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Time to rebuild my host spread

He may have warned one or two, but certainly nothing coordinated, and noticeably, nothing here - he waited for me to grind the answer.

I haven't checked his local site announcements - the logistics are cleared here because this is the same forum as the offer ads. Posting offers here but closing notices locally is a variant of the imbalance I am working against.

It's also a lesson in a couple other things - it is my present discussion point against the Post-to-host model : even grade C posts (random, but not spam) are the client's semi-creative thoughts, so when a host just wanders off, there's lost labor time and it feels exhausting at the end to post to a forum with 12 visitors and then it crumbles anyway.
 
Tyler said:
Do you have backups for the clients?
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This is a tough one. I use a Develop Local Then Post model for my site, so except for a stray misc file, I have perfect backups already. The last point of this incident is, Mr. Mcintyre, I would like you to certify that you have destroyed my copy of your data. I believe failed hosts are a ticking bomb form of security risk. I believe in the worth of the hosts of my study, but on a broad scale, I don't trust every misc host not to simply sell my files somewhere. It gets even worse when you consider the free vs paid host split - files are bad enough, but what about payment data! Very roughly, "DDay" for that phenomenon is a couple years out, say for example 2014.
 
Well I still don't know why he closed. Was it lack of money or did someone abuse on his services and he got shut down by a higher authority?

He was willing to let people host boy child photograph galleries on his free hosting and let them sell the pictures. That would send up red flags in a lot of places - there was discussion about it on his forum before he shut it down.
 
Tyler said:
He was willing to let people host boy child photograph galleries on his free hosting and let them sell the pictures.
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That's true. I remember seeing the thread about it on his site. It's also kind of ironic that he shut down on the first of the month too. Almost makes you wonder if his funding was cut off, or he didn't make the payment on his server.
 
deeplist said:
That's true. I remember seeing the thread about it on his site. It's also kind of ironic that he shut down on the first of the month too. Almost makes you wonder if his funding was cut off, or he didn't make the payment on his server.
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It was not funding, my server was free.
 
Sometimes people just plain run into problems. I'm sure we've all been there, but not everyone can tough it out and not give up on it.

Still, I also find this interesting how even hosts that appeared to be relatively stable for a long time suddenly get into trouble or disappear outright. Is the industry really that unstable at the low end of things?
 
Seraphim said:
Sometimes people just plain run into problems. I'm sure we've all been there, but not everyone can tough it out and not give up on it.

Still, I also find this interesting how even hosts that appeared to be relatively stable for a long time suddenly get into trouble or disappear outright. Is the industry really that unstable at the low end of things?
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Low, medium, and high.

I just bought myself a nice business library culled from 60% off Borders bankrupty discounts. See the news for the other recent implosions.

The bigger problem is the instinct not to report impending trouble because "reporting trouble is always bad", or so the snap-reaction has it.

This industry is particularly plagued though by the confusion between educational learning exercises vs businesses. (I'm all for some guy deciding to practice his server manangement skills for 8 months, prototype a business... he'll learn more there than a random high school class - but the customer has a hard time telling them apart.)

Don't forget the third animal rarely mentioned - the Turnover Specialist. These are guys who get involved with a host, do contract marketing for some x months, then sell the new entity as "host + 100 clients". Unfortunately all bets are off with what the new owner decides to do with it. Looks at the new influx of user names that are barely English.

Without too many delusions of grandeur, I believe project/services like mine will begin to provide external info separate from ads to help clients wade through the high noise in this industry.
 
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I had a brief read over this thread, and I just want to say this is an absolutely interesting read, coming out of free web host request forum.

Thank you TaoPhoenix for keeping this thread updated with your findings, as well as others who participated in the discussions.
 
Thank you kindly Rosareven!
In case your eyes played tricks on you, both IsMyWebsite and Seraphim who replied to your other thread are featured hosts in my study. I particularly believe that having mirror copies of a site can help reduce the adventures of any one host having troubles, although it can sometimes be a lot of work to keep them in synch!
 
I noticed that indeed, and I am currently waiting for approval from both of them after having communicated via PM.

I love the idea of keeping mirror copies to maintain the website with crucial meaning for me, but I often find myself losing motivation to work on that over time, which is the case with many other people really. It is so much easier said than done in the long run.
 
Currently moving your site from a server that is having a bout of instability to a more stable machine. It's been up and down every few minutes for several days now, and from tracking the provider's status updates they at first seemed unable to resolve the situation quickly, now they are not updating status at all and will no longer be used by me for anything more than a backup dump.

Edit: Ack. The transfer was interrupted by that server being unreliable, and data loss took place.
Was trying to avoid that by moving your site before it died entirely.

I've restored the latest backup I had, but it is likely out of sync with the other versions.
 
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Seraphim said:
Currently moving your site from a server that is having a bout of instability to a more stable machine. It's been up and down every few minutes for several days now, and from tracking the provider's status updates they at first seemed unable to resolve the situation quickly, now they are not updating status at all and will no longer be used by me for anything more than a backup dump.

Edit: Ack. The transfer was interrupted by that server being unreliable, and data loss took place.
Was trying to avoid that by moving your site before it died entirely.

I've restored the latest backup I had, but it is likely out of sync with the other versions.
Click to expand...

Why not just re-start the transfer so it completes without data loss?
 
Tyler said:
Why not just re-start the transfer so it completes without data loss?
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If I could have, I would have quietly done so instead of saying anything since I've been dealing with broken transfers all day. Data would not have been lost, it would just mean another retry.

