Outage problems

My hosting company ran into some issues this weekend that, besides causing a two day outage for both my blog and for sharpreader.net, also potentially caused some email to get lost. If you sent me anything on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, you may need to resend it - I'm not sure how much is lost for good and how much will be redelivered later :-(

Also, if anyone has any positive experiences with hosting a 50+ Gb/month site at a reasonable price (I currently only pay $17/month), please let me know. This wasn't the first outage I've had, nor do I expect it to be the last. Maybe it's time to move on.

update: looks like my hosting company still has some issues to be worked out; I can't send any emails through outlook for getting some weird "503 valid RCPT command must precede DATA" error (though sending through the web-based interface seems to work fine), and for some reason my movable type install is not showing any of your comments. Comments have not been lost though, as I can see them through the MT admin interface, and am also getting the email notifications (i'm actually getting those twice now... weird) - I just need to figure out why it's not rebuilding the pages correctly...

update 2: email issue has been fixed - for some reason I had to use some outlook setting that wasn't needed before their servers crashed... now all I need is to figure out what's going on with MT...

update 3: turned out that all comments were in a pending status and needed to be manually approved (the email notifications conveniently failed to mention this though). My MT-Blacklist was setup to only force moderation on old posts, but since the crash-recovery it now seems to force it on new ones as well. Oh well - I'm long overdue for an upgrade to MT 3.2 + SpamLookup anyway; guess it's time to stop procrastinating (but not tonight).

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Comments

I'm using www.webhost4life.com, I've had no problems yet and the price I'm paying is reasonable. I certainly haven't reached 50Gb/month worth of traffic yet either.

Posted by The Igloo Coder at October 24, 2005 12:02 AM

Webhost4life.com

I've been with them for 2 years and cannot remember any outage, for the same price you get unlimited bandwidth.

Posted by Justin King at October 24, 2005 12:17 AM

Hi Luke,

I don't use them myself (yet), but I've heard very positive things about servage.net
See for example this post (in Dutch).
They offer amongst other things: 7500 MB. Web Space and 330 GB Transfer for $7,50 a month and you can host up to 25 domains on one account.

Posted by Pierre at October 24, 2005 12:23 AM

I've had good luck with WebHost4Life: $9.95/month for unlimited bandwidth! http://www.WebHost4Life.com/default.asp?refid=pweber

Posted by Phil Weber at October 24, 2005 12:52 AM

try webhost4life.com

Posted by Shital Shah at October 24, 2005 3:05 AM

For over a year now, I'm a very happy Dreamhost customer. Never experienced any problems. Take a look at their hosting-plans, you'll be amazed :)

Don't forget to use me as referer in case you might sign up :D

Posted by Koen at October 24, 2005 3:29 AM

Hello Luke,
I have a minor suggestion for the icon tray popup's your application uses. Sometimes I see a nice title and want to read it with more attention from the popup itself. I.e. without having to enter the large UI.
My suggestion is that it might be nice that if I enter the popup with my mouse, the delay for hiding the popup starts (or resets) after I leave the popup. So if I would have my mouse on it for 20 seconds and leave the popup, the popup would hide after 20+defaultDelay seconds. A popup that is already hiding should be unhidden while I enter it too, I think (but this has less priority).
Hope this helps.
keep up the good work.
Kind regards,
Freek Versteijn

Posted by Freek Versteijn at October 24, 2005 6:43 AM

I use DreamHost and am very satisfied with their service. They have a great propertiary control panel, and offer 120 GB for $8. The service is of a very high quality, I can compare because I'm myself a shareware developer for more than six years and tried several hosting companies, but for my company web site and for my private hobby web site (www.kremenchuk.org). For the company web site I've witched to a private server, but the hobby site on DreamHost feels very well. The URL is http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?kremenchuk If you register please be sure that the corresponding field says that you are referred by "kremenchuk". Believe me, I would have posted this here even if thy wouldn't have a referral program (they have just a great service), but as they dohave it, why not to benefit from it? :)

Posted by Alexander at October 24, 2005 7:33 AM

service. They have a great propertiary control panel, and offer 120 GB for $8. The service is of a very high quality, I can compare because I'm myself a shareware developer for more than six years and tried several hosting companies, but for my company web site and for my private hobby web site (www.kremenchuk.org). For the company web site I've witched to a private server, but the hobby site on DreamHost feels very well. The URL is http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?kremenchuk If you register please be sure that the corresponding field says that you are referred by "kremenchuk". Believe me, I would have posted this here even if thy wouldn't have a referral program (they have just a great service), but as they dohave it, why not to benefit from it? :)

Posted by Alexander at October 24, 2005 7:34 AM

at http://www.all-inkl.de you get 50GB/month for 4,95 EUR/month
# 1 x Domain inklusive
# 150 x Subdomain
# 1 GB Speicherplatz
# 50 GB Traffic
# 500 x E - Mail
# IMAP und POP3
# PHP, CGI
# FPSE Erweiterung
# 10 x MySQL-Datenbanken
# 100 Kunden je Server

Posted by Martin Hollender at October 24, 2005 11:19 AM

I can recommend webhost4life
Really good (and fast) service, low pricing, unlimited bandwidth.

Posted by TorstenR at October 24, 2005 3:11 PM

I can't say that I know about the bandwidth part because my site doesn't get a lot of traffic, but I've been with Delta Web Hosting for about 3 years and they have significant uptime (99.9%) and pretty good customer support. For the bandwidth that you want it would be $6.00/month! I believe that they are located in The Phillippines.

