Outage...
So my site's been down for nearly a week. External access (linking out images, for instance) is fine, as would be any pages that use HTML-only, because the database link is currently broken. (As the majority of the site is driven by WordPress, and my private data is also on a private wiki, I'm screwed.)
My host right now is Norseman Games, the guys who I sometimes work for. I use so little traffic that they don't charge me anything (hosting, back when I was regular with them, was like, "sure, no big deal".) I also keep in contact with their programmer on a social level. The problem with this, tho, is that I'm basically getting what I pay for. Because it's convenience hosting, I've gotta wait a while for any changes I'd like made on their end.
I indirectly caused the current break in the server because of this. I asked that they install a graphics library into the server, so I could do some server-side image handling. (Pretty cool stuff, the most awesome was a script that converts a certain text-style into an uploaded font, and sends back an image. Other stuff includes auto-thumbnailing gallery scripts, and a few other things I'd heard about but didn't have enough justification to ask them to do it..) Adding the library required a recompile on the server, and that's when the trouble hit. I'm not sure the specifics, but originally, when I tried my pages, every PHP request sent back an error.
So, while I wait for them to fix it, (they tried something, but all it did was switch everything to just saying the database is broken. It was described as a temporary fix, and I got the impression it moved everything to a separate server..) I'm considering new hosts. There's actually a couple I'm thinking of, I did while looking sometime last year.
http://www.globat.com/ - $4.44/mo for the first year, regularly $7.95
http://www.powweb.com/ - $3.88/mo for the first year, regularly $7.77
I'm liking the latter at this point. (With my current guys, it's as much a hassle on them as it is on me, and quite frankly I don't want any dependencies of the company that might well not pay me anything ever again.)
Anyone have any suggestions, or thoughts?
My host right now is Norseman Games, the guys who I sometimes work for. I use so little traffic that they don't charge me anything (hosting, back when I was regular with them, was like, "sure, no big deal".) I also keep in contact with their programmer on a social level. The problem with this, tho, is that I'm basically getting what I pay for. Because it's convenience hosting, I've gotta wait a while for any changes I'd like made on their end.
I indirectly caused the current break in the server because of this. I asked that they install a graphics library into the server, so I could do some server-side image handling. (Pretty cool stuff, the most awesome was a script that converts a certain text-style into an uploaded font, and sends back an image. Other stuff includes auto-thumbnailing gallery scripts, and a few other things I'd heard about but didn't have enough justification to ask them to do it..) Adding the library required a recompile on the server, and that's when the trouble hit. I'm not sure the specifics, but originally, when I tried my pages, every PHP request sent back an error.
So, while I wait for them to fix it, (they tried something, but all it did was switch everything to just saying the database is broken. It was described as a temporary fix, and I got the impression it moved everything to a separate server..) I'm considering new hosts. There's actually a couple I'm thinking of, I did while looking sometime last year.
http://www.globat.com/ - $4.44/mo for the first year, regularly $7.95
http://www.powweb.com/ - $3.88/mo for the first year, regularly $7.77
I'm liking the latter at this point. (With my current guys, it's as much a hassle on them as it is on me, and quite frankly I don't want any dependencies of the company that might well not pay me anything ever again.)
Anyone have any suggestions, or thoughts?