We need to decide what we're doing with web hosting questions

Question

We've discussed this before (1, 2) and never really decided upon much. The reason why I want to bring this up again is two fold:

1. We're getting a lot of these requests and they really aren't very productive

2. We're starting to get a lot more spam in existing questions

My proposal is to create one question titled, "How to find web hosting that meets my requirements" and use it as a reference for all questions seeking hosting. (Those questions get closed as a duplicate of this question). This question should:

• be community wiki
• start off being protected to stave off most spammers
• not specifically recommend any hosting providers
• give tips on determining a site's needs before searching for hosting
• general advice from users (as answers)

After this master question is posted we should lock existing questions to prevent further spam and keep the focus on the new question. This can be done at once or as they get bumped, etc.

Answer 1

It's a good idea. The site could use one of those canonical questions to point all future ones of a similar bent towards.

One detail I suggest to include would be the difference between shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting.

Answer 2

My proposal is to create one question titled, "How to find web hosting that meets my requirements" and use it as a reference for all questions seeking hosting. (Those questions get closed as a duplicate of this question). This question should:

Perfect example of

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/the-wikipedia-of-long-tail-programming-questions/

Go for it!

Answer 3

Definitely agree about making one hosting big question to tight them all.

Totally disagree when you say you don't want specifically recommendation about any hosting providers. I think you should encourage recommendations as long as they come with at least a brief explanation.

Let's look for a while at this Community Wiki question on SO about JS Frameworks.

Do you think is not useful and it should be closed? It's very useful because it could help in most cases choosing a JS library/framework saving hundreds of days that could be spent learning (and using) each framework just to discover that the JS Framework you find to be a good one is also the same one suggested and plussed 1 by most users of the community.

So if you think such question on SO is useful, why don't you think it could be useful to let user recommend also a web hoster in the one hosting big question?

Reputation on SE sites is real reputation. I would definitely give a try on an hoster suggested by Jeff Atwood or John Conde or some of the guys on SO like cletus, bobince, Gumbo (I can't cite them all) because I know that if they don't know a good webhoster based on their experience they would shut up rather than talking crap suggesting something they did not really try.

Reputation it's like in real life, there are people talking crap all days that you don't trust, and people you do trust because you hardly ever heard them giving out wrong suggestions/answers.

Webhosters are a real Ocean! I think there are more webhosters in the world than any other type of businesses. The only way to find one that is a good mix of affordable/reliable/fast is to try them one by one. But it would take forever (even more than finding the right JS Framework). That's where suggestions coming from reputable users come into an hand. I could start trying with the ones suggested instead of wasting weeks testing webhosters around.

So why not let people add their suggestion in the Big Webhosting Question? The +1 / -1 as always will do the rest, by distinguishing between the answers/suggestions more appreciated by the community and the ones that are not. The total reputation of each user answering would not be affected anyway, because it's already a Community Wiki.