Server Issues once again
on September 5, 2011 at 2:56 pmSo, the website host we’re using is complaining that we’re using too much of our CPU allowance on the server we’re on. The upgrades they suggested are around £50+ a month on top of our original package.
So, begin the hunt for a new host!
We need someone that can handle:
3 domains (khaoskomix.com, khaoskostumes.com and thekhaoticemporium.com)
One forum Subdomain
300gb/month traffic
2mil pageviews/ month
Cpanel or similar.
24hour tech support
Promised 100% up time.
Shell access to the server
Here’s what the current host says about our CPU usage:
“the server you are currently on has dual quad core Xeon processors, with 16GB of ram. While you were not using all of the available resources, you were using quite a sizable chunk of what is a pretty powerful server, especially if you want to reactivate your store.”
Any recommendations?
Where are you hosted with at the minute? I know somewhere that charges £90/year (or £8.99/mth if you pay monthly) with 14 extra domain spaces, unlimited subdomains, unlimited bandwidth (traffic), cPanel, and 99.5% uptime.
I’ve got both of my sites hosted on there and, though I only really use them for storage at the moment, they’re absolutely brilliant and so helpful with all of your problems. They have a site, and use their Twitter feed, to inform of server downtime as well. I’ve only ever had one major issue with their server downtime, and they moved everything onto a more stable server.
Here’s the link directly to the package: http://www.evohosting.co.uk/uk-business-hosting ; good luck with sorting things out!
I use boluehost (www.bluehost.com). I have been nothing but thrilled about their service. I have the basic package and pay less than $7usd a month, plus about $10usd a month for my domain name. For this I get 300gigs storage and 3terabytes a month tranfer and 2500 e-mail addresses. they have some great pre installed scripts and apps that I use and their tech support beats out anything I have ever used before. I just had a hacked web site restored and updated in only 45 minutes from time of discovery, at midnight my time.
MPK
While I don’t know if any of their packages suit you, in terms of uptime and tech support I can recommend Vidahost – http://www.vidahost.com/. Whenever I needed technical support they always responded to my help ticket within MINUTES and they followed through until the problem was resolved.
They do make customised packages as well, so might be worth investigating.
I was going to recommend my webhost (tsohost nee zest host) – although my site’s hardly high bandwidth. They’ve always been very prompt answering support queries (especially since I’m on a very, very cheap package they don’t do anymore!). So I popped over to their main site and their ‘Pro’ offering is, err, woefully underpowered for your needs. G’luck though.
You may want to inquire to them directly, but I can personally vouch for the support, uptime and overall tremendous service provided by http://www.utopiasystems.com/ if you’re interested. Thought I’d throw in my two cents.
I’d highly recommend NearlyFreeSpeech.NET (NFSN) as a web host. I’ve been with them for years and been completely satisfied.
They don’t do your traditional hosting plans, but rather you pay for what you use. You can have as many domains and subdomains as you want. They don’t have cPanel, but rather their own personal control interface, but it does everything you need a shared hosting control panel to do. They have a pricing estimator here: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/estimate
How important is 24/7 support? NFSN has set support hours, but they also have a support forum that is accessible at any time, and I’ve posted asking for help at all hours of the night and day and always found someone to help me figure out why something wasn’t working.
Hosting sites at NFSN does require more technical knowledge than many other hosts, but I have found that the value greatly exceeds the effort required.
In addition, you will not run into issues with them regarding the content you host. Even if you were targeted by a hate or censorship group, you’d still be fine with NFSN.
Second. NSFN are excellent.
Not sure what you’re using but KTom and I are using Dreamhost for OTENBA Files and we’ve never really had issues at all.
We have multiple subdomains and domains on our account without issues.
I use EUKhost. Mostly because they’re cheap. Only had a couple of downtime instances. Once due to a bad script of my own, and once due to some hiccup with the virtual server.
Linode is a good provider! Very good service. I think they have both American and European data centers too.
