TheHolo.Net
Oct 28th, 2002, 03:32:42 AM
Here is the full lowdown on the hosting situation.
We went to a new host mainly because of lack of backups by the host, running out of space, and site uptime reliability. I traded many an email with the support staff at the new host expressing concerns after having installed our DB, our files and tested our site. I learned from our host that our site was too server intensive for a virtual (widely shared) host server.
Virtual hosting is the most common and most inexpensive hosting option on the web. I had done some research on the vbulletin.com website/forums and noticed that most owners with our size sites were on dedicated or semi dedicated servers. Dedicated meaning the server is all theirs and not shared by anyone else and semi dedicated being one that very few people are on.
So with my exchange of emails with the new host they had suggested that we go with semi dedicated (much more expensive, yet my research showed that the new host I had chosen had the best priced semi dedicated solution at $69/month) and I was reluctant to agree because things really had gone fairly well with us on our original host, though the backup situation was my main driving force in not wanting to stay and all the complaints of downtime.
The new host techs went ahead and cleared me to go ahead and take the site live, and we went ahead with the move. All went fairly well but about 5 or 6 hours after we went live on the new host, they contacted me and said our forums were kicking the virtual server’s rear hard with constant disk writes, making it unreliable for others on the server.
I had previously asked if they could set me up a test account on semi dedicated so that I could “try before I/we buy”, to which they basically had said no, but now that our site was live and they saw how intensive our forums really were, they were more willing to give me a trial run, which is basically what we have been doing for the last 3 days, testing out the semi dedicated sever which only has a total of 4 clients on it.
When they offered this test run they said they would lower the monthly fee of semi dedicated and do the “domain parking” (making it so the swforums.net domain name would work as well as the sw-fans.net domain name), normally priced at a $25 flat fee, would be free, as incentive to stay with their service. So I agreed and here we are.
I got an email from them tonight asking what I thought of semi dedicated and they told me the details of 4 GB of space and 24 GB bandwidth and that it would cost us $69 a month, to which I replied saying “hey! Hold on a second, you offered to lower the price and give me the free domain parking as incentive to do this. What’s with the $69 a month fee?”
All was quickly resolved when they replied and said that they went ahead and spoke with their management and approved the free domain parking and a $50 a month fee for hosting, but there is still one small detail. We have to wait for final approval sometime tomorrow from the server administrator, when he checks our stats for the weekend on the server. It may be possible that we may have to move again, but from seeing some of the server side stats that I am able in the vB admin CP, I’m fairly confident that the semi dedicated will work well for us.
The moral of my little story is stay on salespeople’s backs if you want to get the deals. They will do all they can to stick it to you if you let them. Our new host however has proven with their support over the course of the last week that they are willing to take that extra step to please their customers, which I like a great deal. :)
I will post to this thread again tomorrow and let you all know what the system admin says about our stats and such.
We went to a new host mainly because of lack of backups by the host, running out of space, and site uptime reliability. I traded many an email with the support staff at the new host expressing concerns after having installed our DB, our files and tested our site. I learned from our host that our site was too server intensive for a virtual (widely shared) host server.
Virtual hosting is the most common and most inexpensive hosting option on the web. I had done some research on the vbulletin.com website/forums and noticed that most owners with our size sites were on dedicated or semi dedicated servers. Dedicated meaning the server is all theirs and not shared by anyone else and semi dedicated being one that very few people are on.
So with my exchange of emails with the new host they had suggested that we go with semi dedicated (much more expensive, yet my research showed that the new host I had chosen had the best priced semi dedicated solution at $69/month) and I was reluctant to agree because things really had gone fairly well with us on our original host, though the backup situation was my main driving force in not wanting to stay and all the complaints of downtime.
The new host techs went ahead and cleared me to go ahead and take the site live, and we went ahead with the move. All went fairly well but about 5 or 6 hours after we went live on the new host, they contacted me and said our forums were kicking the virtual server’s rear hard with constant disk writes, making it unreliable for others on the server.
I had previously asked if they could set me up a test account on semi dedicated so that I could “try before I/we buy”, to which they basically had said no, but now that our site was live and they saw how intensive our forums really were, they were more willing to give me a trial run, which is basically what we have been doing for the last 3 days, testing out the semi dedicated sever which only has a total of 4 clients on it.
When they offered this test run they said they would lower the monthly fee of semi dedicated and do the “domain parking” (making it so the swforums.net domain name would work as well as the sw-fans.net domain name), normally priced at a $25 flat fee, would be free, as incentive to stay with their service. So I agreed and here we are.
I got an email from them tonight asking what I thought of semi dedicated and they told me the details of 4 GB of space and 24 GB bandwidth and that it would cost us $69 a month, to which I replied saying “hey! Hold on a second, you offered to lower the price and give me the free domain parking as incentive to do this. What’s with the $69 a month fee?”
All was quickly resolved when they replied and said that they went ahead and spoke with their management and approved the free domain parking and a $50 a month fee for hosting, but there is still one small detail. We have to wait for final approval sometime tomorrow from the server administrator, when he checks our stats for the weekend on the server. It may be possible that we may have to move again, but from seeing some of the server side stats that I am able in the vB admin CP, I’m fairly confident that the semi dedicated will work well for us.
The moral of my little story is stay on salespeople’s backs if you want to get the deals. They will do all they can to stick it to you if you let them. Our new host however has proven with their support over the course of the last week that they are willing to take that extra step to please their customers, which I like a great deal. :)
I will post to this thread again tomorrow and let you all know what the system admin says about our stats and such.