Time to rebuild my host spread

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay gang.

Time to rebuild my spread of hosts. I am looking for 2-3 hosts for my small personal jumppage whose main current use is linking my typical web recurring items, to possibly host some linked files if you stay put long enough for me to get around to writing the matching articles. Site should be able to handle hobby mp3's and decent sized texts such as 10megs.

No banners. Sorry, but I shall not do posts on your forum, because it becomes wasted effort when the host folds. I will do two linkbacks to the user login page and a central/forum page, but my main value-offer is below:

By now y'all have seen that with a certain exception, I promote my host selections here with a remark every 3-4 months. I value longevity and stability over flashy features.

If a host stayed put long enough one day I'd recommend them to others, but ya'know - in some 2 years here none of my choices have succeeded! So, I would only like offers from hosts that have been up for more than a year.

(Rant)
Just don't try to claim "Unlimited" anything. Also, don't trumpet your "community", because free hosts are primarily mercenary resources, not communities.
(/Rant)

[OnTheHouseHost]

What are your diskspace and bandwidth requirements?

[TaoPhoenix]

What are your diskspace and bandwidth requirements?

Fascinating. My dreams are based on your capacities. Y'all are competing amongst yourselves. Offer me something.

[turesweb]

we can set you up with a coupon for a free shared account: http://turesweb.com/shared-hosting.html

from what you mentioned, you may need a little more bandwidth that is listed for that package but we would be happy to up that for you and expand as needed.

if you have any questions let us know, we'd be happy to help

[Mwzaf]

www.mwzaf.com/host

you are welcome in any time

[[MC]]

TaoPhoenix, tell me your minimum requirements and i might be able to handle host your site. Ex. E-Mail address numbers, domains, sub-domains, bw, disk space...

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi MC.

Part of my whole theme is going ultra-simple. No email needed. No full domains needed. Most of that awesome stuff in typical ads is not needed.

Apparently I'm confusing the gang here but perhaps it is a perspective shift. I can play Limbo under just about any bar, so there's nearly no minimum. But I'm looking for the best standard value mix of disk space/bandwidth/file size&type and site longevity y'all can offer. The more you can offer, the more things I'll dream up to do. "They allow 20 meg files!? Kewl - I can host that remix now."

Then I'll turn around and talk up a storm for ya. It's pretty simple. I'd like to think of it as Olde School business. Just make sure the account is durable. I don't care for the 30-day limits geocities & crowd used to try. If the page gets no hits, then your bandwidth use drops. If it goes up, it's new content.

[TaoPhoenix]

Logged, mwzaf. I'll try a setupthis weekend or so.

[TaoPhoenix]

we can set you up with a coupon for a free shared account: http://turesweb.com/shared-hosting.html

from what you mentioned, you may need a little more bandwidth that is listed for that package but we would be happy to up that for you and expand as needed.

if you have any questions let us know, we'd be happy to help

You're doing just fine!
For easy refrence on the thread: This new vendor is offering to have me be a test-user of their Shared level which is currently rated at 10GB Disk/100GB Bandwidth with helpdesk ticket privileges. I am advising them of some small techincal proofreading details in messages.

I am attempting the signups for the vendors that have responded so far. Small signup glitches are not viewed as significant penalties.

[TaoPhoenix]

;1079112']TaoPhoenix, tell me your minimum requirements and i might be able to handle host your site. Ex. E-Mail address numbers, domains, sub-domains, bw, disk space...

Hi MC.
It turns out I don't need host emails, subdomains are fine. I'm actually experimenting with my own form of marketing in response to the trends I have seen on the state of the industry. So, see what you can come up with for something like Turesweb indicated, a "coupon for a preferred customer". The reason I am taking multiple offers is to build a portfolio, and intentionally to avoid rewarding overselling. As I stated a couple of times, this is totally a "Tortoise and Hare" event where I'm putting my time and site into the tortoise. Give me the best sustainable plan you've got, and there's no fear if someone with a monster server might top it.

Other quick prefs are 10-20 meg filesize would be nice, and no account activity timers. I'm around. When I have a suite of hosts I don't post as often here, but you'll see the page loads.

[TaoPhoenix]

What are your diskspace and bandwidth requirements?

Hi. Do you still wish to make an offer given the further tips I have posted?

[TaoPhoenix]

One of the reasons I go with free hosts is that they really do require less administrative processing than paid accounts. I am typically solidly within T's O.S.

Therefore I cannot accept any offer whose signup requires me to give out Name/Post Address/Phone.

[OnTheHouseHost]

Hi. Do you still wish to make an offer given the further tips I have posted?

Not really. In my opinion, this forum is for requests. Give us specific requirements and we'll give you a specific offer. If you're just looking for offers, there's a totally different forum for that with the competition you're looking for. Plenty of posts for you to "rebuild your host spread" from: http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=32

[TaoPhoenix]

Not really. In my opinion, this forum is for requests. Give us specific requirements and we'll give you a specific offer. If you're just looking for offers, there's a totally different forum for that with the competition you're looking for. Plenty of posts for you to "rebuild your host spread" from: http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=32

We'll get there.
Mwzaf is offering 5Gdisk/50G bandwidth standard.
Turesweb is offering 10Gdisk/100G bandwidth on coupon.
I'd like 10-20 meg file limit with mp3 ability for hobby files, and no inactivity timers.
There's my request. What's your offer? My point was if you're nervous that you don't have that much on hand, offer it anyway. I load my site spread asynchonously depending on each site's capacities.

[TaoPhoenix]

Not really. In my opinion, this forum is for requests. Give us specific requirements and we'll give you a specific offer. If you're just looking for offers, there's a totally different forum for that with the competition you're looking for. Plenty of posts for you to "rebuild your host spread" from: http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=32

I know about the offer board. I've picked from it before. I started a thread so that hosts who want to show their stuff can get started. I'm aware the industry currently rewards some Turnover Specialists who make a random new shell business, power-market it to get signups, and then sell the result 4 months later as "a business with clients". It's a model. They deserve to eat dinner too.

I'm looking for hosts who want their chance to make a name for themselves that they have survival plans in place for more than 4 months. You only have 1GB disk/10GB bandwidth on tap? Do that instead. Your offer will drive things anyway, because it would be rude to ask for more. But I believe the future coming consolidation in this industry is longevity. Do you want a spot on my metrics?

[TaoPhoenix]

Turesweb has been signed up 9-26-09. They are currently in slot 2.

Still looking for slots 3-4.

[TaoPhoenix]

mwzaf has been signed up 9-26-09. They are currently in slot 3.

Still looking for slots 4 and possibly 5

[dannyang]

We can offer you 1GB disk space, 10GB bandwidth.
cPanel control panel.
No file size limit.
There is 60 day inactivity limit if there are absolutely 0 hits.

http://www.hostaider.com

[TaoPhoenix]

We can offer you 1GB disk space, 10GB bandwidth.
cPanel control panel.
No file size limit.
There is 60 day inactivity limit if there are absolutely 0 hits.

http://www.hostaider.com

I'd appreciate it if you could manually override the activity timer. I park different hosts on the various browsers I have and y'all can't all end up on lead. But I'm definitely around. I develop on one copy, upload it to either Lead or Second, then when the glitches iron out it spreads.

Otherwise it sounds promising, and I'll try out the signup process soon.

[TaoPhoenix]

We can offer you 1GB disk space, 10GB bandwidth.
cPanel control panel.
No file size limit.
There is 60 day inactivity limit if there are absolutely 0 hits.

http://www.hostaider.com

Hi.
I'm getting there. I uploaded a couple of pages.

I don't see the generic login link to the cpanel / file manager in your client area though.

[JJW]

my signup process requires that information i am giving out space on my vps that i paid for for a year upfront

[TaoPhoenix]

We can offer you 1GB disk space, 10GB bandwidth.
cPanel control panel.
No file size limit.
There is 60 day inactivity limit if there are absolutely 0 hits.

http://www.hostaider.com

This host appears to be a solid Third. The last place host appears to be struggling at best or even folded, and has been removed from the spread. I switched my spread over to help give Hostaider's system more hits.

Current lineup is cWahi, Turesweb, and Hostaider. I'll entertain any new offers, but won't be as aggressively looking for a while.

[nusitu]

I believe we have what you are looking for, we have been in business for almost 5 years. Our main website is www.Nusitu.com

our free web hosting package is available at www.NoCostHosting.us

Please let me know if I can assist you any further.

Thank You.

[Timelord_]

TaoPhoenix, we would be happy to have you as a client under our FiniteMedia.com brand.

[TaoPhoenix]

TaoPhoenix, we would be happy to have you as a client under our FiniteMedia.com brand.

Sure. Post an offer so the hordes can see it. I'm suggesting a Min disk space of a Gig or two, more if you want to showcase yourself.

I'd prefer not to have any activity timers. More notes to follow when I see your offer.

[Tyler]

Hello,

We can offer you the following:

1GB/Disk quota
25GB/Monthly transfer
Cpanel 11
50MB filesize limit

No deletion for inactivity.

PM me for details.

[Timelord_]

We can offer 20GB disc 100GB BW on our free hosting plans, please let me know if you are interested.

Cheers.

[TaoPhoenix]

We can offer you 1GB disk space, 10GB bandwidth.
cPanel control panel.
No file size limit.
There is 60 day inactivity limit if there are absolutely 0 hits.

http://www.hostaider.com

In case I forgot to mention this before, Hostaider has been added.

[TaoPhoenix]

;1079112']TaoPhoenix, tell me your minimum requirements and i might be able to handle host your site. Ex. E-Mail address numbers, domains, sub-domains, bw, disk space...

Hi MC.

If you're still interested, I'm starting to converge on 1GB disk space. The bandwidth is flexible. I'd prefer no activity timers; I'm around. I'd like a solid file size minimum such as 10 meg.

[TaoPhoenix]

I believe we have what you are looking for, we have been in business for almost 5 years. Our main website is www.Nusitu.com

our free web hosting package is available at www.NoCostHosting.us

Please let me know if I can assist you any further.

Thank You.

