• Howdy! Welcome to our community of more than 130.000 members devoted to web hosting. This is a great place to get special offers from web hosts and post your own requests or ads. To start posting sign up here. Cheers! /Peo, FreeWebSpace.net
managed wordpress hosting

Time to rebuild my host spread

Seraphim said:
Just for reference, I am planning some scheduled maintainence to correct data errors on one of the hard drives in the RAID array. If all goes well it will only involve minimal downtime (reboots) in order to remove the offending drive from the array for diagnostics, followed by another reboot to reattach it if it checks out. Probably will not begin until Friday or Saturday, I need to make absolutely certain that all probable scenarios for this repair are covered in some way with minimal loss and consult the datacenter for recommended approach to this issue as far as actually restoring full capability on the offending drive is concerned.

Though if I can't repair the drive through software I will have to schedule an outage for a replacement drive to be installed. No data will be lost though, I will be making a full backup to another server before making any changes to the current setup. Just in case, even though with a raid array it's not terribly difficult since for the most part it is automated.
Click to expand...

How bad could the scheduled outage get? Most of a day?
 
TaoPhoenix said:
How bad could the scheduled outage get? Most of a day?
Click to expand...

Depends on how wrong things going wrong gets.

I am planning it out to minimize downtime wherever possible, like I said the worst of it will hopefully be no more than a couple of reboots.

But if I lose the array entirely and have to reinstall the OS, it will mean several hours of downtime at a minimum to reinstall enough software to restore the account data.

Fortunately because my last hardware failure was corrected using a RAID array in order to prevent data loss in the event of future failures, between my representative at the datacenter assisting and the hardware structure in use it shouldn't be any worse than a few reboots with maybe a couple of minutes of downtime a piece. Absolute worst-case that something broke in a way that can't be fixed anytime soon, I will reload all active accounts into my other server to keep people's sites alive while I repair my big server.

Just a bit up in the air right now, as the system has had this faulty drive in the array for some time and remains stable anyway. I just don't like the fact that it is giving regular errors, and want to correct it.

As for the Cross Industries thing, no response so far to my email. It is likely by now that he is already out of town for the four months he talked about, during which time all of his servers will be shut down and deleted for non-payment if he didn't instruct his hired technicians tending his store to maintain them for him. And seeing that one has already quit, it's probable that he did not.

Also what is the current version for your site. SeanieB and I were just comparing the versions on our two servers, he seems to still have the ReVision file present with incorrect image mappings while I show no such file on mine and only have the phone version with the current roster visible.
 
Last edited:
"Also what is the current version for your site. SeanieB and I were just comparing the versions on our two servers, he seems to still have the ReVision file present with incorrect image mappings while I show no such file on mine and only have the phone version with the current roster visible. "

Heh I really get a kick out of it when y'all trade notes. I find it hysterically funny, but it also shows the type of inter-host communication I hoped would develop.

I did make an effort a while back to Synch everything - ReVisionPhone is the new mobile name because I have a Wide Screen version under dev at the same time now.

So last I knew,
http://taophoenix.lostsignalweb.com/ReVisionPhone.html and
http://taophoenix.seraphimlabs.net/ReVisionPhone.html

and in fact most all the others are the same.



Re Rankings, we're well into Round 3 by this point. Except for CWahi, just about everyone's had a blip.

My mobile design has room for 4 hosts on a line, and there are 6 left in the study. I'm tempted to experiment with a "communication sort" because of the odd case where CWahi and IsMyWebsite don't follow the ebb and flow here. Colorhost fell out of touch a bit and had a blip a while back, but overall they made it. I could make them a label that says "Round 2 Winners" and stick them on the bottom tier.

I'd consider it a dead heat among the rest of you. Then I get into a label coloring problem. (Colorhost is easy - grey because you are under monitor but you retired your free services division. This will place you last in the rankings, but hey - you're still ON the board!) I tried my hand at giving extra creds to Seraphim and Babble for allowing adult signups, but a red indicator is too misleading. Beyond that gets into the Micro-Manage category I won't get into. No single one blip will start a big shuffle of everyone's rank.
 
Last edited:
Hiya Brandon G!

Meanwhile heh I got tired of the dead link wasting load time. : )
Barring glitches, the whole spread should be updated now.

And - over 500 posts! Yay!
 
