Webfaction Review

I was looking at my web stats and noticed I was getting a lot of traffic to my limited review of Webfaction. To recap, I tried out there account then decided to cancel, and they were prompt and friendly at delivering a refund.

Since that time, I have set up two Webfaction accounts. When I started developing Inzolo.com, I wanted to set it up faster and keep it separated from my VPS accounts mainly so I could keep costs separate with this business as I was going to be working on it with friends. Setting up Django was ridiculously simple compared to the steps I had to go through with cPanel. I was able to set up the latest version of Django and the latest version of Python with a few clicks of a button. As far as access goes, I still had SSH to go in and work directly on the server, just as I can with my VPS account.

Webfaction has a method of breaking things down by domains, applications, and websites. Once you understand how it works, you will fall in love with the simplicity of the system! You can set up multiple domains. Then you can create various applications, such as:

• Django on WSGI
• Django on mod_python
• Static/CGI/PHP
• Subversion (What?! I just saw this, I'll have to check it out!)
• Ruby on Rails
• Symbolic links (perfect for Django's admin media)
• WordPress
• AWStats
• Drupal
• Joomla

Once you have a domain and an application, you specify how you want to access that application on your domain.

Let me give you an example with my latest project - Mini Site Tracker. I originally set this up on my Inzolo account, but again, I wanted to keep expenses separate so I ordered another Webfaction account. I set up a domain, minisitetracker.com. I then added two subdomains:

• www - points to minisitetracker.com
  • wildcard subdomain so I can use any subdomain for accounts in my web application

I then set up the following applications:

• admin_media - points to Django's admin media for the built-in admin control panel

• minisitetracker - Django 1.0.2 running on mod_wsgi 2.0 and Python 2.5

• mst_media - Static/CGI/PHP for storing all my media files associated with my Django application (images, javascript, css)

• osticket - Static/CGI/PHP for installing osTicket on

• WordPress - Wordpress 2.7.1

  

I then map my application to my website like so:

It's really that simple. Databases are equally easy to set up - you can set up MySQL or PostgreSQL. I haven't found that anything missing with Webfaction that I used in cPanel or DirectAdmin VPS accounts.

That about sums it up really. I love Webfaction. Webfaction rocks! Really, for what they do, I don't think they have any real competitors that I know of.

If you find this review helpful, please sign up using my referral link.