Hello Nusitu.
Quick prologue - forced-sound webpages are starting to go out of vogue because in business settings you don't want random noises going on every time you click something.

I do have to remark that your plans are aggressively high-costed. Your free plan is 150 megs and the silver plan of 550 megs is $3.95/mo. However, your 2 Gig disk level aka Platinum at $24.95/mo feels extremely uncompetitive.

My showcase spread is converging on 1GB disk plans, so you are welcome to enter if you can provide that. My key tests are longevity which I think you can handle, and later, testing how well hosts avoid overselling.

Regards,

TaoPhoenix

[TaoPhoenix]

We can offer 20GB disc 100GB BW on our free hosting plans, please let me know if you are interested.

Cheers.

Really!? Let's check a couple of things.

This is a Coupon-ed Special-Survey Linkback spread. Checking your page produces a Boo account at 5Gig space, so if you're choosing the publicity for the spread at your stats above, please let me know the coupon code etc.

(Otherwise gang, the stats above appear to be for their 50-post/month plan, and with that level of inbound content, any manager can put the account on special service.)

Remember, turn off your activity counter. I'm around.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hello,

We can offer you the following:

1GB/Disk quota
25GB/Monthly transfer
Cpanel 11
50MB filesize limit

No deletion for inactivity.

PM me for details.

This host also provided a strong early response to the typical setup quirks, and is now loaded with the rough shell of my page.

I'll give it a few more days then post my current lineup. I have discarded one host already who meant well but has continued to struggle.

[BrandonTheG]

I can help you out, just give me numbers I'll set you up. Want more info feel free to PM me.

[TaoPhoenix]

I can help you out, just give me numbers I'll set you up. Want more info feel free to PM me.

Hey Brandon...

I actually had an account with X10 at one point. The service was delivered as described... however even with the fairly generous requirement of only logging into their forum once every 2 weeks, I still managed to eventually lapse. That is in fact one of the inspirations for my recent requirements of no activity counters.

[Timelord_]

Really!? Let's check a couple of things.

This is a Coupon-ed Special-Survey Linkback spread. Checking your page produces a Boo account at 5Gig space, so if you're choosing the publicity for the spread at your stats above, please let me know the coupon code etc.

(Otherwise gang, the stats above appear to be for their 50-post/month plan, and with that level of inbound content, any manager can put the account on special service.)

Remember, turn off your activity counter. I'm around.

Hi there - I have adjusted my package - we now only offer the Boo package (something that I have been meaning to do anyway). I am not sure what you mean by my activity counter....

Cheers,

[TaoPhoenix]

Hey there Timelord.
Do me a favor and post the terms of the Boo package here for the board for easy reference.

A lot of sites have a (not illogical) mechanism where if they don't see some activity like logins or page hits, they delete the account. My point is this is one of my important long range projects, so I'm not going anywhere. What *will* happen is I'll park the account here and there, so make sure nothing in your software deletes the account.

Otherwise I'll start the signup for your Boo account soon, hopefully later this weekend.

--Tao

[BrandonTheG]

Hey Brandon...

I actually had an account with X10 at one point. The service was delivered as described... however even with the fairly generous requirement of only logging into their forum once every 2 weeks, I still managed to eventually lapse. That is in fact one of the inspirations for my recent requirements of no activity counters.

Not off x10's servers, off my personal server :).

[TaoPhoenix]

Not off x10's servers, off my personal server :).

That's whacked.

(DaTumThump)

Post an offer here for the board with a min of 1G disk so it can be grouped with all the others, then you can message me any signup info I need.

Cheers,

--Tao

[Timelord_]

Hey there Timelord.
Do me a favor and post the terms of the Boo package here for the board for easy reference.

A lot of sites have a (not illogical) mechanism where if they don't see some activity like logins or page hits, they delete the account. My point is this is one of my important long range projects, so I'm not going anywhere. What *will* happen is I'll park the account here and there, so make sure nothing in your software deletes the account.

Otherwise I'll start the signup for your Boo account soon, hopefully later this weekend.

--Tao

Here ya go!

FiniteMedia.com's (http://www.finitemedia.com) Boo (http://www.finitemedia.com/clients/order) package includes the following.

5GB Disc Space
100GB BandWidth
cPanel Control Panel
Unlimited MySQL DB's
Unlimited FTP Accounts
Unlimited Email addresses
No Post To Host

[MilliR]

Hi there Tao.

This seems interesting! I am surprised I didn't see this thread before. I would like to offer you the following off our H-Server for your endeavors/project.
1 GB space
10 GB Bandwidth
If interested, do PM me ;) Btw, what kind of mp3's are we talking about? Musical or some educational kind?

[BrandonTheG]

how about 2.5 / 100? you need any features (mysql, etc)?

you'll be the third account on the server, quad core 3.0, 8 gb ram :)

[TaoPhoenix]

how about 2.5 / 100? you need any features (mysql, etc)?

you'll be the third account on the server, quad core 3.0, 8 gb ram :)

Sure, I'm aiming at what I believe is a modern but easy spec. (I think it's going to shake out at 1GB). I know for a fact I don't need that bandwidth more than a single day's spike. I don't need any features right now.

Send me a PM to get me started on the signup. I saw your forum but a focused signup link would be nice.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi there Tao.

This seems interesting! I am surprised I didn't see this thread before. I would like to offer you the following off our H-Server for your endeavors/project.
1 GB space
10 GB Bandwidth
If interested, do PM me ;) Btw, what kind of mp3's are we talking about? Musical or some educational kind?

Music Mp3's, but extremely conservative on the copyright front.

My interest is public on this thread, so instead, how about you PM me a good signup link to get rolling. I checked your page but it looks like your instant plans have weaker specs.

Heh this is funny gang, I'll have some 8 hosts as a spread. Theoretically there's no limit - it's a longevity test, so I just make new icons for each host and observe them on a random basis. My thread opener said "2-3" because that was the minimum... But the response to my concept is great!

[BrandonTheG]

Sure, I'm aiming at what I believe is a modern but easy spec. (I think it's going to shake out at 1GB). I know for a fact I don't need that bandwidth more than a single day's spike. I don't need any features right now.

Send me a PM to get me started on the signup. I saw your forum but a focused signup link would be nice.

There is no real signup link. I was gonna create your account manually. You want any specific domain or username or anything? sub-domain?

[TaoPhoenix]

There is no real signup link. I was gonna create your account manually. You want any specific domain or username or anything? sub-domain?

I have typically used taophoenix.______.___

I somehow never cared about my own domain, maybe because subdomains seem to be easier to set up.

[BrandonTheG]

I'll set you up an account tomorrow and shoot you a PM.

[TaoPhoenix]

Finite Media / Timelord added.

[BrandonTheG]

Sent account info via PM.

[TaoPhoenix]

I think that's the series ...
So I'll spend a fews days oranizing & reviewing, then I'll post an update.

[Jigzo]

good for you ------

[TaoPhoenix]

All the hosts in the spread are up. I think they're (almost?) all cPanel.

[Timelord_]

cPanel is what all the cool kids use ;)

[TaoPhoenix]

In approximate order of strength

cWahi
Paradox Servers
Turesweb
Finite Media
Just-a-Post
mwzaf

I am investigating an auto-replace issue with cWahi.

I made a dashboard that looks like this:

http://taophoenix.cwahi.net/Tauceti.html
http://taophoenix.turesweb.com/Tauceti.html
http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html
http://taophoenix.finitemedia.com/Tauceti.html
http://taophoenix.brandonsgames.com/Tauceti.html
http://phoenix.mwzaf.com/Tauceti.html

[Timelord_]

Third last! DOH!

[Tyler]

How did I make it into second place!?.

By the way, why does my link on the site re-direct to your sub-directory when the others actually go to the site of the host?. Just curious.

[TaoPhoenix]

Third last! DOH!

Approximate!

cWahi gets lead because they have the risky postion of advertising unbelievable longevity + 650 horsepower.

Mwzaf MADE the list, because despite some server troubles, they are actually online at the moment, and they have a better spokesman lately.

Otherwise it's a big fluxy tie for the middle.

Turesweb was second to offer and responded extremely fast to my setup questions. At the moment Paradox was on Firefox so they ended up on second as the test host, but it's one of those nonexistent artifacts of design. (It so happens that I paired up a host with a browser, and I hate Safari! hehe.) Timelord put up with MoronClient emails, but I had to have SOME stable reference to test on. If I had to jab a pencil at it, I think Paradox had better uptime than mwzaf vs. order of setup.

Brandon is pretty good; he's ex-X10, moving towards a spinoff of his own. I like the JustAPost theme. I hope he finds a way to allow Stacked posts. I banged up a couple to spread the cheer.

Darksoul, I'll fix that quasi-soon. Turns out cWahi has some kind of Anti-Hotlink widget in place that auto-switches graphics to a hotfed banner. That's a pretty big strike - I'm not happy with my design getting torched, so they landed a "penalty link". I think I needed a baseline to prove the point cross-server, and then I finally ran out of energy. They also auto-feed a mini-banner. So that's a tough call, but they still get lead barely from their risky position.

One host may return; they were working this morning and then tanked midafternoon.

Heh - so I'm a ways out from my "2-3", and my design has room for 7 more! But the point is, it's a long haul test. So don't expect week-to-week fireworks. I'm not going to slam someone for a server outage. But the point of the dashboard is if someone finally falls off, I'll notice.

I'd say the first couple of checkpoints is sometime like January-March.

[TaoPhoenix]

How did I make it into second place!?.

By the way, why does my link on the site re-direct to your sub-directory when the others actually go to the site of the host?. Just curious.

I fixed this today.
And free! At no extra charge! I added an "s" to the Paradox Servers button!

:idea:

[Tyler]

I fixed this today.
And free! At no extra charge! I added an "s" to the Paradox Servers button!

:idea:

Sweet!. Assuming your still fixing it since its only fixed on cWahi :biggrin2:

Edit: Yup. Fixed.

[TaoPhoenix]

Blecch!

