| Want a Good House for Joomla! In Malaysia? |
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Image by kenyee We, the admins of Joomla-My have been monitoring the Malaysian Joomla! Community since the day of its birth on the internet. I found out that relatively significant number of users there are still in the dark with regard to choosing a good webhost for their website. It should be noted that these users are making their first ever live website and relatively inexperienced with web development. Soon after, I created a forum category meant solely for users to write a review of their past & present webhost so that we as a community can help each other. What I wrote hereafter is a recollection of experience and thoughts that might help some of you in deciding your new webhost. *be prepared to read. This post is rather lengthy. 
Let the story begin. First webhost
A year later, I noticed something amiss with the server that hosted that particular website when several installations of the usual stuff (components/modules/mambots/template) failed. The errors led to inaccessible PHP /tmp/ directory and failure to move necessary files. A php.ini check revealed a nasty surprise. The server ran on Safe Mode which hindered Mambo to run at its full capability. I tried emailing the technical support to ask them to turn off the Safe Mode. But they insisted that it was needed for security purposes. I was flabbergasted.
Fixing the problem. Second webhostWasting no time, I started a survey of good and affordable webhost for Joomla!. I read reviews a lot and ended up with a rather good one (no, its not yet Exabytes as their price was still pricey for a student like me). The price was good (RM149) and the space was big (at that time) – 2Gb. However, it still lacked DOXML. As I was not using Expose4 for any project, I can still live without it. Thus the coming year (2007), I bought a couple more packages (one of them was this blog).
A year later, I released a Fireboard Forum module called mod_fblatest. Again, a sudden (and continuous) flock of visitors came to this blog. I started to receive some comments from loyal oversea visitors (USA and European countries) on the load time of the website. As a quick response to this, I unpublished all local advertisement services as I realized that they were consuming almost 300Kb alone for their promotions! Plus with the un-optimized javascripts (back then, mind you), it was actually a necessity to remove them. Yet, the emails keep coming in. A friend of mine, Derred showed some proof of the loading time taken from USA (using Firebug).
Time to move on. Current webhost
In January, I grabbed its e-Biz Plus package. For those with deep pockets and in the need for future expandability, I highly recommend you guys to get e-Biz Gold instead (300Gb storage, 300Gb bandwidth, 30 domains). The first thing that I noticed was that the response time and subsequent loading time were much faster. A brief chat with my oversea connections confirms this and a happy man I was. The spec is very up-to-date with cPanel 11, DOXML, ModSecurity and ionCube installed. DOXML would be for Expose4, ModSecurity is for added protection and ionCube is important in order to use commercial encrypted components such as Clexus PMS. Is there one thing that I learnt from being a part-time support crew for a famous Joomla! Component developer last year, it will be the importance of keeping the support ticket checked. I was (and still)amazed of the responsiveness of the tech staff in Exabytes. Early in my server migration, I had to sort out some permission issues. Should you are a Joomla! user, I am sure you are aware of FTP & PHP user ownership problem, right? A support ticket was sent at 11.00 pm, after over 7,8 replies later (with some new problems), all issues were solved around 1.30 am. Aint it fast?
The good things aside, there is only minor disappointment that I really wish it could have been better. In fact, like most big companies, the policies and regulations are rigid. You will definitely get what you asked for in your order, No More, No Less. Compared to my previous webhost (which I still use for projects with small budget), you could ask for a bit of this and that. An example is like the one that I mentioned before. It much like comparing a kedai mamak/cheap eatery (my previous webhost) with a fancy restaurant (Exabytes). Kedai Mamak (one in Section 14, PJ): • ‘Nasi goreng ayam satu! Nasi extra!’ / ‘One chicken fried rice! Extra rice!’
Fancy Restaurant (one in One Bangsar) : • ‘err… Branzino.. Salmon elForno..’ Yes, the starting price is not cheap (cheapest is e-Biz Plus at RM269 per year). I reckon that paying for 2 or 3 consecutive years is a very, very wise move as you will get hundreds of ringgits worth of discounts. But consider your investment is worth the money as the support and the system is again, top-notch. For bloggers / newbies in web development, you might as well try this package, XStudent for RM99 per year (with a FREE domain!). As what been discussed in the forum that I moderate, there are still a number of good webhost that you might consider. The list is not exhaustive, and by all means this article does not necessarily mean that Exabytes is the best Malaysian webhost for Joomla!. It is just works well for me and I'd recommend Joomla! users in Malaysia to use Exabytes for a peace of mind. Those who are interested to know my previous two webhost can contact me using this link.
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*Keep in mind that I wrote this in conjunction with a contest that
is organized by my 
I bought my first webhosting package back in 2004, when I started to
run a 
Apart from this main problem, another frustration was caused by the
lack of DOXML in their PHP configuration. This plugin is needed when
you install a (cool) flash photo gallery called 
There was this one interesting occasion I would like to share during my
time in using their service. One of my sites got 
I decided to keep my visitors happy. Thus earlier this year, I moved
this blog and my first website to Exabytes. However all sites that were
made prior to 2008 were not moved because I appreciate my past
webhosts’ good treatment. 
Not so long ago, there were two or three noticeable server downtime
that affects my site. The interruptions were short, yet I was not
satisfied. The first one was due to malfunctioned DC switch and the
other due to problematic datacenter. Funny enough though, Joomla-My was
not affected. So my conclusion was my sites are not on the same server
as Joomla-My. I noticed the difference of both server, thus I have
requested the support staff to move my sites to the same server that
hosts Joomla-My. Not only they agreed, and moved the site, they even
keep my old site just in case problem arises. Just a week later when I
am satisfied that everything is in working order, then they deleted the
backup. Trust me, they are very professional and know what they are doing
(which never ceases to impress me).
Joomla! is a trademark and its rightful name is Joomla!, not Joomla (without the ‘!’ ) 
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