Hello boys and girls! After a day of trying, I’ve finally managed to get Frankly Curious transferred over to its new host. You see, the bad people over at Lunar Pages have clearly outgrown their infrastructure, and rather than investing in more are depending upon the fact that it is a total pain in the ass to move a website to a new server. Proof of this is that after all the work I’ve done, at this moment, individual articles are displaying with the Curiously Clever logo. But regardless of the trouble, I could not continue on with Lunar Pages. It seemed that every day the site was down for at least a couple of minutes and the night before last, it was down for almost a half hour. This resulted in my starting three problem tickets with tech support, billing, and sales. Not one of these have been answered.
So I’m taking a chance with Host Gator. They cost a tad more after the first year, but they have a 99.9% guarantee, which, if my calculations are right, means that if they are down for more than 45 minutes during a month, I get the month free. At that rate, I never would have paid Lunar Pages.
Howdy Frank,
I’ve used HostGator and LunarPages as webhost providers over the last decade for both me and some client sites.
Both were good for a while, until you are there for a few years and you end up on an outdated server… and hosting companies always treat the "new guy" better than a loyal customer.
I’ve worked in customer support for hosting companies, and also as a researcher/writer for a site "about webhosting".
My conclusion is: hosting sucks.
Now, I keep 2 VPS servers so I can switch my DNS to a secondary server with very little interruption if one of them goes down.
Since 2001, I’ve gone through a dozen hosting companies. My biggest tip: register your domains with someone other than your host. (I prefer namecheap).
Thanks Toni. I thought about asking your opinion, but I didn’t want to bother you.
I have my domains through a nice little family company that I’ve been with forever. They are fronting for Netearth One, but it is always way expensive to go to the primary folk. Or it used to be. I’m an old man! Definitely at the seventh stage: ossification. "I remember when…"
I like the two server option. But cost is an issue, at least until Scholastic starts showering me with money for my new book.
As for getting good service as a new customer: LunarPages must have seen me coming. They sucked from the beginning. I only waited this long because I can’t deal with monthly contracts. So wait for my "ragging on Host Gator" article next January!