99% of shared hosting packages will not be very good for hosting a fair sized MediaWiki environment.
Your best bet is a VPS. I've been using Linode.com for mine for awhile, though if you are pretty large and want some scalability you might try using Amazon ec2 (I'm thinking of experimenting with them soon). The smallest Linode is about $20/mo. Though I warn you that while ec2 is good for scalability and only paying for what you actually use, a 24/7 server will normally cost you at least around $80/mo. But it is a good solution if you expect a lot of bandwidth and visitors.
As for your comment of automatic installations. Most of those are junk anyways, MediaWiki isn't to hard to setup and in the long run you are far better off if you actually understand how to configure the stuff you are running. While a VPS will take a little more understanding of how things work, you can fairly easily get things like Memcached, ImageMagic, rsvg, and all the other special MediaWiki features setup. Most of those will be completely unavailable to you on shared hosting.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://nadir-seen-fire.com] -Nadir-Point (http://nadir-point.com) -Wiki-Tools (http://wiki-tools.com) -MonkeyScript (http://monkeyscript.nadir-point.com) -Animepedia (http://anime.wikia.com) -Narutopedia (http://naruto.wikia.com) -Soul Eater Wiki (http://souleater.wikia.com)
Ekompute .info wrote:
Hi, can anyone recommend me a good *multi-domain webhost* to host my Mediawiki? I am with Siteground. They are good but they are now asking me to upgrade to VPS hosting @ US$99 a month although I only use 0.5% of my hard disk allocation and 0.3% of my bandwidth allocation.
I tried Hostgator but the installation is not automatic. I have to set up my own database manually and I am worried that there will be many features that they can't handle, just like my local webhost in Malaysia. They just give you a hosting and that's it! Hostgator honored their money-back guarantee and promptly refund my money.
PM Poon