@Panda said in Come back PhP, all is forgiven!:
Its 2023 but lots of hostings still cant run nodejs.
After a not good hosting experience with Ionos (looks cheap at first, but requires add-on ££ packages) Im wondering what realistically is cheapest monthly hosting, that can run nodejs and Nodebb.
You raise an excellent point here. Sadly, NodeJS doesn’t seem to have found it’s way into all shared hosting packages just yet, whereas Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP are still the mainstay because these are the required components to run a WordPress site.
The WAMP, LAMP, and LEMP stacks (see reading material below) are commonplace because they work well on shared hosting (although not all are created equal), and because they only give you a “slice” of the power (usually 1 CPU and 512Mb RAM - or 1Gb if they are feeling generous, coupled with a small disk size, free backups etc) they can keep the cost low as their overhead in this case is literally zero as they already acquired the hosts themselves which often run hundreds of sites, and are over subscribed to the point where they are ridiculously slow).
https://cloudinfrastructureservices.co.uk/lamp-vs-xampp-vs-wamp-vs-mamp-whats-the-difference/
In fact, several WordPress hosting providers encourage you to use caching plugins like WP Rocket, or Cloudflare which really is to mask their poor hardware performance and the fact that there are too many websites sitting on on server. This is known as “Cloud Linux” (see below)
https://www.cloudlinux.com/
This hosting platform also contains Control Panels such as cPanel, Plesk, and the like. However, not all that glitters is gold. At the expense of low cost websites comes 7-p’s style performance (a bit more about that below)
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/7_Ps_(military_adage)
In essence, over subscribing plans means that they all use a shared resource pool. There are often certain clients who will max out a running PHP process (default here is 30 seconds, but very easily overridden) which then locks the CPU and kills the speed for everyone else. It’s up to the hosting provider to find the culprit, and kill the session.
A VPS however, is by far a superior model. It too uses shared resources, although these are cut logically meaning that one VPS on the same host cannot interfere with another. The additional benefit of a VPS is that, although self-managed and by that I mean there is nobody to help you with issues, it comes with full root access and is a bare-bones operating system meaning you can install what you like - NodeJS, MongoDB, you name it - you just need to ensure you scale correctly in terms of hardware like CPU, Memory, and disk space.
Shared hosts have started offering Composer support, but only because it’s an accepted standard when installing PHP packages - no more or less, and it’s taken years to get even that basic support. Composer also requires SSH access, so hosting companies are also having to provide this when previously, they have locked it off to secure the environment (although that’s more like security through obscurity to be honest).
@Panda said in Come back PhP, all is forgiven!:
Many offer 70% discount for first 3-12 months, which then reverts to a higher price.
It is one advantage of PhP code that its more universal.
True, but cheap is not cheerful. The more complex your site becomes (along with your coding skills increasing), the quicker you will grow out of the plan you have. If they can’t limit you in terms of hardware, they’ll do it in visitors instead. The 70% discount is a carrot - nothing more, nothing less. Don’t be fooled by this if you are serious about hosting.
Digital Ocean for example has NodeJS packages, along with several others - see below
https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/best-nodejs-hosting/
I used IONOS for a while, and realised that Hetzner provide a much better deal for those experienced with Linux. I know @cagatay, @DownPW and myself all use Hetzner, and I think @Madchatthew (whom I haven’t seen for a while 
) was also considering taking their services. There’s an affiliate link below if you’d like to go down that route
https://console.hetzner.cloud/refer
Obtaining a VPS comes with the double-edged sword of being completely on your own with no support, although by using Virtualmin, you’ll find life so much simpler (something I know @DownPW can attest to, as I managed to convert him )
In terms of cost, I pay € 31.40 per month. Sudonix sits on a 4 core CPU with 16Gb RAM and 150Gb disk space, and a custom built low-latency kernel. This is further “backed” by a 500Gb Storage Box I use for backups and DEV work
The screenshot above is from Virtualmin btw…
