You’ve probably noticed that my site has been having some crazy problems lately. There have been lots of timeouts reported by users trying to connect to it. And I’ve also had trouble accessing my databases. Needless to say, it sucks a lot. I wrote my hosting company about it, who have always been very helpful and they replied:
Please note that the usage of your website far exceeds normal websites and what we define as high-performance websites. The resources consumed from your website are not suitable for a shared hosting service and that is why we suggest a dedicated server.
All other major businesses who fall into this category use their own servers for the simple reason that a shared hosting environment will unlikely be suitable for their needs.
What I don’t get though is that my site doesn’t seem to be spiking at all in the level of traffic or usage. And in either case, I have an “unlimited” (ie, unmetered) amount of traffic according to my account agreement with them. Again, they’ve always been a great hosting company, but I’m really not sure about the advice they’re giving here. Does anybody reading this have experience with dedicated hosting and if it’s really necessary for somebody with my traffic needs? Here’s a link to my Sitemeter account so you can get a rough estimate of what kind of traffic I’m pulling down. Also, according to my site admin panel, my projected traffic for March is almost 20 gigs.
Admittedly, it would be sweet to have a dedicated server for this site. I think it would likely alleviate all those assy load times for the Google ads and the main page. But I’m seriously uninterested in getting into the extreme pricing of a lot of those services. Any advice or recommendations would be most appreciated.
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6 Comments
Well, being a conspiracy theorist I believe people and entities in positions of high power in the UN, Vatican, and aliens on our evil twin planet Earth are responsible for the problems. I had a strange day dream to back all these allegations up. The only reason the site is still accessible is because of a few rebel angels in hideout keeps the connection open. I’d say your hosting company is run by the demiurge itself. Be careful Rehcoub Mit. And for the love of God do not abbreviate and fornicate after you ate eight crates of crepes.
Yeah, I’ve noticed this.
Shared servers are annoying. You probably have some jackass on the same host with a poorly written script that’s causing an intermittent bottleneck. If you have shell access, and aren’t restricted from using ‘top’ or some other process monitor, you may be able to figure out which user is the culprit, and alert the admins about the specifics of the problem. This has happened to me before, and that’s how I worked it out.
People running bots are usually to blame; ie. IRC, AIM, what-have-you.
Surely with all those visitors, some kind soul who works for or owns a hosting service can do right by you. Maybe in the guise of a sponsorship deal?
Ha, for all I know, that jackass is me!
Hahaha, yeah. On more than one occasion, I’ve bitched for hours about somebody else being the problem, only to find out that some goofy, pointless experiment I had forgotten about days ago is still stuck in an infinite loop.
As far as a reliable Web host goes, the old adage “you get what you pay for” usually rings true. I pay $25/month to have my site hosted, and my ISP has never cut off my access, complained about “offensive” content, or cut me off if a kook or spammer complained about me. Your Web site gets far more hits than mine, though, so I’m not sure if they’d object to the amount of traffic you have. I doubt it, though. My Web site was originally hosted by AT&T, but they sold off their Web hosting service and it’s been an independent company for a few years now. The hosting site, if you’re interested, can be found at http://www.interland.net/ — hope this helps.