Folks, that's why the Dark One is in second place! I got distracted writing my tech support case for the hotlink bit and he caught it before I could spill-down the new file across the spread. :P

[Tyler]

Any new information on that issue?.

[TaoPhoenix]

Any new information on that issue?.

Seems my hunch was right that they don't allow hotlinking. But since they're the guys with the colossal capacity, I'll probably leave the page as is. I did ask for the official advisory against hotlinking for my records.

The other host that didn't make the chart might be experiencing problems. They'll probably come back online, but there's nothing special about them.

So my spread is done for the hosts I know of. I'll see about any new offers if they arrive.

[TaoPhoenix]

Third last! DOH!

No Longer!

[Tyler]

No Longer!

No!. I'm not last now am I!?. :nervous: ogre2 :molesto:

[TaoPhoenix]

See for yourself!

[Tyler]

Haha, sneaky sneaky. Your hosting the cWahi image from me :P.

[TaoPhoenix]

I knew you'd get the joke! :cool2:

[Timelord_]

No Longer!
OHHHH YEAH!! Bring it ON!

[Tyler]

OHHHH YEAH!! Bring it ON!

*looks both ways* *goes up behind Timelord* *Looks around, grins, kicks in butt*...

:classic2: Muahhahaaha....

[Timelord_]

Oww/....

[TaoPhoenix]

*looks both ways* *goes up behind Timelord* *Looks around, grins, kicks in butt*...


Docked for Fighting! :devious2:

CWahi saw the light and gave me the coupon, so they're back at third.

JustAPost wandered away, causing me to need a new category. The deep-server is still up, but it's probably now in the class of "private hosting by appointment".

This is CWahi's new copy. I feel lazy so it may be a few days before it propogates down because it requires some new files.

http://taophoenix.cwahi.net/Tauceti.html

[Timelord_]

Looks like yours truly is at numero uno!

[TaoPhoenix]

About half the hosts on the list have by now had a blip. But they're mostly all still going hosts.

[Timelord_]

Any chance you can let us know what you mean by a blip, and who the hosts were?

[azoundria]

Hi Tao,

I'm one step ahead of you. I already got tired of the companies I depend on disappearing or performing poorly, so I have seven myself.

And when I get tired with one, I just bring in a new company. So what I end up with is a selection of only the best providers and I'm virtually indestructable. Our reliability on the WORST server is presently 98.43%. (Best is always 100.00% and I would put you on one of those.) No single company can take us down.

So I can basically guarantee we'll be here tomorrow unless I got hit by a bus (and I'm working on that one too). We have all the paid quality features for free, and are the only web host I'm aware of that can do this:
http://www.ismywebsite.com/?p=testify

Unfortunately, we're ad supported, but what you mentioned was 'No Banners'. I believe AdSense has a text-only mode, so that might work. The only question is - are you tired enough of switching hosting providers that you'd be willing to do a thing like that?

Well actually, here's a better offer. I can put a third of the money generated through the AdSense on your site towards a free domain name (TLD) for your site. So that way, you can have professional hosting and a domain without paying anything. How's that?

Oh well. Your decision. I will leave it up to you then.

[aloycasmir]

Hmmm . Now that's a tempting offer from is my website :lol:
So how much do personal favours affect the overall listing tao ?

[azoundria]

Why do you need a listing to do personal favours for your clients?

[TaoPhoenix]

Why do you need a listing to do personal favours for your clients?

I'll start here because it ties into my answer to you Azoundria. He recognizes that there's value to my listing of a different and currently ill-measured kind. In any business that's what the management function is for - making 2nd order trades.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmmm . Now that's a tempting offer from is my website
So how much do personal favours affect the overall listing Tao ?

There is in fact a test of service response in there, but once at the minimum there's no further benefit to be gained by offering thunderous specs. I'm standardizing on about 1GB of space to help keep parity, but I use very little bandwidth. I've actually advised some sites to ratchet down to reverse an oversell post.

Also the exact ordering contains 5% humor; there's no real difference between 3rd & 4th etc. If a host doesn't make it, after a couple of warning posts I'm not going to ridicule them. One has retired the public option and another has disqualified itself. I expect the ones left to at least make the "February checkpoint".

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi Tao,

I'm one step ahead of you. I already got tired of the companies I depend on disappearing or performing poorly, so I have seven myself.

And when I get tired with one, I just bring in a new company. So what I end up with is a selection of only the best providers and I'm virtually indestructable. Our reliability on the WORST server is presently 98.43%. (Best is always 100.00% and I would put you on one of those.) No single company can take us down.

So I can basically guarantee we'll be here tomorrow unless I got hit by a bus (and I'm working on that one too). We have all the paid quality features for free, and are the only web host I'm aware of that can do this:
http://www.ismywebsite.com/?p=testify

Unfortunately, we're ad supported, but what you mentioned was 'No Banners'. I believe AdSense has a text-only mode, so that might work. The only question is - are you tired enough of switching hosting providers that you'd be willing to do a thing like that?

Well actually, here's a better offer. I can put a third of the money generated through the AdSense on your site towards a free domain name (TLD) for your site. So that way, you can have professional hosting and a domain without paying anything. How's that?

Oh well. Your decision. I will leave it up to you then.

I had somewhat forgotten about text-adsense, but I decline that too. Updating my previous thematic text, each host gets up to *three* linkbacks, because if your server is present & ready it's a clickable link on the dashboard.

I am carefully not just picking random places out of the offers board, and you even saw a few hosts shy out early on. What happens is anyone can start a host at Thanksgiving, then paraphrasing the classic words of a post elsewhere "Oh well, school break ended so I shut down after Christmas". The first checkpoint is about 4 months in.

If you want to be part of the roller coaster, manager-override the ads. By now it's clear I'm not doing SaturdayNightLive's "Stupid Client Tricks", so over half of the hosts have me on a small upgrade coupon above the terms offered to the slathering hordes.

Being responsive DOES help the ratings; not counting my pages are a little out of synch this week, the top few slots are hosts who made efforts to maintain things.

Are you ready for the challenge? : )

[azoundria]

Hi TaoPhoenix,

I'm ready for the challenge. I suppose a linkback arrangement will have to do, but only as an exception in your case.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hallo Azoundria.
I'm learning all kinds of interesting things while I do this. To avoid total chaos, I'm not comparing features, and standard customers may not be able to get all of the package specs I have for the study host entries. That is because hosts remarket themselves however they like all the time and it would lead to squabbling like "Well, I'll see your 3 SQL databases and a Thanksgiving Turkey and trade you 7 CronJobs, Fantastico, and a Christmas Ham". Companies can easily do "new divisions" so if the base company is doing fine, the offering spread can evolve later.

I do think that when I start reeling off checkpoint markers, I'll have categories of "exact package available" vs. "Premium account".
Send me anything I need to get started. Just make sure the disk is at least 1GB.

[azoundria]

Hi TaoPhoenix,

Signup is here: http://join.ismywebsite.com/

It should be fast and easy to get it set up (and no faster for me to do it for you). Besides, I want to know what you think of the signup process, since you have a lot to say about everything. :)

[aloycasmir]

Good to hear that you consider other factors too tao :)
Btw azoundria , we all have many opinions .

@tao Regarding your justification on management's attempt to influence their rating based on the special add ons they have given you doesn't satisfy me .
Agreed it shows their ability to promote their product .
But it's definitely not the case that they'll be offering everyone the same favour .
As we see many hosts going to the extent of overriding their inactivity limits , i don't feel they'll be doing the same for most of the general public(Take me for example . Today i request such a package and i'll be denied , coz here it's not about promoting their product . This is what's gonna happen with almost all ppl) .
Your ratings should be from the point of view of the general public , not just yourself .
And if it's meant only from your point of view then it isn't what ppl should be interested in , and such ratings should not be posted on public forums , you should simply note em down somewhere on a piece of paper instead .
Coz it's irrelevant to the ppl .
And if it has to be relevant to ppl , it has to be impartial .
It should only take into account what the host is willing to offer to every single person who comes to them .

Plz remember i mean no offence to you or anyone , i'm just speaking out my feelings regarding this affair .
And i appreciate your efforts in finding good hosts , but i also feel special coupons or favors on you , etc. shouldn't be counted since it's not what the host generally offers to ppl to whom this thread should be relevant to .
Hope you understand .

Br,
Aloycasmir

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi TaoPhoenix,

Signup is here: http://join.ismywebsite.com/

It should be fast and easy to get it set up (and no faster for me to do it for you). Besides, I want to know what you think of the signup process, since you have a lot to say about everything. :)

I'll definitely tag this to be added. It's going to be tight before the holidays, but over a week or so it'll happen.

[TaoPhoenix]

Aloycasmir, I like your spirit of discussion.
Re: "General Public" you'd just need to pick off the side of the chart "exact package available". The reason I did this above is that I am doing a host-survival test. The hosts themselves post offers of all shapes and sizes every week, so getting you set up would happen eventually. What they offer for specs any particular month is totally at the whim of the host, so that's why I'm staying out of that. Server freezes hit any and all plans.

Assuming the host doesn't completely fall off the scale, it's a downtime test. So by being on a premium coupon and the host still goes down helps ensure that stays conservative.

[aloycasmir]

Glad to know you took it positively :)
Agreed about the fact that you're not considering features they offer .
But the inactivity limit is my prime concern .
You know , some hosts do offer to override the inactivity timer particularly for you .
It might not happen with the rest of us :)

What do you think about this one :D

[TaoPhoenix]

Glad to know you took it positively
Agreed about the fact that you're not considering features they offer .
But the inactivity limit is my prime concern .
You know , some hosts do offer to override the inactivity timer particularly for you .
It might not happen with the rest of us

What do you think about this one

"Give me 6 months to work on that".
Decide on a host and then ask them. They create a blanket design to protect themselves from junk signups. But I am promoting that for users who show sincerity, activity timers should go down to say once a year, but def not "30 days".

