Hosting providers recommendations

[DawoudIO]

Hi everyone,

In an effort to support new installations, let's us get recommendations on hosting providers that work well with ChurchCRM. Additionally, I would appreciate any advice on the best installation methods for these providers. Also, do they support Softaculous and localization?

Thank you in advance for your help!

[MrClever]

I've been using Bluehost for years and found their CPanel setup and ability to have shell (SSH) access makes installing and trouble-shooting various web applications really straightforward. They also have Softaculous support if people would prefer that route too. Bluehost does heavily rely on .htaccess to control the per-site/folder PHP and Apache setup so it needs to be preserved when deploying ChurchCRM otherwise any site-specific hosting config (like PHP modules, PHP version, Apache modules, etc) will be lost.

I terms of deployment, I simply wrote my own shell script to fetch and install ChurchCRM (this also works as a script-based upgrader too because it doesn't touch the site-specific stuff like Include/Config.php or the images directory etc.). Needs shell access but that is simple to setup in Bluehost's user tools etc.:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Assumptions:
# 1. the destination directory has already been created 
# 2. the user executing this script is the same user accessing the site (safe for BlueHost)
# 3. the database and DB user for ChurchCRM has already been created - needed for web installation wizard!

# Replace these to match your setup
destDir="./churchcrm"
yourSite="https://your.churchcrm.site"

#
# No need to touch anything below here...there be dragons
#
if [[ -z $1 ]]; then
	echo "Need a release to deploy:"
	echo "eg,"
	echo "    $(basename $0) 5.0.0"
	exit 1
fi

# make sure we can proceed function:
confirm() {
    # call with a prompt string or use a default
    read -r -p "${1:-Are you sure? [y/N]} " response
    case "$response" in
        [yY][eE][sS]|[yY])
            true
            ;;
        *)
            false
            ;;
    esac
}

# Remove any existing zip file for current release - always get from the source
if [[ -f ChurchCRM-${1}.zip ]]; then
	rm -f ChurchCRM-${1}.zip >/dev/null 2>&1
fi

# Grab the requested release from GitHub
echo -e "\n=== FETCH RELEASE MAGIC ==="
echo "$(date): Attempting to download release '$1'"
wget -q https://github.com/ChurchCRM/CRM/releases/download/${1}/ChurchCRM-${1}.zip
if [[ $? == 0 ]]; then
	echo -e "$(date): Sucessfully fetched ChurchCRM-${1}.zip\n"
else
	echo "Download failed - bailing out"
	exit 1
fi

# Successful retrieval of zip file - confirm we want to deploy.
confirm "Do you want to deploy ChurchCRM v${1} [y/N]"
if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
	echo "Bailing out as requested"
	echo -n "Deleting downloaded zip file..."
	rm -f ChurchCRM-${1}.zip >/dev/null 2>&1
	echo DONE
fi

# Got the go-ahead from the user...deploy files.
echo -e "\n=== UNPACK FILES MAGIC ==="
echo "$(date): Backing up our '.htaccess' file because it contains hosting config"
if [[ -f "${destDir}/.htaccess" ]]; then
	cp "${destDir}/.htaccess" "${destDir}/.htaccess-backup"
else
	echo "    Weird - no .htaccess file detected...skipping this step"
fi

echo -e "$(date): Unzipping deployment files to '${destDir}'"
unzip -qo "ChurchCRM-${1}.zip"

# Set permissions for the deployment
echo -e "\n=== PERMISSIONS MAGIC ==="
echo -n "$(date): Setting file permissions..."
find "${destDir}" -type f -exec chmod 644 "{}" \;
echo "DONE"

echo -n "$(date): Setting directory permissions..."
find "${destDir}" -type d -exec chmod 755 "{}" \;
echo "DONE"

# Restore .htaccess - this will trigger a file checksum error but it can't be helped
if [[ -f "${destDir}/.htaccess-backup" ]]; then
	echo "$(date): Restoring our '.htaccess' file"
	mv -fv "${destDir}/.htaccess-backup" "churchcrm/.htaccess"
fi

# Cleanup...
echo -n "Removing deployment zip file..."
rm -r ChurchCRM-${1}.zip >/dev/null 2>&1
echo DONE

echo -e "\nYour site can be viewed at $yourSite"

[DawoudIO]

I use A2 Hosting - https://www.a2hosting.com/. It works excellently and includes Softaculous support and installers. However, it falls short for localization since it isn't included in their web hosting package; instead, it's available in the more expensive VM packages.

[Pooja2091]

I've tried a few hosting providers over the years, but switching to HostGraber was honestly one of the best decisions I've made for my website. Their uptime is rock-solid, and the support team is quick and helpful whenever I need something. If anyone’s still trying to figure out which hosting provider to go with, I highly recommend checking them out: https://hostgraber.com/