Hello & thanks in advance for any help on this matter.... (sorry it is so long - skip to bottom for short version) I am having a nightmare of a time finding a new host for my music production community. Bluehost who I am with now are throttling my CPU uasage which is crippling my community. They at 1st blamed 3rd party add-ons. But since I had none installed for 6mths and still have the problem they then blamed Ip. Board software itself, along with me "being too successful" and would need VPS or Dedicated hosting. Well this is a load of crap. I lately have been doing tests and found out that with even all core hooks disabled & my board closed that we where still being throttled for excessive CPU usage. In the end I done a test and narrowed the problem down to even the boards offline message page being refreshed 12 times in one minute meant we went over or CPU usage. So obviously the problem is at there end. Anyway I am fed up and ready for a new host. However there is a problem. Many hosts have already turned me down and others are simply too vague on whether they would also cause a problem. Many say my community is too active for them. Now this is quite funny as my stats are by no means the greatest: Stats: Between 100 to 200 members online a day About 30 to 50 of them are new signups. Only about 20 to 40 members a day actually post. New topics a day are between 20 to 60. Visitors (guests) are around a steady 1,500. We have just over 35,000 members in total (who I like to email a newsletter twice a year). Bandwidth per month is between 20 and 90GB (depends if we are running a contest). Disk Space is about 12GB total File count is exactly 21,333 ^ So as you can see nothing is really "crazy". Just a nice little healthy community forum. Yet most the hosts I approach who have "unlimited" packages more or less tell me that my quota would go over there unlimited offer (yeah, how exactly can you go over an unlimited package?). Also the small print on many really gives away why no one wants a active community on there hosting plan. Bluehost throttles CPU usage at the drop of a hat as previously explained (even on an offline board) Hostgator is saying they only allow 25 concurrent MySQL Processes as any one time (is an MySQL query classed as a process?) Many other potential hosts in live chat look at my forum figures and just say No to me Can anyone with a healthy forum with roughly the same figures who are on a decent host who does not throttle there CPU limit or suspend there account. Or limit MySQL queries or any other crazy stuff that slows down a forum. Can you please leave a reply with your forum stats and which host you use and how you would rate them for me please. As I really need to find a new host asap. BTW I don't have enough money to pay for VPS. We don't make any money apart from small donations here and there. I can't use IPS hosting as I can't edit my files and they are a little on the expensive side too compared to normal hosting (also we will soon not be forum only but a full website). I really need your help on this peeps. Ideally I'd like to be paying between $5 & $20 per month. (I'd honestly pay more if I could, but I'm not in employment at the moment). --- Short Version: Busy community looking for a good cheap host that doesn't slow down the board. (what host do you use?)
We base our hosting on average online users. Perhaps that would work for you? http://www.invisionpower.com/hosting/select_package.php
I need 12GB online storage and access to all IPB folders with none encoded (how can you charge almost $44.99 for 800mb? - you even have a post count limit?! why? is the software using so many resources after so many posts are created?). I also have a perpetual license and so don't need a pre-install. I've already asked on the IPS Company forums and my topic got locked. Seems you don't like hosting questions asked there for discussion but will promote your hosting elsewhere (bit of a double standard there in free speech).
I can solve your problem. I provide a 2 GB/ram VPS, I can start you with 1TB bandwidth , IN EXCHANGE you let me have front page ad space (I will only advertise my own Websites ... nothing that gets in the way of your users) OR We We can get into a partnership in case your forum need further investment. I just need to see your site first. Let me know
I use vps.net (if you sign up, I'd appreciate if you use my referral link, I'm poor) - it's a VPS, but it's affordable. Their lowest plan is I think $20 a month, I'm on the second to lowest (2 nodes). I've had some trouble with them, but it's only ever temporary, and I've learnt it's mostly my fault. For running your own site on there, and just the one, looking at your stats and traffic I'd say go for 2 nodes which is about $23(£30) a month I think. With a community as growing and active as yours, may I suggest a donation drive? If the community really cares, they'll donate $5/10 each right? Remember, if 10 people donate 10bux each, thats 100.