[aloycasmir]

Of course :)
That's a lot sensible .
I'm also on that 1yr inactivity bandwagon with you :D

[TaoPhoenix]

Glad to know you took it positively :)
Agreed about the fact that you're not considering features they offer .
But the inactivity limit is my prime concern .
You know , some hosts do offer to override the inactivity timer particularly for you .
It might not happen with the rest of us :)

What do you think about this one :D

I have already chosen your host for you. Talk to Darksoul of Paradox Servers. He uses almost as many smileys as you do. Ask for the bonus feature - "A Torment a day keeps the blues away".

http://www.paradoxservers.net/

[aloycasmir]

He uses almost as many smileys as you do.
Lol
Nice one :D
Pm sent . And mentioned your referral , you should be expecting some more benefits :lol:

[TaoPhoenix]

Lol
Nice one :D
Pm sent . And mentioned your referral , you should be expecting some more benefits :lol:

Hehe. I'll trade direct "stats" for broader karma across my project. I was just thinking a small spillover to my project is I can get a little inter-host unity. Some hosts want page hits, some want to reduce bandwidth, so a few client trades might work.

That's why my fairly simple graphic can't be stretched too far into "how far down" because they vary at the intangibles.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi TaoPhoenix,

Signup is here: http://join.ismywebsite.com/

It should be fast and easy to get it set up (and no faster for me to do it for you). Besides, I want to know what you think of the signup process, since you have a lot to say about everything. :)

Heh. "He won't shut up!"

Really though - starting this process now.

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay, first up, this weird page listing multiple variants on your name is pretty scary because I believe it encourages web identity diffusion. I don't approve of "Joe6" "Joe12" "JoeM4" stuff because that's what Spam-Scammers use.

...

From the signup email

"The description you enter is VERY IMPORTANT. It helps us to determine your potential, and allocate you the most appropriate server. We have limited server resources, so some applications will be denied. All descriptions must be in cohesive English, and should be 3-4 sentences in length. If you can't explain why your site is unique and worth the time of a potential visitor, then speaking from 3 years of experience with web hosting, there is NO HOPE for you. You are wasting your time."

Nope. From a figurative page 12 of Intro to Business 101: I'm a client. This is a buyer's market despite the seller tricks. You need me, I don't need you. WORSE, you just insulted my website before even finding out what it is! Define the problem you are trying to solve and reverse the metric. If you're that scared of 90-10 abuse where some twerp hoses the capacity, make it a double barrelled signup. Make it "All accounts have a max CPU % to start. To request an exemption, THEN write your sentences."

"As a final note, repeated here for those who didn't read the rules. To delete your account, you NEED to tell us what you thought of the service, and most specifically, what sort of problem you ran into. And naturally, we will aim to solve your problem and leave you with no reason to delete your account. This is because we care. If you don't like this policy, then please do not activate your account."

More aggressive stuff. AOL ran into this actually, and got pulverized for it. If I want to delete my account, if I don't just remove my files, make it like the TrashBin - an email to send it there and compress the backup, and a second one to confirm final delete of the backup. If you get one user who churns his account, hang on tight and then try to help after he's back.

[Tyler]

Interesting..

[TaoPhoenix]

Heh - Okay, I have to go easy on this one.

I hate communities. 1 in 100 works brilliantly, the rest are varying degrees of unhappy.

I recommend you make a standard signup with low specs, and then "sign up for the upgrade". If your goal is to cut down on account churn, just put protective measures in place.

It so happens I have nothing of interest to anyone else YET on my page, yet I'm not being given a choice about it being made public. Release to the community needs to be OptIn.

So there's my submittal. Waiting for you.

[Tyler]

Hey TaoPhoenix - just a post is back.

http://forums.freezehost.net/showthread.php?t=44&p=170%23post170

[TaoPhoenix]

Hey TaoPhoenix - just a post is back.

http://forums.freezehost.net/showthread.php?t=44&p=170%23post170

Hmm. Unfortunately this is exactly what my study looks for. All the guys here are pleasant enough, but this kind of churn is pretty rough on customers. I'm starting to get an idea to use the right side of my grid as "private coupon" to show that someone may exist but not be generally available on an even par with the others.

[TaoPhoenix]

(Deleted Post)

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi Tao,

...Unfortunately, we're ad supported...

Back to an idea I had a couple years ago ... Banner Royal Rumble!

Ever notice you're reading a nice little remark about the comparative psychology of free web branding when

:evilb: your :welcome: attention is brutally :jump: ripped away :bkick: and your concentration is shot????? :crying5:

That's what ads tend to do.

"Pick on content your own size, meanie!"

OKAY!

Let's make an area entirely full of ads! Glorious ads! I'm no pagerank expert though, so I'd need some advice to avoid sinking it. But I have a theory that when done to ludicrous extremes it will become a cult hit.

[TaoPhoenix]

Current Lineup

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

It won't be mirrored down yet.

[Tyler]

Just a post was dropped?

[TaoPhoenix]

Just a post was dropped?

Yeah, since they don't exist! "The same owner performed a migration" but in business that's a warning sign. It reverts my site to "privately hosted by the owner" which isn't what my survey covers.

[Tyler]

Yeah, since they don't exist! "The same owner performed a migration" but in business that's a warning sign. It reverts my site to "privately hosted by the owner" which isn't what my survey covers.

It's a shame they couldn't even stick around for a month.

[BrandonTheG]

What did I do? Check your PMs I replied.

[TaoPhoenix]

In a nutshell, name changes are dangerous. Owners can't just get jumpy, go down for a week, and pop back with a new company name. If you want to experiment with service offerings, the way to do that is create a bland company name and then the service offering as a brand underneath it.

The entire point of my survey is a continuity test. If you peruse the history of thread which is its entire point, the entity known as JustAPost went under. I'm well aware my "privately hosted" site is still up, so work on your company structure and I'll probably put you back.

As a global comment, I'm wondering about new hosts trying to get established offering something like BetaTester Accounts. Like a higher yield on a risky bond, they would get better specs than the slathering hordes to follow later. The risk is, that they would get caught in company tuneups. That would explicitly make clear that an account would possibly be short lived, so the client takes different protections.

[aloycasmir]

Hey tao , that link you posted doesn't seem to work :)

@brandon , i guess you can start afresh with your offer and this time only do so if you're sure you're not gonna change the domain names or hosting and stuff all over again...

[Tyler]

Hey tao , that link you posted doesn't seem to work :)

@brandon , i guess you can start afresh with your offer and this time only do so if you're sure you're not gonna change the domain names or hosting and stuff all over again...

This one?.

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

Works fine here and through the ztunnel proxy.

[TaoPhoenix]

It's a shame they couldn't even stick around for a month.

My turn to bail out Brandon here. It's "thin ice" not a total sink. He's still around. He just missed a step in the processing of his switchover. Just like I have some weird plans that may not be commonly available, he just retired a division. See my previous note about Beta accounts. With those few little nuances it all changes.

[aloycasmir]

It does work now tao .
Wasn't working a while ago :hm:

[TaoPhoenix]

It does work now tao .
Wasn't working a while ago :hm:

By "Not work" do you mean "page not found" or did it come through spotty?

It's got a fairly heavy picture graphic in it, so that it often takes me a page refresh to get the second half to come through.
But when a host DOES go down, I pull one of the other copies and watch if the dashboard light goes out. A couple hosts did have a bit of downtime here and there.

[aloycasmir]

I mean page not found .
That was what i could see...

[TaoPhoenix]

Oh well.

If it works now, the link is good and something glitched.

[Timelord_]

woot! I am still on the list!

[TaoPhoenix]

woot! I am still on the list!

Of course. The list runs on a "No News is Good News" basis.

Brandon'sGames - FreezeHost will be reappearing too. We've been working on some strategy.

'Haven't heard from IsMyWebsite yet. However, I have to wait for the holidays to pass because everyone's probably away.

[Tyler]

Of course. The list runs on a "No News is Good News" basis.

Brandon'sGames - FreezeHost will be reappearing too. We've been working on some strategy.

'Haven't heard from IsMyWebsite yet. However, I have to wait for the holidays to pass because everyone's probably away.

LIES!!!.

On a completely unrelated note I have decided on a 4x500GB RAID10 setup for the server we are going to colocate at some point after Christmas.

[Tyler]

I think its completely insane I replied two minutes after you posted that Phoenix, especially because I had JUST plugged back in my internet...

[TaoPhoenix]

I think its completely insane I replied two minutes after you posted that Phoenix, especially because I had JUST plugged back in my internet...

And you wondered why you got first? : )

[Tyler]

I love Barg's root beer.

[TaoPhoenix]

I love Barg's root beer.

Are we winning any awards for post count?

[Tyler]

I donno, are we?.

Randomness ftw.

But seriously, I love Barg's.

Chaos!!!.

Back on topic, does the space/bandwidth of every hosts free package affect placement at all on the list?. I'm assuming no, but it would be nice to know.

[TaoPhoenix]

...
Back on topic, does the space/bandwidth of every hosts free package affect placement at all on the list?. I'm assuming no, but it would be nice to know.

Not quite. I have a few Manager's Coupon upgrades, but that's to even everyone out at 1GB space. This is deliberate to prevent overselling. (I don't even know what the bandwidth is since I don't use much.)

Right behind you, the next three hosts are in a dead even tie.

The low rung is hosts that had some problems, but are still yet here, and it's anyone's marathon.

[Tyler]

Ah, that is good to know.

And now, I have things to do ;). I'll be back later though.

[BrandonTheG]

Seems like it!

[Timelord_]

Anyones marathon... I like that!

[TaoPhoenix]

Freezehost is back on the list. : )

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

[BrandonTheG]

Freezehost is back on the list. : )

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

That's what I am saying, back to working on FHPanel!

[TaoPhoenix]

IsMyWebsite has been added.
As far as I know all applicant hosts have been added.
This list will be stable for a while.
http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html
Remember that in a vertical list it looks like some sites are penalized more than warranted.

[BrandonTheG]

Sorry that we are down, we are having a payment issue at our datacenter.

[TaoPhoenix]

Thanks for the update Brandon.
Free hosting isn't all flowers every day. But users would rather have a gutsy host with glitches than a whitewash one. In the digital age, news gets out anyway. Better to post a service tag than get hit with a slam thread.