Regards,

Paul

Posted by Paul Lester at October 24, 2005 7:01 PM

How about $7-$10/m for 75GB bandwidth, 6GB storage and 5 domains (not included)? :) I've been hosting here years ago and recently came back to them after I went elsewhere for services they didn't offer at the time. Can't be happier with my return. Their offer is only valid this week I believe: http://www.site5.com/. They get a lot of good reviews everywhere and are comparable in quality (probably a bit better) to hosters like Dreamhost.

Posted by Arnoud at October 24, 2005 8:19 PM

I use http://www.penguinhost.net/ $7/month for 60GB of bandwidth.
I have had sites on two of their servers for a few years, and reliability and support is good (they have installed additional PHP extensions for me). Once in a while there's a temporary outage, but it's better than other more expensive hosting I used before.

Good luck!

Posted by Patrick at October 24, 2005 10:11 PM

I have been using pair.com for several years and I find them excellent. My site doesn't get as much traffic as yours does but Pair has been outstanding in reliability.

Posted by Steve Boyko at October 25, 2005 8:18 AM

AmishHosting.com is offering 2 months free "refugee" hosting to people and companies who are disappointed with their current hosting.

Many hosting companies claim to offer high bandwidth levels, but they figure out ways to drive away people who actually want all that bandwidth. We're getting an increasing number of musical performers at AmishHosting, because the 100 GB/month of transfer we offer is honest.

Alexa.com (an Amazon company) says we offer some of the fastest hosting on the web. By way of comparison, one of our busier customers is CDZinc.com (86 GB of traffic so far this month, and no, we don't reveal your stats without your permission.)
According to this afternoon's statistics:
* CDZinc.com, #14,525 in traffic rank, is faster than 88% of the web, and has a 0.7 seconds load time.
* Hutteman.com, #349,300 in traffic rank, is faster than 60% of the web, and has a 1.4 seconds load time.
* SharpReader.net, #58767 in traffic rank, is faster than 59% of the web, and has a 1.4 seconds load time.

Obviously, reliability is even more important than speed. I've been working with computers since 1969 (IBM 1132), and with microcomputers since 1975 (KIM-1), so I claim to be a competent sysop - and you can call me toll-free 24x365. No, not a call center in Mumbai - I'm the one that answers the phone, in Lancaster PA. (No, I'm not Amish - but "Pennsylvania-Dutch-Area-Hosting.com" is too long.)

For 2.4 GB of space and 100 GB of monthly transfer, it's $99/year - but as I mentioned, right now we're offering 2 months free hosting to "refugees", with NO obligation to spend a cent. It appears you are on a Cpanel server, which means we can move your sites for you with just a few mouse clicks.

I feel strange tooting my own horn, but I do know exactly what you're going through. Most people go into hosting as their primary business; my wife and I ended up going into hosting in order to get reliability. We used DreamHost for years, and they're a pretty decent hosting company, but hosting is cheap, and losing customers is expensive....

Posted by Paul Ding at October 25, 2005 6:51 PM

See: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/10/27/new_11_hosting_packages_start_at_299_a_month.html

Although I can't personally vouch for them.

Posted by Justin Goldberg at October 28, 2005 12:01 PM

Seems like quite a few servers have had difficulty in the past week. Do you have a WordPress blog as well?

Posted by JAWjaw at October 30, 2005 9:54 PM

Better go to http://www.godaddy.com

Posted by at November 3, 2005 3:38 AM

Luke,

Looked all over your site for a direct email to you. Can't find any, so this PUBLIC display is my only other choice ....

Downloaded your SharpReader and only have ONE problem with it.

How the hell do I get it OFF my system? Everything in it is like a virus with "ACCESS DENIED"!

Your prompt attention would be appreciated.

THANKS!

Colonel Robert F. Cunningham
colrfcunningham@comcast.net

Posted by Colonel Robert F. Cunningham at November 4, 2005 1:35 PM

There's a link to my personal email hidden in the sidebar on the main page of my weblog, and there's a sharpreader-specific email in sharpreader's about-dialog.

removal should be simple. If you used the installer, just go to add/remove programs and remove it from there. If you manually unzipped it, just remove that directory.

btw - if the only ONE problem you have is that you can't remove it, why are you trying to remove it in the first place?

Posted by Luke Hutteman at November 4, 2005 3:52 PM

try http://www.Dreamhost.com for $7.95/m, one of the few that provides Ruby on Rails.

here is a comparison: http://www.dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html

1 FREE domain registration
UNLIMITED domains hosted
15 subdomains
4800 MB Disk, 120 GB Transfer
600 Mailboxes, 75 Shell/FTP Users

Posted by haydiv at November 9, 2005 8:12 PM

If 9,90 EUR is less enough for you, you might want to give BeKaWe Media a try. I've been with 'em for more than a year and although I'm already through several comment and referrer spam attacks their servers havent gone down yet ;)

Direct link to their biggest offer (pro'ly you can ask for an individual offer, too): http://www.bekawe-hosting.de/content.php?page=aprofi

About all-inkl.com/all-inkl.de: I'd rather suggest NOT choosing them as your new hosting solutions - I'm doing site administration for some folks who let their site host there, and recently I noticed very slow MySQL connections with such simply queries as "SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE table_id > 2 AND table_id

cu, w0lf.

Posted by fwolf at November 14, 2005 8:39 AM

You can find a good hosting company here: http://hosting-finder.com

Posted by Dan at November 18, 2005 10:42 AM

Try datapacket.net - load balanced servers, affordable pricing.

Posted by datapacket at January 6, 2006 3:45 AM
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