Heya! We have about 300 registered logins per day Host a forum and a wiki (One of the largest independent gaming wikis in the world now) Have more than 20 thousand members, and about 179 thousand posts... all this and more at MDD Hostingfor 13.18 a month for the last year using their Advanced Shared Hosting. VPS Is overrated, and SO often not needed if you have a fair hosting company. We have well for years now...all this with shared hosting. Who woulda thunk it ^^ Blue Host is famous for rip-offs, do a search for them on The Admin Zone for other tales of horror. :wavespin: gogo
Thanks for your recommendation. I've checked out your forum and they do seem to be slightly more busy than ours, which is great if you are having no problems at all with your host. Only thing I can see is you are using an older version of IP. Board 2.x.x which is less resource intensive than 3.x.x (we 1st started getting problems on the upgrade from 2.x.x to 3.x.x). I see the host has a maximum of 50 Concurrent MySQL connections. But I think that may be alright for us (Hostgator is 25 which put me off using them). I'm going to have a look around more on the hosting company forums and do a bit more reading there. But they do look a very viable option to host us. So thanks again, they are definitely in my list as an option (If I do choose them I'll mention you sent me there way). P.S. Your forums load up fast. But the page takes ages to load intellichat for the 1st time (few mins).
50 Concurrent connections should be more than enough as there are generally three reasons you would pass that: You have some very bad queries being performed by an add-on/modification on your forum. Your site has simply outgrown shared hosting in the traditional sense. You're running some sort of Chat Box/Ajax Chat If you were with us and started to hit the connection limit we could look and see what queries were being run and which ones were hitting the slow log if any and advise you. Beyond that, most shared providers limit you to around 10~25 and those that do offer 100+ generally offer performance so slow that you'll hit that limit faster than you would even 50 at a quality provider simply because the queries will take so long to execute. Best of luck.
Hi Mike, I've just spent over the last hour reading up about your packages, company forums and your endeavors with a certain scrupulous individual of a review site. I must say I like your style and your Company. The prices seem very reasonable with price plans that can allow us to grow and upgrade without problem or too great a jump in price. The size of your company seems big enough to be professional enough to hold true to there specifications and yet not too large to lose the personal touch and be over-subscribed. The more I read your posts on various forums checking your integrity the more I like you and feel as if I know you and can actually trust you with my precious site (which I normally wouldn't do for a hosting Company I had personally never heard of before - I usually stick to the big "oversubscribed" guns, much to my ill judgment). I was going to sign up to your forums or fire off a quick email. But seeing as you seem to be very pro-active, all-seeing and everywhere than I may as well ask here (it may help others too)... Radio Streaming - Do you allow shoutcast streaming within CPU (25% for 2mins) & MYSQL (50) connection resource boundaries? (Maximum limit we have listening is about 12, but usually just hit 2 or 3 - stream is shut-off automatically when there is no connections) Emails - I know your limit is 200 per hour and no more than 900 unless on VPS. But I have a list of 35,000 on our mailing list for our bi-annual newsletter (twice a year). Any chance we can come to an agreement so we can still do our newsletter twice a year? (we will still throttle and obey the 200 per hour limit - will take a couple of weeks but that doesn't matter as we do that now anyway with our current hosts limit of 500 per hour - which usually takes about 9 days). I'm guessing the Datacentre is T1 connected to the backbone (sorry for the silly question), and on another note, if by some means there was a problem with hosting could we pull out and get a refund on the remaining time left on the account? This would be for shared hosting. That's about it really. There is perhaps one more question, but I'll ask that in private as it's kinda hard to explain. Also the above aren't really deal-breakers if they can't be done. The radio is mostly inactive and I can always try to find a solution to our mailing list problem. Just it would be a nice bonus. All the best and I hope to hear from you soon. If not I will be in contact via email anyway sometime tomorrow perhaps for more info anyway. Best regards, -xe- Paul Pattinson [xe-cute] www.serious-sounds.net
We don't have shoutcast installed on our shared servers however you would be welcome to do so in a VPS. Generally I'd probably either do one of two things: Find a provider that offers shared hosting and shoutcast hosting that is reputable. Get a separate shoutcast account at a reputable provider. We can adjust the limit for you, you just need to let us know after you sign up. Currently our services are in Softlayer, Dallas however we're actually shifting facilities for shared / reseller / and semi-dedicated on the 18th of this month and VPS accounts in December. You're welcome to read up on it at http://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/338-upgraded-hardware-and-data-center-transfers/ If you want to get some details over about how you're currently using shoutcast that would be good, as far as I know it's a separate server daemon that has to be installed and run as root.