[BrandonTheG]

Should be fixed soon, sorry for the problems.

Edit: We are back.

[TaoPhoenix]

New Year Note -

No one has totally folded yet, but a couple of hosts are at risk of a TKO cumulative-problems knockout. My primary system is down for a couple of weeks, so my first hard look is planned for about February 2010.

[Timelord_]

Any chance you can let us know which hosts are struggling with uptime?

[TaoPhoenix]

You're nipping at the edges Timelord!

[Timelord_]

Oh Lord..... Thats my luck - I got listed on a major hosting dir, and then get DDOSED.

[~Edy]

What Directory? FWS?

[TaoPhoenix]

Getting near the end of Round 1.
Like the game show format it is modeled on, it's been a ride already.
FreezeHost has announced its retirement in its current incarnation.
Mwzaf has accumulated too many demerits and will be TKO'ed.
A couple of the others have down spots, but are still in the game.

[Timelord_]

We had some serious downtime in January, however, we have a pretty good reason! Here is a post I made on the FiniteMedia.com forums



There has been a significant chuck of downtime today due to a fire in the Portland OR area (where our data center is). Our apologies for this. If you would like more info, please hit the following link

http://www.katu.com/news/local/80899527.html

[TaoPhoenix]

We had some serious downtime in January, however, we have a pretty good reason! Here is a post I made on the FiniteMedia.com forums



There has been a significant chuck of downtime today due to a fire in the Portland OR area (where our data center is). Our apologies for this. If you would like more info, please hit the following link

http://www.katu.com/news/local/80899527.html

Yeah, tough events there.
But I have to treat events as they are... if I got into "Not My Fault" I'd get all tangled again. But you're still safely on the list, just lower.

[Timelord_]

Thats works for me!

Cheers.

[TaoPhoenix]

... According to the owner, they also had some more mundane glitches as well as the more "epic" fire situation. Per Above, they're still on the list, but they have to slide down a notch or two.

[TaoPhoenix]

I found the problem that was disturbing my layout, so here is the rough start for Round 2. Aloy Casmir gave me an account but I haven't loaded it yet. I have some backend unifying to do now as well.

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

There are now two categories. On the left are accounts mostly "straight up" - available for anyone to get the package I am using. On the right are hosts who gave me manager coupons. Remember, this is a durability test, not a test of ad placement policies.

[TaoPhoenix]

Finite Media appears to be selling/shutting down, so they have been removed.

[TaoPhoenix]

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

This is the official lineup of Round 2. I will entertain new offers, but I think I will enforce the "in business for a year" metric more sternly because the hosts that folded were precisely in the magic Five-Month mark. (Sept-January).

[TaoPhoenix]

Seems they retired their earlier generation of free hosting. If so, Round 2 will "hiccup" since this is really a prior result. I missed it because I may be Grandfathered into a "private hosting" that is no longer available.

[Schmarvin]

Sorry that I could not offer you free hosting.

[TaoPhoenix]

And here is my tuned list for Round 2.

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Tauceti.html

Pretty lean, but that works...

[Eric_HE]

what a mass..

[Tyler]

TaoPhoenix, I think you messed something up :). I'm getting a blank page besides the middle.

[aloycasmir]

Actually i find the whole design layout is somewhat confusing....

[dmmcintyre3]

TaoPhoenix, I think you messed something up :). I'm getting a blank page besides the middle.

Same here.

[TaoPhoenix]

what a mass..

Okay, I'm presuming you said my random new page is a mess rather than a church service.

That said, it's nice to see someone actually looking at my little project. Since I was figuring no one was actually paying attention, I went fiddling with the pages. I am leaning towards a new "brand" image like ReVision, as the current name was derived from my predilection to a Dan Simmons book from 15 years ago. (!)

In between my design shenanigans, all four hosts are currently up. I'm thinking this will be a boring round - I don't really plan to add many hosts this time... if they all survive, 3 of the 4 remaining will have been up for some 7 months, which starts to be notice worthy.

For those interested, the final result of the mess was this:

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/ReVision.html

Load it on your phone and report back if it's "phone friendly". (Yes, I know it loads "small".... not sure why... so zoom in.)

[TaoPhoenix]

Actually i find the whole design layout is somewhat confusing....

Hey Aloy, did you find it confusing before, or just now since the "mess"? (And see the mobile version).

Long ago the design was meant for people with cheap setups and garbage resolutions. Then I decided to try to make a phone version that was even more sliced down. Also it came from an age when I thought "huge page=better", so it was supposed to sprawl into 66 pages. Then I never wrote the articles, so it became a wasteland. :)

Especially see that I redid the topics... never mind that the articles intended are not there yet... does the new mobile front page make sense Aloy?

[TaoPhoenix]

And now it's back with new MicroLinks!

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/ReVision.html

[aloycasmir]

That's a lot better tao .
Page load timings though , still need a little more of finetuning .
But it already looks a lot better on phone...

[Darknight]

I really dont get what your doing, please explain?

[TaoPhoenix]

Aloy, the whole page is under 120K already. I can shave about 20 more k off to get at about 99 sharp, but below that it starts to look ugly on the pics. The green bars are 1 k each, but remember, *they are hosted on people's servers*, so if someone doesn't feed it, it's a sign.

Otherwise, we're so used to splendid page load times groundside, that (at least for me) in bad service pockets, mobile then is 3 times slower.

[TaoPhoenix]

DarkKnight,
If you look way back at the first 10 or so posts here, I started a duration study of a few hosts here. I grew tired of one of the highest rates of abusive overselling in the computer world. It was an opt-in volunteer basis for hosts who got a bit of exposure in return for a version of public monitoring.

I put a bit of a game show spin on it, because it resembles a reality tv theme by now. Round 1 saw a lot of entries, half of whom *didn't survive 5 months*!

The ones for this round are three survivors from last time (plus newcomer Aloy of NumbHost.) By now you know they all have made it six months of monitoring alone, on top of how many years before that. (CWahi and IsMyWebsite are at something like 9 and 4 by now.)

[aloycasmir]

Well if it's so , maybe you should image hosting sites for those graphics(i mean those belonging to your website) .
otherwise the structure is really good looking on phone too...

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi Aloy.
I'm not sure I understand your note. You guys ARE the hosts... it's just a webpage. So however fast your servers are is what the public gets. Back in Round 1 we saw Finite going down with a crushed server. The primary page is hosted with mirror copies on all the hosts, but the green bars pull from ALL the servers at once. So using an "image host site" doesn't exactly make sense, because it's not exactly a speed test.

P.S. Darkknight, what that means is when a host starts to get in trouble, the rest of the page eventually loads, except one (or more!) of the green Host bars.

[aloycasmir]

I meant these images Tao:?http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Circuit.gif
http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Parchment.jpg?http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/Books02.jpg and the rest
It would be better if you could embed these images in the html code itself or maybe use image hosting sites for these .

But nonetheless , I guess it comes down to under 1-1.5 minute page loads with this update , so you can just let it be , it's fine the other way too...

[TaoPhoenix]

Hey Aloy, I sent you a PM since there's something to thrash out here.

[aloycasmir]

Yep , replied with some info which might help out .
But I feel it won't be necessary , since the load time has already reduced to a considerable extent .

Best Regards,
Aloycasmir

[Mike Gibson]

busy thread eh ... Does Paradox allow advers though?

[aloycasmir]

He does allow advertisements Mike .

[TaoPhoenix]

Yes Mike, by keeping the thread active, it's becoming an event in its own right. The approach seems to keep host spam down in here. And it's surging away from the pack in viewer interest.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hehe I'm close to the 2nd highest page views of all time, behind a Newbie admin sticky. First for a real thread!

[dmmcintyre3]

Hehe I'm close to the 2nd highest page views of all time, behind a Newbie admin sticky. First for a real thread!

You are still behind a sticky in this forum, but you are close to passing it

[TaoPhoenix]

Check now!

[jiehao85]

It's been a while since I last checked FWS. This is one interesting thread. I used to offer free hosting a few years back on a one-to-one/case-by-case basis. There's no registration form or auto account creation. Can I still take part in the next round?

[TaoPhoenix]

Hello Jiehao.

I'm learning all kinds of unique things as I run this little project. I think an unstated requirement is emerging that applicants have to be offering hosting elsewhere. I am essentially doing a rating service, so I realized it doesn't exactly accomplish anything if I am the sole client account.

I have twice had someone disappear from real hosting, but my account was lurking somewhere on their server giving false positives.

[dmmcintyre3]

Check now!

http://freewebspace.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&f=2&page=1&pp=40&sort=views&order=desc&daysprune=-1

A long way to go

[TaoPhoenix]

Hehe I'm close to the 2nd highest page views of all time, behind a Newbie admin sticky. First for a real thread!

Good Catch elsewhere there. So I'm not. Oh well.

It's still lots of fun.

[TaoPhoenix]

Aloy, your forum seems to have hit a glitch.

[aloycasmir]

Ya I know .
Check my sig :(

[TaoPhoenix]

Shout out when this gets fixed. I'll pull you off for a while so that people don't stare at a big "Not Found" link. Good job with the backups though.

[TaoPhoenix]

I got a chance to update my page, and a few events have happened in a short flurry, so I'll call this the end of a shorter Round 2.

http://taophoenix.paradoxservers.net/ReVision.html

Congrats to Paradox, CWahi, and IsMyWebsite. In that order but now really close together, they are my current recommendations for hosting. Darksoul is the fastest on support, CWahi apparently has the strongest back end bandwidth, and until I dig up a specialty feature, IsMyWebsite seems to be a solid midline round-out option.

Some other things that have come up:
Host Offerings.
To qualify, hosts need to actively be offering hosting. I may have a couple of coupons on exact terms, but the hosts themselves are open for sales. I retired the category where my one little site would lurk effectively as "1% advertising" grafted onto a venture that morphed out of hosting into other random things. Same situation goes with "I offer 1 at a time hosting"... there are scores of talented folks here, who can hook a computer to the net and call it a host, but I also retired "Invitation Only". That makes more sense between a client with a tough hosting need and a 1-1 provider who takes it on. It's a bit different from my study.

