Comments on: Idol Blogger Crashes Server and Teaches us a Lesson about Hosting

By: Nelly Spencer

Nelly Spencer — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:00:48 +0000

This does raise a concern, especially when you depend on a free service. The catch is that it takes time to generate a following so you cannot predict the size that your blog will be. I think companies should host their own blogs on their own servers so as to avoid a potential disaster.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:31:37 +0000

I’ve been with surpasshosting on both shared and reseller hosting since 2003. This is undoubtedly the best hosting company I have been with (out of 6) They run phpsuexec on all their servers, which is sure the best way to do things on shared hosting. Support has ALWAYS been excellent and I have had genuine 99.9% uptime. Aren’t I the lucky one! nope, thousand of others will credit Surpass with the same good repute.

By: » How Wordpress Blogging Pays My Bills Zulit: The Terry Zulit Financial Freedom Blog

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:36:38 +0000

[...] a service like Blogger.com you can never be sure your content is safe and sound. I want you to read this post and that should be enough to convince you to start your blogging journey with your own private [...]

By: Trent

Trent — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:00:27 +0000

Darren,

When did you switch to a dedicated host, and why? At what point in a blog’s life cycle do you think it is worthwhile?

Thanks,

Trent

By: Are web host overselling?

Are web host overselling? — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:40:52 +0000

[...] I have used a virtual and reseller account at surpasshosting.com for a while now. I would strongly recommend them as your web hosting company. Update: I have to strike this one, I ran into this post by problogger.net, it scared me. I never ran into problem with surpass hosting except that time they installed phpsuexec. Their technical support has been perfect on this issue. [...]

By: Peter Davis

Peter Davis — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:01:29 +0000

Yep, I’ve heard of this all too often. This is why I proselytize so much for thrid party backups. With my own sites, I use a three-tiered backup process, 1 the host, 2 a thrid party (another host) and 3 my own hard drive. I have not had a significant data loss on any of the sites I use this on. Recently I did have a problem on one site, and the host’s backup failed (it was hosted on a Servint VPS), but thanks to having backups in other places, I only lost a few hours of data (rolling back to the most recent uncorrupted backup. Do it, and do it religiously.

By: blogHelper » Daily WordPress Backups with WP-Cron and GMail

blogHelper » Daily WordPress Backups with WP-Cron and GMail — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 13:44:42 +0000

[...] We’ve heard lots about lousy hosts that suspend hosting accounts without a tinge of guilt, or good hosts with just some lousy luck – crashed servers, bombed hard disk drives or corrupted databases. I’ve even had some friends who’ve lost weeks of posts due to database problems or sheer carelessness. [...]

By: Lo Mejor de las Últimas Semanas :: ProWeblogs - Generando Ingresos con tus Blogs

Lo Mejor de las Últimas Semanas :: ProWeblogs - Generando Ingresos con tus Blogs — Sat, 27 May 2006 14:52:00 +0000

[...] ProBlogger postea una valiosa lección en cuanto a la importancia del hosting. Yo ya he tocado numerosas veces el tema – por experiencia propia y ajenas – y vale la pena aprender de las catástrofes de los demás para evitarlas. [...]

By: Woland

Woland — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:20:34 +0000

imeNOC IISS

Hi,

I already responded to the site owner. I am not the person doing the
ticket, but I know of the situation. No one’s data is being held ransom.
If he has to move hosts, then we provide a backup. If he hasn’t received
his backup yet, then he has to reply to his ticket to get the link to
his backup.

Thanks,
Kayla

Boris wrote:
> IP Address: xx.xxx.xx.xxx
> Name: B.
> E-Mail: xxxxxxx@gmail.com
> Feedback: I happened to read this story:
> http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/05/24/idol-blogger-crashes-server-and-teaches-us-a-lesson-about-hosting/#more-2632
>
> Keeping people\’s data ransom, in order to force them into costly upgrade is totaly unacceptable.
> You have just lost a few thousands customers.
>
>

By: Blogger Crashes Server - Web Hosting Suspend Account. at Gecko & Fly | Blogger Templates | Contextual Advertising | Blogging Tips

Thu, 25 May 2006 15:57:45 +0000

[...] idolbloglive.com is a very good example of how we can protect ourself from situation like this. Accordinng to Problogger, idol blog live crash when it reach 3500 page view per hour and the hosting company suspend the account, holding his blog for ransom by refusing him the rights to transfer it to another hosting company. Unfortunately for it’s owner (djslim) his hosting provider suspended his account saying that he had crashed their server and is virtually holding his content ransom. He writes, “The only way to come back online or to retrieve the files is to upgrade my account which costs $110.00 a month.” [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 25 May 2006 13:37:24 +0000

At the end of the day, you cant beat a dedicated box for security, and they are getting cheaper, you can find dedicated boxes these days for as little as $50-$60 per month.

