Deos it have to be drupal? If there is a Django CMS you could host it for free on Google App Engine. Or Heroku for a Ruby CMS. - delagoya

I initially thought drupal because it's relatively mature. But I like the ideas above. Anyone know of actual deployments of a CMS on GAE/Heroku? - Andrew Su

Rich Apodaca has Chempedia working on Heroku. I suspect that's a custom Rails CMS, but any Rails app should work. Workhabit have a Drupal AMI for EC2 http://www.workhabit.com/labs... - Deepak Singh

For Ruby, there is RadiantCMS, and a newer CMS called Seed that looks promising: http://www.railsinside.com/tools.... Another option would be hosted wordpress.com with custom theme and hostname, although I do not know UCSD's policy on CNAME records that should point to their internal network (although sdcsb.org looks like something they should have no problem with). - delagoya

Don't know about Dreamhost. Choosing a host is always a bit of a minefield. Personally, I use A2 hosting which has been very good. I have built a websites in both Drupal and Wordpress in the past and I would say that if the functionality exists in Wordpress then I would go with that every time. Drupal customization is a nightmare in comparison. It's very flexible, but unless you enjoy hunting through pages of configuration options that all look the same and do subtly different things, it is not much fun. Looking at your current site, I think everything can be done in Wordpress with plugins apart perhaps from the forum, but you could always install phpbb or something to cover that. Personally, I would go self-hosted rather than wordpress.com because I like the extra flexibility. - Matt Leifer

Great feedback, thanks guys. Will definitely go check out wordpress for the simplicity factor. Entering the aforementioned minefield, any other hosting recommendations? Seems everyone offers unlimited bandwidth/storage now, the differentiating factors seem pretty slim... - Andrew Su

No, the differentiating factors are *very* large, it is just that you can't tell what they are from the blurb on the hosts own site. For instance, I started out with Servage before switching to A2 because Servage is incredibly bad, but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference by looking at their sites. Unfortunately, it is also very hard to find an unbiased review site that is not either getting backhanders from the hosts or full of spam reviews from the hosts. As I said, I like A2, but I have friends who like hostgator so that might be worth looking at as well. These are good if you want cheap options. There are other good ones as well, but I don't have experience with them. Here are a few factors to take into consideration: 1. Support - Do they offer live chat and a local phone number as well as email/ticket based support. Most hosts have a very quick turn around time on tickets, but the response is often terrible, e.g. "no, we can't help you with that", so it is better to be able to have an interactive conversation. 2. Do they offer ssh access? If not, steer clear because you will be constantly asking support to do things for you that you could easily have done yourself. 3. Do they allow you to install packages and/or are they willing to install packages for you? A good test case is to ask about LaTeX support, not necessarily because you need it but if they are willing to install it then it indicates that they will probably install other things that you might need. 4. How easy is it to run non-PHP programs? Often hosts say they will support Python, Ruby, etc. but it is only via CGI scripts which are not adequate for running frameworks like Rails, Django and Zope, which your CMS might depend on. 5. Do they run a standard cpanel environment or are they running their own custom access panel? If the latter then steer clear because they are probably trying to restrict what you can do with their account. One more piece of advice: be wary of hosts offering to... more... - Matt Leifer

At the risk of repeating myself, if wordpress is leading the pack, you should seriously think about hosting it on wordpress.com. For $40 (no ads + domain map) they maintain the servers, apply updates and security patches, etc. The only reason to host it yourself is of course if you need a custom theme, and frankly I host with go-daddy (which is the used-car salesman of hosting) and have never had a problem with their cheapest economy plan. Plus use coupon code WORDPRESS2 for a discount! - delagoya

D, my impression was that wordpress.com was too limited for what we'd want to do (single-blog focus), but it will definitely be something I check out to confirm. Matt, fantastic set of criteria for evaluating hosting companies. Thanks again to you both... - Andrew Su