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I have had a gutfull of asmallorange hosting

Started by Ed, September 29, 2009, 06:33:38 PM

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Ed

September 29, 2009, 06:33:38 PM
Asmallorange's hosting has been so unreliable these past few weeks (down, yet again, tonight - for several hours) that I have decided to bite the bullet and change hosts. This couldn't have come at a worse time. Right in the middle of our competition, with the chance that e-mails might go amiss, both during the many and lengthy server crashes and during the time it takes for our DNS to catch up with our new host's server address.

I plan to set the ball rolling tomorrow, nonetheless. I have had enough of asmallorange.com :bangh: :bangh: :bangh: :pissed: :pissed: :pissed: :bangh: :bangh: :bangh:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

delboy

#1
September 30, 2009, 03:02:58 AM
Fingers crossed, Ed!

Can't you sellotape a notice on the Cafe door pointing to the new address?

Derek
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it."

Robert B. Parker

Woody

#2
September 30, 2009, 02:04:26 PM
Never a simple nor straightforward undertaking Ed - the very best of luck. May the gods of the digital age smile upon you and make the journey swift and successful.  :smiley:

Rather you than me.

all the best.

Do you know what they've done to create this havoc? For me it has a whiff of moving from Linux to Windows.
___________________________________________________________
Writers Anonymous(http://www.writersanonymous.org.uk)-a source of sinister anthologies
Perception is nine tenths of the look. Brave Dave the Feather in Caribbean Conspiracy

Ed

#3
September 30, 2009, 02:39:03 PM
No, I think they are just an inept bunch of useless bastards, Woody. Nothing has changed that I know of. They just say there's a website on the same server as ours that's creating a load spike that crashes the server, but they don't know which site it is, and don't seem to have clue #1 about how to track it down. They have suggested several times that I purchase VPS, which asmallorange claim will solve all our problems. I refused on the basis that I don't trust them to run the VPS servers any better than the shared hosting, plus it smacks of rewarding piss poor customer service, as VPS hosting obviously costs more than our current package. I have even wondered if they make their shared hosting as crap as it is in order to sell customers the more expensive package. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Del - shame it's not that easy. When you buy a domain name, you have to have a DNS server so that when somebody puts your website name into a browser and hits 'go' your site receives a hit. The DNS server needs to know where the site is physically located, ie what server it's on, so when you load up your site, you get a server address, which you have to give to the DNS server, so that all the traffic meant for your site reaches the server it's hosted on. Hence, when I move us from asmallorange to a better web host, the address of  the server will be different. So at some point I'll have to go to our DNS server and tell it where the site is moving to. Once that's done, the name change has to propogate all around the world, which can take a couple of days. In the meantime, somebody in Brazil might still be looking at the old server, while somebody in Blighty is looking at the new server.

What I'll probably do is put the forum into mantenance mode, with a message saying we'll be back soon, so users will see that message on the old server until the name propogates to the new one for them. I'll leave the forum as it is on the new server, so as soon as you see it you'll be able to use it, without us losing posts.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Ed

#4
September 30, 2009, 04:47:38 PM
That latest outage (approx 2 hours) made up my mind to get this over and done with as quickly as poss. I've signed up with a new host now, and the move is immanent. See you all on the other side :afro:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Woody

.
#5
September 30, 2009, 05:43:45 PM Last Edit: February 11, 2011, 07:55:38 PM by Woody
mustn't have my stuff here, ed keeps it.
___________________________________________________________
Writers Anonymous(http://www.writersanonymous.org.uk)-a source of sinister anthologies
Perception is nine tenths of the look. Brave Dave the Feather in Caribbean Conspiracy

Dragoro

#6
September 30, 2009, 10:32:21 PM
Seems that the move has happened. Pretty smooth!
NEGOTIUM PERAMBULANS IN TENEBRIS.

Ed

#7
October 01, 2009, 03:04:07 AM
Thanks - yeah, I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but the move does seem to have gone relatively smoothly.

I can already tell this server is better than the one at asmallorange - everything is that much quicker to load. Let's hope it stays that way :dance:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Pharosian

#8
October 01, 2009, 08:54:07 AM
Doesn't seem like it took very long for the new address to propagate, either... at least not for this user "across the pond"...  :dance:

Ed

#9
October 01, 2009, 02:18:18 PM
Quote from: Pharosian on October 01, 2009, 08:54:07 AM
Doesn't seem like it took very long for the new address to propagate, either... at least not for this user "across the pond"...  :dance:

That might have something to do with the server being in California :afro:

Did anybody get to see the maintenance page I put up on the old server? I set everything up before I went to bed - had to wait an hour for the site to upload to the new hosts. Once I was sure it was all there safely I put the old forum into maintenance mode and changed the addresses on our name server to point at our new host's servers, which all in all meant I didn't get to bed until 1:30am :buck: but when I woke up this morning it was all working fairly well.

We had a few path issues, because my user name on the new server was different to the one on the old server. So I had a bit of tinkering to do this morning for an hour to put all that right, but (touch wood) it all seems to be running smoothly. It'll be nice not to have the inconvenience of being offline for a couple of hours tonight, like we usually were with ASO lately.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Woody

.
#10
October 01, 2009, 03:13:54 PM Last Edit: February 25, 2011, 08:24:13 PM by Woody
.
___________________________________________________________
Writers Anonymous(http://www.writersanonymous.org.uk)-a source of sinister anthologies
Perception is nine tenths of the look. Brave Dave the Feather in Caribbean Conspiracy

Ed

#11
October 01, 2009, 03:31:52 PM Last Edit: October 01, 2009, 04:19:25 PM by Ed
Thanks for the congrats, Woody. Well spotted with the spellcheck. I remember that happening before - it's something to do with the way the host server is configured. Will have to do my homework again and ask them to enable something or other in php, or summat. Regular Marvo the Memory Man, I am :idiot:

Edit - I remember now. It's because 'pspell' isn't properly integrated with php on the server, so it needs recompiling by the techs on the host side.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Ed

#12
October 03, 2009, 05:59:50 AM
Bad news about the spellcheck. I sent a support request asking them to check out the way pspell was configured and they sent me this reply:

QuoteWe used to have aspell as part of the standard server configuration some time back but withdrew it as it was found to be causing load and resource usage. Please note that you are hosted on a shared hosting server with many accounts hosted alongside yours and so we cannot let anything degrade the performance of the server. After doing some tests, I am sorry to say that this cannot be implemented on the server. You will have to advise clients to use spell checker plugins which are commonly available and far easier to configure.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. If there is anything else that you need from us, please do not hesitate to ask.

So it looks like we won't be getting our spellcheck back, unless we move hosts again :/
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

delph_ambi

#13
October 03, 2009, 06:20:19 AM
Just use Firefox as your browser. Simple. I expect other browsers have spell check options too.

Dragoro

#14
October 03, 2009, 10:38:29 AM
Hehe as aspiring writers, shouldnt be be able to spell pretty decently anyways?
NEGOTIUM PERAMBULANS IN TENEBRIS.
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