What happened with his was I didn't realize the transferred copy was incomplete until I had removed the original and attempted to restore the copy on the other machine. My current structure doesn't let me restore a site that I already am serving on another machine due to the DNS conflicts that would result. I will definately be developing a safer procedure for server transfers so as to keep this from happening again- probably something involving verifying the transfer integrity before removing the site from the old machine. But in this case I know Tao has full backups and syncs versions regularly, so I've restored what I have from the last full backup to his account and will have to deal with what comes of it.

Was completly my fault, I should have checked the integrity of the backup before removing his site from the unreliable server.
 
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Gutsy Seraphim. This is one of those "0.1 point" problems - data loss is never fun, and it could have messed up some other client, but better just to announce it and take the 0.1 than try to get all squirrelly and hide it at which point the decimal flips into 1.0! (Remember gang, for obscure reasons there is only approx. 2.8 points on the scale, so you can see a host can basically survive any reasonable number of 0.1's but not much more than two full points.)

The good news is that you weren't on the lead spot for a while so I have at least two prior versions to choose from. I'll do a reload in a few days.
 
Major New Design & Study Near-Final Results

Okay everyone,

In line with the wind down, I put through a massive new redesign. A few years back I was enamored of a big LA-Sprawl style structure, which shows its weakness when it goes undeveloped for years.

I returned to the Mobile style, which also reflects that my interests have moved a little so half of the placeholders were articles that no longer interested me.

http://taophoenix.ismywebsite.com/ReVisionWhiteMobile.html

The further result is that the study results are much clearer now. Congratulations to the six finalist hosts. The tiers are my approximate rating of strength. After much thought, I switched the final order of the top tier. Azoundria of IsMyWebsite is now the winner, having finally beaten tough contender cWahi through a mix of better panels, and offering configuration choices. Late entrant Decker Services sounds like it is pretty solid, so I am satisfied with a second place. After all, the raw time duration spent was ultimately a test, not a county fair contest. CWahi remains with its audacious claim intact, but it is no longer a presence here on FWS so they slide to third.

In the second tier, Babblehost and Perfectz are gathering momentum. Seraphim slides into the last spot through sheer willpower.

The former entrants are doing a mix of activities from starting new hosts to reviving their former ones after some bumps. This has been a pretty civil adventure, so all told everyone put in their efforts, and some of the alumni learned a few things for their next attempts. That's worth a point of stress because I traded some aspects of "ruthless science" for warmer judgement calls. I am out to create recommendations for hosts, and I can recommend the remaining ones here. There was some interim horse-race excitement early on which was fun, but a surprise of the last six months was that eventually it all collapsed into a clean final result.

Life is never perfect so all of a sudden a perfect storm could wipe out a couple of these hosts, but I'd roughly rate this final lineup at about 85% confidence for one year and 70% for two years, which ought to be enough for "this generation" of people seeking hosts to get their stuff done.

Anyone can still post notes into the thread as they like. Now that the results are in, I will be less fierce with minor outage blips, though I do still require major events to be reported. Seraphim's recent note is a good example, and he gets mention as someone whose raw results are a little rough, but he seems to be around and might be better than one of the other lower-rung hosts on the service availability side. Without confusing the graphical design, Babblehost once rated themselves as allowing adult content, though new clients should always confirm that because we're teetering on the edge of a new censorship age.
 
Perfectz disqualified

I'm really sorry to post this, but Perfectz has taken themselves out of the running.

I just now found this, 15 days late, on the "Host Announcement". You're doing a turbo-rebuild and don't have the time to make backups, which will wipe out all existing accounts, and you couldn't post it here? I'm sorry but you'll have to join the other alumni of the study at the "Next Adventure" level.

I'm upset. I only have one rule, which is "don't croak, but if you do, go graceful". "One and only warning" ?!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PerfectZ Rebuild - Every one *should* read!!!

Dear users and non-users of PerfectZ free web hosting,

As you may know, it has been more than a year after we have launched our free web hosting service.

Many people have enjoyed our service and some of them are still doing so. We have got so much of positive feedback from our clients for the service we offered.

Due to some abusers who used our service for illegal things, our sponsorship deal provided by ExaBytes Inc. is now on it's final stage.

The sponsorship for the dedicated server which is used to provide free web hosting will be disconnected from their network on the 02nd of May 2011. Therefore we need to clear out everything and minimize the damage as much as we can.

Since there are still so many inactive accounts exist on the server, we are going to rebuild the whole service erasing all the existing accounts.

So if you are a PerfectZ free web hosting client, this is the first and last announcement for creating your backups. We won't be responsible for any data loss because of the server move. Therefore it is your own responsibility to take your own website backups safe and secure.
Note: You can use cPanel account backup feature to backup your website data.

If you think this is the end of PerfectZ free web hosting, it's NOT!!!
We will be buying a new server from a different datacenter and starting from the beginning.
The service might be down for maximum of one week because we need to do lots of things from our end. But it will be up again and won't face problems again. We promise that!

Since we don't have a stable way of generating money to pay for the server bills, we are requesting donations from everyone who can do something for us.

Also if you are not comfortable with transferring backups, we can do that for you for 5$. We do this because we need to find money to pay for the server bills.
Also, these paying clients will face a less downtime comparing to others.

See what you can do for keep us alive: http://perfectz.info/donate.php

Thank you for your understanding.

We'll meet again at a different place with better features and performance.

Tweet and share this news with your friends and colleagues.

Your free web host,
PerfectZ free web hosting
 
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