Hosting Recommendations Anyone?
Yesterday, Ever After received the biggest spike in visitors it has seen in a long time. While the numbers themselves aren’t all that impressive (about 800 unique visitors, 3000 pageviews, and 28000 hits), it was certainly enough to drive WordPress crazy.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if it just gave me the white screen of death, because then at least I could look it up and find fixes to it. Nope, it had to be sneaky and make me think that everything was ok, when in fact, it wasn’t. The footers for my blog and for my wordpress admin panel wouldn’t load. Ok, so maybe I could let that go, but then it got worse. It was like my site was melting from the bottom up, because things from the footer on would just start disappearing one by one. I was pulling my hair out while I disabled and enabled my plugins over and over again.
I think I managed to stop the meltdown of my site by disabling a couple obsolete plugins and installing WP Super Cache, a plugin which claims to make your wordpress Digg-proof. But now I think back about it, this all seems like one big joke.
- The “spike” in traffic I got is the traffic many popular sites get daily.
- My site wasn’t even on the front page of Digg, or any other popular social media site.
My conclusion? Something is wrong with my host. Don’t get me wrong, because Cirtex Host has been great, with affordable prices and all, but if a measily little spike in traffic like that is going to mess up my site, imagine what would happen if my site was on Digg! What annoyed me even more was when I tried talking to their support through chat and AIM (both were “available”) and they made me wait for an hour. One whole gorgeously fat hour. And they probably would’ve kept me waiting had I decided to stick around. So I left a ticket complaining and asking them what was going on, and they replied this morning saying
The server load is normal and there is no server Spike, could you please double check with your end, if you still have problem let us know with the exact URL and logins. Thank you.
I thought the reply was dumb and redundant because I obviously checked everything on my end and realized something was wrong to have left a ticket. But my site stopped melting away and the footer is back, good relief, but the load time for my admin panel is still as slow as ever. Funny every time something goes wrong, they never reply on the spot (though they are “available”) and their ticket reply is always “everything is sunny side up! 
”. My conclusion? Cirtex Host is good if you have a small personal site/blog looking for a home. However, if you’re looking to use a lot of scripts and databases, or you’re looking to seriously expand your site, you better find another host.
Which is why I’m saying a big fat bye bye and moving out once my plan ends with Cirtex. I’m debating between Holdfire Network’s custom plan and Xfluro’s $10 promotion. Opinions, comments, reviews, and even new host recommendations are ALL WELCOME. I’m getting desperate here.
Oli says:
Hey!
I run quite a few websites and deal with approximately 10,000 visitors a day at the moment! I have used servage now for 5 years and have not had any problems
Servage are pretty good, they give you a huge amount of bandwidth, lots of disk space and pretty much any feature you could ever want!
It has also survived the Digg effect several times on my geekywood.com and e-techblog.com websites!
you can find them at http://www.servage.com
or
http://www.servage.net/?coupon=cust15949
Which gives me two months free hosting and you an extra 25gb webspace! :p
Eitherway good luck with the new host!
Regina says:
Holdfire! I have never heard of the other one before. But be sure to read reviews first! =) http://www.hostjury.com has good reviews.
Amber says:
I’ve heard a lot of good things about thiswebhost.com. They’re big into not overselling so their servers can remain clear for things (like potential diggs
)
Good luck!
Kevin says:
I have had good results with bluehost.
Mimi says:
@ Oli: I tried servage before and I agree that their service is great. However, I doubt I’ll ever use up that much bandwidth and space. Thank you for your recommendations though.
@Regina: The other host is owned by someone I know, and he hosts a forum I used to visit along with a couple other websites out there. Thank you for providing the review site!
@Amber: Thiswebhost.com sounds like a great host, and I really like it. However, they’re a little over my budget, so I’ll probably consider them in the future when I have more $$$. Thank you for the recommendations though!
@Kevin: I’ve heard good and bad things about bluehost, but I don’t like them advertising “unlimited” bandwidth and space. Isn’t that overselling? What I hear happens is that people on the older servers are fine, but new clients who get put on the newer servers experience problems. But thank you for the recommendations!
Jaemie says:
I just purchased a package from MediaTemple after soliciting recommendations from Twitter. It’s a little pricey if you’re hosting one site and don’t need the all of the space/bandwidth, though. The interface (control panel/administrator area) looks awesome. There’s IMAP email, 1TB of bandwidth, etc. I’m completely happy with my recent purchase.