frontpage extension he offers are "deprecated technology" and that he should be using WEBDAV instead.
So an IT expert says it is yesterday's technology for high prices...
Posted by: Fran Mateos | July 26, 2008 at 06:00 PM
Customers who want oodles of disk space on the cheap should not choose Family History Hosting. It's not intended as a photo backup site. It's intended as a hosting service for genealogists who want to publish the fruits of their research on the web. If your genealogy site includes 250 photos, and many do, those photos should mostly be low-resolution images and they will hardly make a dent in 250MB. I chose 250MB mostly because I did a survey of Second Site customers and 99% of them had sites that would fit within 250MB.
If you choose your hosting service based on $/MB, you should choose one of the big hosting services that sells their service based on $/MB. If you are looking for a service that will help you overcome the barriers that are keeping your site offline, then you should consider Family History Hosting.
So far, I have devoted an average of 2 hours of direct, remote control support with each customer and consulted with them on domain registration, site structure, search engine issues, and updating strategies. I've installed and configured FTP clients and other software, and given expert advice on the use of TMG and Second Site. I've helped people create low-resolution copies of digital images. You can't get that kind of support from the companies that compete based on $/MB: they don't offer it at any price. If you don't need that kind of help, then you won't attach any value to it. If you DO need that kind of help, then you'll think it's invaluable.
Posted by: John Cardinal | July 26, 2008 at 11:28 PM
Fran Mateos - I tried to find the review you mentioned by Tamura Jones but couldn't find it, or much about who Tamura is and her credentials as a reviewer (maybe well know in USA but not "Down Under"). Can you point us to the review please?
Posted by: Graeme Simpson | July 27, 2008 at 08:37 AM
Sounds like a great idea with plenty of space. Why does anyone put a picture on a website at 1 MB or more when it views the same at 100KB. The most important part of a service like this is the support. A lot of us need support. I personally use TNG a PHP website and without the support of TNG and my hosting service I could never have put up the web site.
Posted by: Don Jaggi | July 27, 2008 at 06:57 PM
Sounds like a great idea with plenty of space. Why does anyone put a picture on a website at 1 MB or more when it views the same at 100KB. The most important part of a service like this is the support. A lot of us need support. I personally use TNG a PHP website and without the support of TNG and my hosting service I could never have put up the web site.
Posted by: Don Jaggi | July 27, 2008 at 06:59 PM
I'm curious...Why is there a Godadd.com verified logo on FHH? Is he reselling Godaddy space? BTW once you click on the support area there doesn't appear to be a link back to HOME or the pricing area. Oops.
Posted by: anonymous | July 28, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Re: "I'm curious...Why is there a Godadd.com verified logo on FHH? Is he reselling Godaddy space?"
The icon verifies that the site is secured using a GoDaddy-issued SSL certificate. That's why it says "SECURE SITE" and that's also why when you click the icon you are shown some information about the security certificate.
No, I am not reselling GoDaddy space. I recommend GoDaddy for registering domains, but I do not benefit financially from making that recommendation. There are many other good choices; I recommend GoDaddy only because I am familiar with GoDaddy and use them myself for registering domain names. Family History Hosting offers domain registration services, but I recommend that people keep domain registration and web hosting services separate.
Re: "BTW once you click on the support area there doesn't appear to be a link back to HOME or the pricing area. Oops."
There should be a link, but there's no convenient way to add it using the 3rd-party software I selected to manage that area of the site. I trust your browser has a back button...
Posted by: John Cardinal | July 28, 2008 at 01:23 PM
The GoDaddy logo/certificate indicates that the site IS secure. The icon verifies that the site is secured using a GoDaddy-issued SSL certificate.
This newsletter was hosted on GoDaddy until last winter when I switched to another (more expensive) service that offers better support. I have a LOT of experience with GoDaddy. I can verify that they are very secure. In fact, I was satisfied with their security but had problems with their lack of support. I notice that John Cardinal is offering a much higher level of support. Had John been in this business last winter, I probably would have switched this newsletter's site to his hosting service.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | July 28, 2008 at 01:47 PM