To qualify, the host has to stay intact. Temporary emergency solutions get kudos from me as data protection quality, but the host can't qualify for a sort of "Host Star-Search". However, owners here have often had a test venture to learn on, then nailed down the formula for the second swing at the market and gone on to fine things.

This study might be close to winding down for the goals it was designed for. Sure, elsewhere on FWS we saw some long running hosts finally collapse into the mists of time, but I trust these hosts will still be around past next Christmas. Stats wise, it's one newcomer against two much older hosts. Great stuff. But all but perhaps one of the other entrants were ALL new hosts, which quietly also indicated the purpose of my little project - to weed out the new sales hype into who solidifies for the long run.

If I do a round 3, I would now be much fiercer with the entrance requirements, but then it's more of a split of studies. Calling this some kind of minor durability certification, the proper way to do things would be to have a feeder study with newcomer applicants. However I wouldn't try to load my whole site structure onto the new entrants, and that in turn would play havoc with whether I "deserve" to lock up a whole account space. All I do know is I am out of energy for a while to fully load up a host only to have it turn into a "Flip Operation" that deliberately intends to sell out in some 7 months with "more market value because of the 100 existing clients".

[Tyler]

Seriously, only three hosts left?. Wow.

[TaoPhoenix]

Please be aware my project is *not* a Terms Offered study. That's because managers can offer any plan that suits them on a whim. Currently I have terms coupons with CWahi and IsMyWebsite that as of this writing appear to be different from their off-shelf offerings. That's because off-shelf has to take on all comers including potential risks. I have found my own way to prove I am no snark, so I encourage dedicated clients to apply themselves to see what shows up.

From the early days of the study, I got several applicants with "tell me what you need". I don't like this, because the concept of a client asking for a service means he doesn't know what the state of the market is. I feel the proper way is a two-step process. Client says "give me options", Vendor opens with the shelf offerings, and then if Client has a wrinkle to solve, they figure it out. The hosts who hide behind a "tell me what you need" curtain are possibly abusive. It is a trick to deliberately play against both humble clients who get weaker than normal offerings, and enthused clients who may then be rejected as asking too much.

[TaoPhoenix]

Seriously, only three hosts left?. Wow.

Awful pun aside, that says something about the state of the industry and my project design doesn't it?

New hosts are at awful risk to fold.

But even more telling, workload aside, I placed no initial limits on entrants! But notice how few applied! That bothers me even more, that hosts either can't be bothered (service indicator), or that they don't trust their endgame plans (durability trust).

By now I'm at least infamous, so the cricket chirping says something, compared to the overflowing ad forum!

[Tyler]

Awful pun aside, that says something about the state of the industry and my project design doesn't it?

New hosts are at awful risk to fold.

But even more telling, workload aside, I placed no initial limits on entrants! But notice how few applied! That bothers me even more, that hosts either can't be bothered (service indicator), or that they don't trust their endgame plans (durability trust).

By now I'm at least infamous, so the cricket chirping says something, compared to the overflowing ad forum!

I believe the ad forum is at least 60% bots. But hey, I could be wrong.

[TaoPhoenix]

I believe the ad forum is at least 60% bots. But hey, I could be wrong.

I don't think so. Form the very little I know, there are real hosts behind the ads. I was remarking on how few applied, but there are hundreds of hosts represented on here.

I see it as more of the Template effect. When a marketing manager gets his formula down for the shelf offerings, it's a cut and paste operation. That's not a bot.

[dmmcintyre3]

I don't think so. Form the very little I know, there are real hosts behind the ads. I was remarking on how few applied, but there are hundreds of hosts represented on here.

I see it as more of the Template effect. When a marketing manager gets his formula down for the shelf offerings, it's a cut and paste operation. That's not a bot.

I don't think he was referring to the free/paid web host offers, but instead the ads and offers forum were there is all of the "free wordpress theme" posts are

[Tyler]

I don't think he was referring to the free/paid web host offers, but instead the ads and offers forum were there is all of the "free wordpress theme" posts are

No I was talking about the free/paid hosting ads.

Like I said, could be wrong.

[azoundria]

until I dig up a specialty feature, IsMyWebsite seems to be a solid midline round-out option.

Try here. http://www.ismywebsite.com/what-we-offer-that-no-one-else-does

[TaoPhoenix]

Try here. http://www.ismywebsite.com/what-we-offer-that-no-one-else-does

Nice tip there.

Though my first instinct felt like "US vs. Europe" paired with CWahi, aka both of you are promoting scalability, as a quick impression I might tag this "Support flexibility" though I haven't charted the details.

Either way, I'm pleased with the results of my findings.

[TaoPhoenix]

Elsewhere, Cal's sig said:

Want To Get Your Data Stolen??
And See Your Database And Website On Sale At DP???
Then Host With ParadoxServers.net - Where Their TOS Allows Them To Own/Steal/Sell Your Data

-----------------------

I think this is relevant. Darksoul, you go first. What do you think happened?

Cal, what piece of their TOS are you referring to?

[Tyler]

Elsewhere, Cal's sig said:

Want To Get Your Data Stolen??
And See Your Database And Website On Sale At DP???
Then Host With ParadoxServers.net - Where Their TOS Allows Them To Own/Steal/Sell Your Data

-----------------------

I think this is relevant. Darksoul, you go first. What do you think happened?

Cal, what piece of their TOS are you referring to?

I have no idea, hopefully Cal will be able to clear it up.

[Namepad]

But even more telling, workload aside, I placed no initial limits on entrants! But notice how few applied! That bothers me even more, that hosts either can't be bothered (service indicator), or that they don't trust their endgame plans (durability trust).



I think this statement should answer your question as why few applied. Your making these assumptions based on what ?

[TaoPhoenix]

I think this statement should answer your question as why few applied. Your making these assumptions based on what ?

In a study whose chief requirement is not to compromise the business, I took my best guesses as to reasons.

Do you have any opinions? Would you have joined a "New Host Feeder Round"?

[Namepad]

I applaud what you set out to accomplish and for that you deserve credit.

But to "not compromise" means to not "best guess either".

I think some hosts saw this as yet another which host is "best" contest when in reality there really is no "best" host. There will always be a preconceived best, but I would rather see how a provider handles adversity, over prosperity.

Good luck with it the rest of the way.

[azoundria]

Well I am personally honoured to have anyone test and compare our service against the others. It's kind of pointless to operate a host, if you can't do it better than someone else.

[Seraphim]

Tao are you still looking for applicants, since a lot of the previous ones have already failed?

At the time of your original post I was still putting things together on my end, being a new start up and all, but now I think I could have a go at this and see how I do.

[TaoPhoenix]

Maybe Seraphim.

It's the new hosts who are at risk of Bad Things Happening. So do you have a couple tricks up your sleeve to avoid the worst of downtimes?

At the moment you're in something like the "Feeder" category. Let's do this. I'll pass on logging a full strength account with you just for the sake of saving work. But I'll make a different link to you just so we can keep tabs, but you get a break on minor blips.

[colorhost]

I Would like to apply (Used to be an free host for 1 year running! Now paid)

Ill give you my old Free plan which includes

1gb disk
10gb bandwith
5x Features ( i can upgrade depending on if you acually need more.)

Contact me if you want this.

Thanks
ColorHost

[TaoPhoenix]

Well well, maybe we have a real round 3 after all!
I do think I'll keep tiers to give the props to the incumbents from prior rounds, and my site design might support a "Bottom Tier - Top Tier" format.
So Seraphim, go for it, can you stabilize at a 1GB plan?

[colorhost]

Tao, Would you like my offer?
Never got an reply on what you thought.

Thanks
ColorHost

[TaoPhoenix]

Sorry Colorhost,
In fact it was your offer that made me reopen the round. But I smashed too many sentencs together into a mush.
Yes, I'll accept yours.
I'm a bit slow on processing, but I'll get the round opened eventually.

[TaoPhoenix]

However, Cal, your comment is relevant over here.

(Pasted)


I finally had it taken down, after I provided proof of domain ownership. Visit DigitalPoint Forums.

If your also with ParadoxServers... then keep a look out if you have a BIG forum or website. Your data may get stolen and used without you knowing.

I found out when some random person (a buyer) emailed my from my forums, and asked about the sale. I had no idea what the hell was going on... he sent me a link and I was shocked.

All I can say... I won't ever be hosting for free anymore. I rather pay and know a reputable company wouldn't do something like what I went through.... It's just a shock that free hosts would take advantage of it's users these days.


But, lets get this topic back on track. If you or anyone else wants more info, feel free to PM me. Let's not break the rules and wreck a thread here.

Cal, I don't know what piece of Paradox's TOS is involved as opposed to simple data security concerns. Earlier Darksoul said he didn't know either.

And if I'm going to do an accurate survey, I need to know. Did you have a big forum hosted on Paradox, then it wandered away somehow, and then someone tried to copy most/all of it for sale? (Forum design? How do you get away with copying the whole forum including posts and selling it?)

Can you explain here? I'd rather not muddy things cross-site over at DP. I barely heard of them before your note.

Note that data can be copied from nearly anywhere on the web. I'm interested in precisely how Paradox's involvement made things any worse.

[Cal]

However, Cal, your comment is relevant over here.

(Pasted)



Cal, I don't know what piece of Paradox's TOS is involved as opposed to simple data security concerns. Earlier Darksoul said he didn't know either.

And if I'm going to do an accurate survey, I need to know. Did you have a big forum hosted on Paradox, then it wandered away somehow, and then someone tried to copy most/all of it for sale? (Forum design? How do you get away with copying the whole forum including posts and selling it?)

Can you explain here? I'd rather not muddy things cross-site over at DP. I barely heard of them before your note.

Note that data can be copied from nearly anywhere on the web. I'm interested in precisely how Paradox's involvement made things any worse.
I am contacting the admins right now. After that, I will update you all on the story. All I can say is for now read my signature.

[colorhost]

ONTOPIC: When you want the Deal Tao, contact me cause there is no order form for this package anymore.