50 MySQL connections? :-o I thought that Bluehost with 30 connections was the maximum one could get on shared hosting. MDD is now on my list, as soon as I outgrow Bluehost :wink:
I'm with Bluehost and I am leaving them due to there CPU Throttling. If you go in to Cpanel click on 'CPU Throttling' and see if you have anything that looks like this: If you do than it means they are slowing down your account already, regardless of how many MySQL connections. You may get a shock - I did. P.S. Please let me know if you are getting CPU throttled as I'm sure they do it to any account hosting any kind of php script. For example just refreshing my boards offline page a few times in a minute triggers our CPU throttling (that's how sensitive it is - I've even heard personal blogs get CPU throttled too).
That is one of the major downsides to BlueHost/HostMonster is that they throttle you down pretty easily... I suppose it's better than having your site run slow because the server is overloaded in general. If you have any questions I'll try to remember to check in on this thread for the next few days, I'm not getting the notifications like I once did so I'm having to check back.
I'm still weighing up my options but MDD is in the top 3 for sure. I must admit the moving data centre thing did knock me back a little. I always fear the worst over such moves and expect downtime due to something somewhere going wrong. The new Location seems to be more further away from Europe too and the USA incoming T1 connection across the pond (I'm sure the difference will not be noticeable though - shame I can't find a decent Euro host, but the USA seems to be far cheaper).
I'm also a current customer of MDD, since June 2009. I'm certainly not a medium or large site, but I've been continuously pleased all this time. So I'm on the shared plan and run a couple sites, but all very very low key. MDD is very transparent in terms of issues occurring and their communication just works for me. We did have hardware failure a month or so ago. You can find a thread on the MDD forums that discussed it and it's public. Our experience was just fine. Yes there is a hardware move now, but I really don't think the new Denver location will impact that much, purely based on the experience I've had with MDD thus far. Denver's capabilities of grown immensely over the past 2 years. What I see in this thread is constant interrogation for each potential customer's needs...and that is the bottomline. Moreover...that Mike is indeed proactive with you. May your decisions always be the best for your situation.
Hi, Xe, I think your on the right track here. I saw on Webhostingtalk you got a lot of recommendations for a VPS. But at your budget that will do more harm than good. (I'm ShaunH on WHT) A VPS is only a wise idea if you have a high budget or you don't need management. And frankly shared should suit you just fine and if Not, MDD also offers semi-dedicated which will hold a decent sized site. Sadly I think to many people jump right to a VPS when a quality shared account or Semi-dedicated account would be a better fit. And if down the road your site out grows shared / semi-dedicated hosting then you can look at a large VPS or your own server. As others have said Mike's a stand up guy. And works hard to keep everyone happy and well informed. As for the data center transfer I doubt you have anything to worry about. Hmmm I wonder if AdX could work on a Semi-dedicated plan? I'm pretty sure it could.
Great info! That's what we thought too. Semi was astonishing good value. We got that for the whole next year and now we're having a good bit of fun deciding on how we're going to fill up that bandwidth to get our ROI back. yum gogo
I just want to keep you update. I signed up for 3yrs Intermediate shared hosting with MDD. Within 24hrs I've had them kindly transfer over to there servers a backup and restore it. They also fixed a problem with my .htaccess file. DNS Propagation was smooth too. Right away I can see the difference in speed. Visually, my drop down menus which load exploded before imploding are no longer hanging there exploded for a few seconds. Now it is so fast you can't tell (as it should be). Statistic wise, my page load time on my old server was always between 0.8000 and 2.5000 secs (yup, sometimes two and a half seconds to load a page) depending how busy we where. With MDD we are loading up pages at between 0.2000 & 0.5000 secs (a vast improvement). I'll make a review after a longer period of time. Thanks kindly for everyones help over this matter... Admin Extra Website for being here to ask & for the twitter shout-out, Gogoblender for suggesting MDD Hosting in the 1st place and finally MikeDVB for getting me setup quickly & smoothly (I think I've kept him awake all night working). Best wishes all. Hope you have a great upcoming holiday season. -xe-