I will rather go for $50-$60 VPS than a $50-$60 “dedicated server”, which is most likely a Celeron with desktop-grade hardware, slow IO, non-redundant disk, unmanaged, etc. Where VPS at that price range is most likely to be fully managed on high-end servers.

And running a dedicated server is no more secure than running a VPS on a paravirtualisation technology like Xen, which all VMs are isolated. At the end, you don’t really own the dedicated server, but it is leased to you by the hosting company under terms and conditions. Unlike co-location you don’t have physical access, and there still exists possibility that they’ll disconnect you and hold your data for ransom. (obviously most good hosts don’t do)

You need a good dedicated (or a cluster of those) to run one very busy site. However if you have a handful of blogsites, I’ll rather host them in different VPS at different data centres. Never put all eggs in one basket…

By: Enda Quicklinks

Enda Quicklinks — Thu, 25 May 2006 11:36:04 +0000

Blog American Idol Crashed

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/05/24/idol-blogger-crashes-server-and-teaches-us-a-lesson-about-hosting/...

By: DJSlim

DJSlim — Thu, 25 May 2006 03:09:48 +0000

I forgot to mention that the root http://www.brentnatzle.com redirects also to a blog that was on the hosting account that was cancelled

By: DJSlim

DJSlim — Thu, 25 May 2006 03:08:08 +0000

Can a wb-savvyperson explain how he was able to get the page up that announced the site was down (http://www.brentnatzle.com/down.htm) and which has a donation link….? go to the root (http://www.brentnatzle.com/) and you get a page that says the account was suspended… Just curious.

Yeah very simple I bought the domain name and hosting from seperate people as mentioned in the comments by someone and when they shut down my hosting, I put up a down page on another hosting account and redirected my domain name to that page.

By: Miriguy

Miriguy — Thu, 25 May 2006 02:33:37 +0000

there should be Service Level Agreement (SLA), between the 2 parties.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Thu, 25 May 2006 01:37:38 +0000

Chris
VPS isn’t a bad stepping stone, and you can get some pretty good offers out there, but I find the risk is similar to shared hosting (in my experience anyway) that you are often crammed onto a box with others and hence the risk is high.
At the end of the day, you cant beat a dedicated box for security, and they are getting cheaper, you can find dedicated boxes these days for as little as $50-$60 per month. If you were making even $100 a month from Adsense (and nothing else) I’d recommend one, because if you want to grow to higher figures you need the infrastructure to support you, and shared hosting in most cases is a time bomb waiting to go off.

By: Mike Sigers

Mike Sigers — Thu, 25 May 2006 01:31:44 +0000

My daughter had one of her sites shut dowm in the same manner for almost the exact same usage.

500 people online and about 3500 page views in a short time.

I only had one choice….I bought her a dedicated server to host her site @ http://www.katharine-mcphee.net.

Shared hosting’s okay for a sales letter site and a blog that only get a couple hundered pageviews a day.

By: DJSlim

DJSlim — Thu, 25 May 2006 00:39:38 +0000

Well I learned my lesson and am taking every comment and suggestion everyone made here to heart. I screwed up using shared hosting but I am happy to report the site is back online at this time thanks to some nice emails and nasty emails to my host. Bottom line is I learned my lesson and am back online.

By: http://ben.hamilton.id.au » Blog Archive » When should a web site be turned off?

Wed, 24 May 2006 23:56:35 +0000

[...] In the comments on this post, over at ProBlogger, a discussion is raging about how an American Idol blog site has been turned off, without notice, because it exceeded it’s bandwidth/server limits. [...]

By: Chris Knowles

Chris Knowles — Wed, 24 May 2006 23:04:33 +0000

The jump from shared hosting to dedicated server is pretty big and you’ve either got to love your hobby or be making some return on the AdSense :)
VPS is a good in-between option. With dedicated resources, there’s none of the problems associated with shared hosting and although it will run slower under heavier loads than a full-blown server it is considerably cheaper.
Most VPS hosts also offer easy upgrade paths to dedicated servers making a progression as you grow (traffic + income) pretty painless.