Singing the Website Blues…
If you’re reading this, all my website problems have been resolved. They started on Wednesday, Sept 19, the day after I had begun moving my website to another hosting service. Ironically, my website host’s (ApolloHosting) entire operation cratered all day from what I could tell, taking my website with it, of course, and convincing me I needed to hurry the transition to my new hosting service. Boy was that right! Unfortunately, I rushed one piece of it a little too much; and that helped knock me off the air for a few days until the DNS change got implemented.
As you may or may not have known, I had been hosting the site for the past few months at ApolloHosting. While their service was pretty good, their prices seemed high and they seemed best for small to medium websites with little to moderate traffic. While that describes my site most of the time, I am rapidly expanding it and did have a huge traffic increase last month when I posted the “G4, G5, and AMD Shootout” article in the ComputerZone. That required me to pay extra for transfer and made me take a look at what I was getting for my money from both a space and transfer perspective. After all, I didn’t know when I might hit paydirt again and wanted to be able to. (I’ve been telling my wife we need to get a dual 2Ghz G5 in here for testing, but so far, she’s not buying…) I wanted the capability to expand the site without it costing a fortune, and Apollo Hosting just did not fit that bill.
After doing a bit of research, I decided to give Lunarpages a try. I get twice the space and transfer for the same amount of money I was paying at Apollo Hosting, and I can reduce costs further by renewing for a year, something I’m not yet ready to do. But, you know what they say about getting what you pay for. My first impressions with Lunarpages have been--they are good but not great. I suffered through tons of “FTP errors” when uploading large files to the new website. Also, some file name capitalizations got changed in the transfer, and that caused me a lot of manual labor on the server side to keep things straight. (I think that was the fault of Adobe Go Live, but that’s something I’m still checking out.) The down time on Sept 18 and after was not their fault, though. It happened because Apollo Hosting requires that you submit a cancellation at least 5 days before your billing period ends or they will automatically renew your account. My account period was up the 24th, so I dropped the cancellation notice today. They reacted immediately and killed my site, knocking me off-line and making no effort to refund any remaining monies. That certainly didn’t leave me with a good taste in my mouth about them. I felt trapped by their requirement and knocked off the air for no good reason. I asked for the DNS change from Network Solutions yesterday, but it hasn’t happened yet. If you’re reading this, it finally kicked in.
The new site is being hosted at Lunarpages. If this works out, I’ll probably stay with them a while. We’ll see how it goes.
As you may or may not have known, I had been hosting the site for the past few months at ApolloHosting. While their service was pretty good, their prices seemed high and they seemed best for small to medium websites with little to moderate traffic. While that describes my site most of the time, I am rapidly expanding it and did have a huge traffic increase last month when I posted the “G4, G5, and AMD Shootout” article in the ComputerZone. That required me to pay extra for transfer and made me take a look at what I was getting for my money from both a space and transfer perspective. After all, I didn’t know when I might hit paydirt again and wanted to be able to. (I’ve been telling my wife we need to get a dual 2Ghz G5 in here for testing, but so far, she’s not buying…) I wanted the capability to expand the site without it costing a fortune, and Apollo Hosting just did not fit that bill.
After doing a bit of research, I decided to give Lunarpages a try. I get twice the space and transfer for the same amount of money I was paying at Apollo Hosting, and I can reduce costs further by renewing for a year, something I’m not yet ready to do. But, you know what they say about getting what you pay for. My first impressions with Lunarpages have been--they are good but not great. I suffered through tons of “FTP errors” when uploading large files to the new website. Also, some file name capitalizations got changed in the transfer, and that caused me a lot of manual labor on the server side to keep things straight. (I think that was the fault of Adobe Go Live, but that’s something I’m still checking out.) The down time on Sept 18 and after was not their fault, though. It happened because Apollo Hosting requires that you submit a cancellation at least 5 days before your billing period ends or they will automatically renew your account. My account period was up the 24th, so I dropped the cancellation notice today. They reacted immediately and killed my site, knocking me off-line and making no effort to refund any remaining monies. That certainly didn’t leave me with a good taste in my mouth about them. I felt trapped by their requirement and knocked off the air for no good reason. I asked for the DNS change from Network Solutions yesterday, but it hasn’t happened yet. If you’re reading this, it finally kicked in.
The new site is being hosted at Lunarpages. If this works out, I’ll probably stay with them a while. We’ll see how it goes.
posted by Andy Foster at
3:35 AM
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