I quite like Bluehost. A friend of mine uses it for about two years and never had any problem – and he even used his customer’s service and all and ended up quite satisfied. And as we live in Brazil – and Bluehost is internacional – this means quite a lot.
I’m using now Host Gator – just made a contract with them actually – and no problems until now.
In case it’s important to anyone, Host Gator is an extremely sexist company. Sexual harassment is par for the course for female employees, and women are hired (and fired) depending on whether they’ll sleep with their bosses. The owner of the company is the worst – his harassment and abuse of female employees is legendary within the company. Naturally, I can’t say where I got this info, but knowing this, they’re one company that I hope fails.
I used to be fairly active on a fora that used Host Gator, and their service was terrible. They also appear to have a business model based on providing fairly cheap service at first, then extorting any halfway successful sites into paying exhorbitant and arbitrary rates.
You could ask BigWetFish – they’ve got fantastic customer service and up-time and really competitive pricing on packages that should suit you – and you can speak directly to someone via Skype (username: bwfhosting) to see what kind of deal they can do you. And let them know I sent you
It doesn’t make sense to me that your site is eating that much ram. I mean this isn’t the kind of site that should be processing lots of data all the time. I think you should inverstigate into it. See if you’re not running into an issue similar to this one: http://digwp.com/2011/06/dont-use-postname/
Also if you’re not running it already, install the WP-total cache plugin. It’ll cache all your database requests and then the server won’t have to process those every single time someone goes on your site (which amounts to a lot, judging by your pageviews).
I second what Veronica says. Moderately popular WP sites can be very CPU hungry if not optimized properly. You can most likely reduce CPU usage and keep your current host by installing the total cache widget and removing any other WP widgets that you don’t really need. You want to reduce the number of various requests sent to your server.
http://www.gisol.com/index.php I used this host for quite a while till I realized no one reads my comic and it easier to host on a free site…good host though
Speaking from a server stand point, that not a very powerful server. While a 16 gig ram is ‘nice’ for a sever its not ideal, especially if its high traffic flow like your site obviously is. In addition, I can’t believe they’re using a Xeon Intel processor. Those are crazy outdated even though they just came out on the market. If you can’t find a good server and you have around $500 you can make your own server with a much faster processor and more HDD space and tell your old provider to suck it. There are actually plenty of tutorials on building a server. Either way I wish you the best of luck mate.
Making your own server is a cool-sounding idea, but pretty useless. You could have the highest specs you can imagine, and the site would still crawl. A server needs to be located properly, in a high-bandwidth server farm. And hosting your own equipment in such a place costs a fortune. Unless you need custom hardware for some reason, and can afford to employ a sever administrator, you’re much better off paying a hosting company to manage all that sort of thing for you.
TRiG.
I personally use One.com, which has only cost me 31$US per year, including my domain name. They have 24h live tech support in the language of your choice, offer 25000MB storage for 5,95$US a month but “unlimited transfer” (I assume they mean bandwidth). I’ve been with them for 3 years with no problem, though my website has much less traffic than yours :3
It sounds like your wordpress/comicpress implementation is not optimized nor cached.
Personally, I would really recommend LiquidWeb as I use them for my sites.
I wouldn’t go for the low end resellers (like HostGator that just resell boxes in someone elses data center.) Nor companies that stuff their boxes full of sites (while good for small sites, can be easily overrun, like DreamHost)
I have run sites in excess of what you are saying your site specs at via LiquidWeb with no issues.
http://linkfeed.com/liquidweb
They run their own datacenters, have 24/7 live support, and treat you professionally. I am actually a reseller of their services, but suggest that you go direct and look into a VPS.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I use http://www.midphase.com/ – on their Linux Business plan – I have not had any downtime (except for a short 1 hour period while they did an upgrade) in the 5 years with them. The prices are amazing, support is wonderful (24 hour, and I’ve tested that!), and features/specs are at a great price.