Last edited:
help

By now y'all have seen that with a certain exception, I promote my host selections here with a remark every 3-4 months. I value longevity and stability over flashy features.
 
rajugundam said:
By now y'all have seen that with a certain exception, I promote my host selections here with a remark every 3-4 months. I value longevity and stability over flashy features.
Click to expand...

For example I would prefer fewer features if that means the host stays in business longer, rather than offering something like a free VPS and croaking in 3 months.
 
Hey Tao!

I finally stepped into web 2.0 a bit farther, and I set up a twitter account for quick status updates and announcements from our team, so if you're a Twitter user, you might want to follow

http://twitter.com/lostsignalnet

Also, a complete overhaul of our site is underway.
 
I know of twitter but I haven't done much with it. I'd still like bad news notes to be copied here because unifying the news of the hosts under study is the point of this thread. Things like upgrade news are optional here. I think it would serve as positive marketing for the hosts, but there is no penalty for not posting non-performance memos.
 
Thought it might be interesting to post about the launch of our new site design! I'm thrilled about how it's came out and I'm gonna be making it even better over the coming weeks,

Check it out, and let me know what you think, I really appreciate it!
 
Seanieb said:
Thought it might be interesting to post about the launch of our new site design! I'm thrilled about how it's came out and I'm gonna be making it even better over the coming weeks,

Check it out, and let me know what you think, I really appreciate it!
Click to expand...

Pretty good there Seanie!

My main comment to start is that there is a big discussion ambling over the web on Flash. See for example Apple refusing to put Flash on its i-Stuff. But many smart tech users run Flashblock and NoScript etc because of the general abuse of flash for ads across the web and scripts of all kinds doing Evil Things.

A quick test of a firefox plugin says if I have Flash off it deletes your presentation of features and if javascript is off it makes your site nearly unusable because the menus stop working.

I suggest a "power-user" Html alternate page with the same content. Also, power users would want a kind of dashboard/monitor station with compressed essential info, perhaps a server-up check, your twitter feed, etc.

Regards,

--Tao
 
TaoPhoenix said:
Pretty good there Seanie!

My main comment to start is that there is a big discussion ambling over the web on Flash. See for example Apple refusing to put Flash on its i-Stuff. But many smart tech users run Flashblock and NoScript etc because of the general abuse of flash for ads across the web and scripts of all kinds doing Evil Things.

A quick test of a firefox plugin says if I have Flash off it deletes your presentation of features and if javascript is off it makes your site nearly unusable because the menus stop working.

I suggest a "power-user" Html alternate page with the same content. Also, power users would want a kind of dashboard/monitor station with compressed essential info, perhaps a server-up check, your twitter feed, etc.

Regards,

--Tao
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm working with the system to see if I can make a menu available for people without JavaScript enabled, hopefully I can figure that part out, maybe through a secondary menu or something..
 
That's partially why I keep mine in an older incarnation of Web2.0. It does have the graphics capability of newer systems, while the code itself is object compatible with all but the oldest of browsers. At worst a mobile device would have layout distortion caused by the small screen size.

I will eventually update mine, but I am keeping my focus on accessibility to everyone rather than flashy site features that only waste resources and complicate things for people with older computers or using mobile devices.
 
torpix said:
Yes We do. http://www.discoverywebz.com/shared/
Click to expand...

Hi Torpix.

I managed to be unclear, so I will try my post again. First of all, I think your overall strategy is on the right track - one of the best candidates to support a free host is one that does paid on the next level up.

However, I got a chance to look at your plans. Whether my efforts or someone else's gets there first, I believe the Free Host market will soon semi-standardize on Min 1Gig HD for a free plan. (But no higher for a while, because once past that mark is the slippery slope to overselling.) Therefore I have the following comments.

A. I recommend you rework your plan spread so that the 1 Gig package is the free one. I am fine with 10Gig as bandwidth. Then make your 2Gig package the $1.49 price. Then you will notice your 4Gig as is falls perfectly on the sliding scale.

B. Because of my theory above, I have standardized my study on 1Gig plans from the hosts. I can admit you into Round 4 if you have a free plan of 1Gig. In parts of my study I have worked out "Manager's Coupons" to even things out, but I'd rather the plan be a stock one available to the public.

Regards,

--Tao
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top