Thanks
ColorHost

[Seraphim]

Maybe Seraphim.

It's the new hosts who are at risk of Bad Things Happening. So do you have a couple tricks up your sleeve to avoid the worst of downtimes?

At the moment you're in something like the "Feeder" category. Let's do this. I'll pass on logging a full strength account with you just for the sake of saving work. But I'll make a different link to you just so we can keep tabs, but you get a break on minor blips.

You bet I do. I'm building a network from the ground up with reliability in mind, my projected downtime goal is no more than 5 minutes of site downtime for any customer in a given 30 day period.

I'll admit it isn't easy on my current budget, and there's a lot of competition out there.

SeraphimLabs Free

1 Subdomain
1 MySQL Database
5GB/month bandwidth
500MB storage
Virtualmin control panel
PHP, CGI, Perl
Single Banner Ad
Starting at: $0/month (Single Banner Ad)

Here's my normal free plan. For the sake of review, I'll drop the ads and double the storage and bandwidth just to be on par with the others, since I'm still small enough scale that it doesn't make a mess of the bookkeeping. Will probably just enter it in my customer database as two free accounts with the same username and contact info, that way I can account for that space and bandwidth as things start to get busy.

Signup here. It does verify the email via confirmation message (https://www.seraphimlabs.net/subscribe.php)

[Seanieb]

Hey,

I'm from Lost Signal Networks, and a friend showed me this thread, wanted to see what you thought. I give out free accounts with the following specifications:

5 GB of disk space, 75 GB of bandwidth a month (I do limited runs of these accounts, but I have plenty of spots left.)
"Unlimited" SQL databases, meaning that you can have as many as you please within your disk space limit

I do not require ads, I do not have a forum, though if you want more bandwidth I would ask you to put an ad up, but the offering seems well within your requirements. I have been up since 2006, providing web hosting since 2008. I currently serve about 10 other customers, without so much as a hitch, on paid or free accounts, VPS services, etc.

My website is at http://lostsignalweb.com/ . I'm committed to customer service, so for the last little while I've been taking customer requests all by hand, to make sure everyone is taken care of. You can e-mail me directly, use one of the contact forums on my site or send me a PM. There should be an "e-mail me" button on this forum.

-Sean B.
Lost Signal Web

[TaoPhoenix]

Hey Cal, can you keep this thread updated with the results of your discussions with the SuperPowers here? Your former Sig affects my study project.

[TaoPhoenix]

You bet I do. I'm building a network from the ground up with reliability in mind, my projected downtime goal is no more than 5 minutes of site downtime for any customer in a given 30 day period.

I'll admit it isn't easy on my current budget, and there's a lot of competition out there.

SeraphimLabs Free

1 Subdomain
1 MySQL Database
5GB/month bandwidth
500MB storage
Virtualmin control panel
PHP, CGI, Perl
Single Banner Ad
Starting at: $0/month (Single Banner Ad)

Here's my normal free plan. For the sake of review, I'll drop the ads and double the storage and bandwidth just to be on par with the others, since I'm still small enough scale that it doesn't make a mess of the bookkeeping. Will probably just enter it in my customer database as two free accounts with the same username and contact info, that way I can account for that space and bandwidth as things start to get busy.

Signup here. It does verify the email via confirmation message (https://www.seraphimlabs.net/subscribe.php)

Yes please, "Coupon" me up to 1GB space and no ad, but I'll remark that if anything I won't even use all of that existing bandwidth. My dev style is long haul & static.

I'd remark that you can even get away with "1 hour downtime per 30 days". A 5 Min goal is probably a bit too brittle. (One tasty glitch will sink you for that aforementioned hour because you'd end up rebooting with 2 network tests or something.)

[TaoPhoenix]

Hey,

I'm from Lost Signal Networks, and a friend showed me this thread, wanted to see what you thought. I give out free accounts with the following specifications:

5 GB of disk space, 75 GB of bandwidth a month (I do limited runs of these accounts, but I have plenty of spots left.)
"Unlimited" SQL databases, meaning that you can have as many as you please within your disk space limit

I do not require ads, I do not have a forum, though if you want more bandwidth I would ask you to put an ad up, but the offering seems well within your requirements. I have been up since 2006, providing web hosting since 2008. I currently serve about 10 other customers, without so much as a hitch, on paid or free accounts, VPS services, etc.

My website is at http://lostsignalweb.com/ . I'm committed to customer service, so for the last little while I've been taking customer requests all by hand, to make sure everyone is taken care of. You can e-mail me directly, use one of the contact forums on my site or send me a PM. There should be an "e-mail me" button on this forum.

-Sean B.
Lost Signal Web

Wow, my Feeder Round is really heating up! Tangentially, the first guys to figure out a barter system for resources will move this industry to the next level. I guarantee I won't come close to using that kind of bandwidth for a long time.

I do most of the logistics in this thread itself, because a fairly open process is important. People can see hosts rise, and then ... sometimes stumble. I have several manager coupons for parity, but see elsewhere that this is not a feature comparison, simply a host longevity review.

Heh. Okay, now that I have a full fledged new round, I'll have to clean up the debris in my files to close out the last series. My links are just a shorthand - all you guys are in, so my tardiness has no effect on anything.

[Tyler]

I am contacting the admins right now. After that, I will update you all on the story. All I can say is for now read my signature.


Hey Cal, can you keep this thread updated with the results of your discussions with the SuperPowers here? Your former Sig affects my study project.

Hm...

http://filesmelt.com/dl/cal.png

[Seraphim]

Yes please, "Coupon" me up to 1GB space and no ad, but I'll remark that if anything I won't even use all of that existing bandwidth. My dev style is long haul & static.

I'd remark that you can even get away with "1 hour downtime per 30 days". A 5 Min goal is probably a bit too brittle. (One tasty glitch will sink you for that aforementioned hour because you'd end up rebooting with 2 network tests or something.)

I probably will use an hour a month when it comes to advertising and calculating outage refunds, but internally my goal is staying 5 minutes, since my longest reboot only takes 3 minutes to do.

Incidentally I was just playing with some numbers regarding times.

In a 30 day billing cycle, there are 720 hours. 99% uptime as most hosts claim to offer would have at minimum 712.8 hours of that as uptime, with up to 7 hours a month down.

Meaning even at no more than 1 hour a month downtime as my goal, I would still be way ahead in reliability.

[TaoPhoenix]

1 hour:
3 min for the reboot that doesn't help
42 min for scrunching up your eyebrows while muttering "WTF"
12 min to fix some unbeliveably baroque yet stupid problem
3 min to retrieve beverage from fridge.

[Seanieb]

Wow, my Feeder Round is really heating up! Tangentially, the first guys to figure out a barter system for resources will move this industry to the next level. I guarantee I won't come close to using that kind of bandwidth for a long time.

I do most of the logistics in this thread itself, because a fairly open process is important. People can see hosts rise, and then ... sometimes stumble. I have several manager coupons for parity, but see elsewhere that this is not a feature comparison, simply a host longevity review.

Heh. Okay, now that I have a full fledged new round, I'll have to clean up the debris in my files to close out the last series. My links are just a shorthand - all you guys are in, so my tardiness has no effect on anything.

Sorry to go off topic here, but "feeder"?

[TaoPhoenix]

Sorry to go off topic here, but "feeder"?

It's still 20% on topic. What resulted was three hosts are on track to be really solid for a while. Industry wide, new hosts drop off like a cliff. So I thought there should be "layers of achievement" between a host I think is really solid and newcomers who are still shaking down.

As hinted elsewhere, this is a low dollar field, so it attracts all kinds of folks who have some skill but not much startup capital. I personally think it's a great little sideline to learn on as a provider, but mostly everyone agrees it's no big-bucks.

So while you're a nice newcomer, we'll have to see how events play out.

[Seanieb]

I may be new to doing this myself, but I am hardly new to the webhosting indusry, all I want to do is provide what I expect for myself to others. I've been employed by other companies in the past, it's why I'm going my own now.

[TaoPhoenix]

Heh. I was going to start updating stuff but then my rental-house net croaked. Just posting a note today to say I'm still watching over things. It could take a while for it to come back up though.

[aloycasmir]

Looking forward to having you back Tao .
Long time no see...

[Seraphim]

Well at least it went out at a decent time.

One of my dedicated systems died and I had to switch providers. No big deal really, just frustrating. It's all back up and running again on the new machine with a different datacenter, so that should take care of that for a while.

I'll be ready when you are.

[Tyler]

Well at least it went out at a decent time.

One of my dedicated systems died and I had to switch providers. No big deal really, just frustrating. It's all back up and running again on the new machine with a different datacenter, so that should take care of that for a while.

I'll be ready when you are.

Why would you switch providers over that?. Hardware failure happens, its normal.

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay,
Getting back to things, I have tagged pending:
SeraphimLabs
Colorhost
Lost Signal

and you seem to have stayed put Aloy, so I should give you another try at this 2nd rung. I have to figure out where we left my account.

[aloycasmir]

Sure thanks . And Let me know if you need me to re-send your account info .

Best Regards,
Aloycasmir

[hostmaster1215]

wrong category?

[Seraphim]

Why would you switch providers over that?. Hardware failure happens, its normal.

I had been having issues with high latency as well, they apparently had a reputation for trouble with that.

So when the hardware showed warning signs of failure I changed providers to one that performs better, dropping my pings even over my Cell Modem from ~150ms down to only 80ms.

Doesn't matter much, though it is good to know that the new machine is literally a new machine, whereas before I was on a two or three times pre-owned box.

Incidentally good thing I moved when I did. I got an email a few days ago saying that the provider I left had a major outage in the datacenter where my dedi was that would have knocked me offline for close to 12 hours. Fortunately that machine is sitting idle counting down the last few days of it's billing cycle.

Yes that kind of thing happens, but I found Codero to not be as good a deal as it seemed at first.

[TaoPhoenix]

wrong category?

Bonus points for the stumper question!

I traditionally haven't cared for file hosting, because if you see the discussions elsewhere in my thread, a full host ... hosts files. File hosts tend to like aggressive deletion policies like "we delete if you don't download every 30 days" etc, which doesn't work at all with the intent I am studying.

If you really like what I'm doing and have something to prove, I'd have to look hard at your TOS and get a "MgrCoupon" to adjust them to something I can use.

[TaoPhoenix]

I am contacting Seraphim Labs, Color Host, and Lost Signal for account setup.

[TaoPhoenix]

Colorhost has been added.

I have not heard from Seraphim or Lost Signal.

http://taophoenix.colorhost.net/ReVision.html

[dmmcintyre3]

TaoPhoenix, would you like to test my cPanel offering?
http://support.fasterhost.tk/index.php?category=3&product_id=15

[TaoPhoenix]

Sure, that's why I started a second tier, to be less stringent than the first round winners.

You can PM me the setup info. Go with Subdomain.

[TaoPhoenix]

Fasterhost sent me my account.
Advice from clueless user:
FWS is pretty agressive making smileys out of characters!
I'll add his button soonish.

[TaoPhoenix]

Aloy and NumbHost are rejoining too. He had a bad glitch so I have him some time off the grid, and now he's ready to try for his spot.

So we have a nice update today!

http://taophoenix.numbhost.com/ReVision.html

The Host links all work, and all are up at the start of this Round 3. There are two tiers, but it's mostly a dead heat among the hosts on each tier.

My site itself is a mismash among the host versions because I worked first to get the update posted. At a leisurely pace behind the scenes I'll go back and actually fill in stuff. But the design itself is new, because I went to the crunched mobile design away from the one with the more baroque background.

So, Off we go on round 3!

Meanwhile, I haven't heard from Seraphim or Lost Signal, and I think that matters a bit, to have a support voice here. I know, hosts like people on their own forums etc, but this is the cross-site reference zone.

Again, I encourage sites to post their own news, pre-emptively! Because everyone can click the little green linkies, and you don't want scuttle "ooh, look, he's down"!

[colorhost]

I Will Update this periodically now since that post was written i now have it written on my list of things to do.

"Post on TaoPhoenix's Thread if Downtime/upgrades Happen!"

So you might hear from me often if anything happens it will be posted here!

I Have noticed NumbHosts Copy is more recent and updated than the copy hosted on ColorHost, is that gonna be updated or not? (It doesn't matter if it isnt gonna be updated, its just my curiosity.)

Thanks
ColorHost

[dmmcintyre3]

I Have noticed NumbHosts Copy is more recent and updated than the copy hosted on ColorHost, is that gonna be updated or not? (It doesn't matter if it isnt gonna be updated, its just my curiosity.)

I noticed the same thing. Are you going to update it TaoPhoenix?

[aloycasmir]

I can clarify . Mine was the last one to be added to the list .
He was already updating the layout . Luckily , I was relisted to the study at the same time as he did his layout job .
So , I have the latest files .

When , he'll find time , he'll update all your files too .
Don't worry :)

[TaoPhoenix]

I noticed the same thing. Are you going to update it TaoPhoenix?

Absolutely. "But for what values of Updating?"

I'm also in the middle of a total design overhaul, even beyond Aloy's copy! I typically have one front-runner copy that gets moved around, and then the updates are spread out. That's why I smashed together the only part of the site that matters to get an official Round 3 start because I had already been delayed.

[TaoPhoenix]

I noticed the same thing. Are you going to update it TaoPhoenix?

"Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it!"

I went to check something and now I can't log in. I'm getting an error message.
Firefox can't find the server at stxt.tk. at http://stxt.tk:2082/login/"

and
404 Not Found
The server can not find the requested page:
taophoenix.fasterhost.tk/Fasterhost.gif (port 80)

Also, the troubling part of this is that the way my design works, barring goofs on my part, a green light goes out when a host has trouble. I believe it was working at the time I posted my link. Any info to be had?

[TaoPhoenix]

I Will Update this periodically now since that post was written i now have it written on my list of things to do.

"Post on TaoPhoenix's Thread if Downtime/upgrades Happen!"

So you might hear from me often if anything happens it will be posted here!

I Have noticed NumbHosts Copy is more recent and updated than the copy hosted on ColorHost, is that gonna be updated or not? (It doesn't matter if it isnt gonna be updated, its just my curiosity.)

Thanks
ColorHost

By now most of the hosts have fresh copies. Expect these copies of the basic site to mostly stay put for quite a while. But I'll still work with the Host Greenbars as needed for the study.

[dmmcintyre3]

"Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it!"

I went to check something and now I can't log in. I'm getting an error message.
Firefox can't find the server at stxt.tk. at http://stxt.tk:2082/login/"

and
404 Not Found
The server can not find the requested page:
taophoenix.fasterhost.tk/Fasterhost.gif (port 80)

Also, the troubling part of this is that the way my design works, barring goofs on my part, a green light goes out when a host has trouble. I believe it was working at the time I posted my link. Any info to be had?

My cPanel reseller vanished off the server. I don't know why this happened and have contacted the reseller provider about it. I have no response as of now. The reseller host's main site is even down currently. The strange thing is that the server is still up (Your site goes to the no account cPanel page) but the host's main site is down.

EDIT: It seems they (the reseller host) were using resellerrocket.com which does not allow free hosting at all. Thee were offering free shared and free resellers off of what appears to have been a unlimited master reseller. (there was paid too, but the free was still not allowed)

[TaoPhoenix]

My cPanel reseller vanished off the server. I don't know why this happened and have contacted the reseller provider about it. I have no response as of now. The reseller host's main site is even down currently. The strange thing is that the server is still up (Your site goes to the no account cPanel page) but the host's main site is down.

EDIT: It seems they (the reseller host) were using resellerrocket.com which does not allow free hosting at all. Thee were offering free shared and free resellers off of what appears to have been a unlimited master reseller. (there was paid too, but the free was still not allowed)

That's a rocky start! Not being able to login is one problem, but losing existing data is worse! Also, I took a nap and came back, and it looks like stuff is still haywire. Any chance of this getting fixed tonight?

[dmmcintyre3]

That's a rocky start! Not being able to login is one problem, but losing existing data is worse! Also, I took a nap and came back, and it looks like stuff is still haywire. Any chance of this getting fixed tonight?

I think the whole host that I got my reseller from is down for now. I am not sure what to do really.

[TaoPhoenix]

It's a tough place to run a business gang. Mcintyre at least had the guts to put the test on the line. It's better than lots of unnamed hosts who blanket the Ads column, then vanish never to be heard again.
(Edited Version)

Having a Failover strategy with a small bump is better than a total crash. Fasterhost still gets a small demerit for being unable to smoothly transfer data, but my study also acts as a "medium-safe" learning ground. For other clients he could easily add a step to his processes to make the switch policy-automatic.

Experimental Alpha offerings are not the same as the entire host's existence. So if we were to rewrite history, way back Mcintyre's offer maybe should have read "Hi, I have a host. Would you like to try my CPanel side? It's experimental and untested, and if something goes wrong, we'd switch you over to the more tried and proven DirectAdmin side."

To other hosts considering entering, same caveat - I'm looking at overall host stability. I don't have a clear structured strategy for testing Alpha experiments. I do like that sort of stuff, but the type of account would likely be different, as would the type of page I'd upload, which would be far simpler than my main page.

[TaoPhoenix]

For a while, my links are actually login links while the flurry of Round 3 is going on. I'll have to rely on the general intelligence of the audience to find the main pages of the companies. Later when it all shakes out, they will flip back to being sales links, and the logins will go to a Computers subpage.

[TaoPhoenix]

(Pasted from the Ads Section)


My DirectAdmin hosting is up, as it has been since the start. http://fasterhost.tk/uptime

Can you do a switchover of my data onto the Direct Admin side? If you automate something like this at a policy level so that when things like your cPanel side goes down, it adds creds to your overall business brand.

If you are reduced to only switching over my client stats I can re-upload the site.

[TaoPhoenix]

I did upload my site back to Fasterhost, and so they're back on the list. This "today's refresh" of the current roster - same as a few days ago, but with more adventures in the meantime!

http://www.taophoenix.fasterhost.tk/ReVision.html

[Seraphim]

Aloy and NumbHost are rejoining too. He had a bad glitch so I have him some time off the grid, and now he's ready to try for his spot.

So we have a nice update today!

http://taophoenix.numbhost.com/ReVision.html

The Host links all work, and all are up at the start of this Round 3. There are two tiers, but it's mostly a dead heat among the hosts on each tier.

My site itself is a mismash among the host versions because I worked first to get the update posted. At a leisurely pace behind the scenes I'll go back and actually fill in stuff. But the design itself is new, because I went to the crunched mobile design away from the one with the more baroque background.

So, Off we go on round 3!

Meanwhile, I haven't heard from Seraphim or Lost Signal, and I think that matters a bit, to have a support voice here. I know, hosts like people on their own forums etc, but this is the cross-site reference zone.

Again, I encourage sites to post their own news, pre-emptively! Because everyone can click the little green linkies, and you don't want scuttle "ooh, look, he's down"!

I'm having technical difficulties over here. Wasn't sure when you were going to start this thing so I was keeping busy, and last night my best server lost it's hard drive. Apparently I passed a factory defect, the drive failed in service after only three weeks of uptime since my new provider custom built a new machine for me.

The datacenter is on top of it, they're rebuilding me with a RAID1 drive arrangement in the offending machine to prevent this from happening again. But in the meantime most of my services are running in contingency mode on my remaining hardware.

But it seems I'm either going to be a late entry or have to wait on this round until everything is up and running again. I'm not dead yet, just delayed. Hopefully this will be the last time in a good while that I have to take unplanned downtime in excess of my target values. Usually once a given hardware set is stable for a month or so it will stay that way for the rest of it's service lifetime.

Will get in touch with LSN about their entry, though he's been pretty busy lately with his reseller program.

[Tyler]

I'm having technical difficulties over here. Wasn't sure when you were going to start this thing, and last night my best server lost it's hard drive. Apparently I passed a factory defect, the drive failed in service after only three weeks of uptime.

The datacenter is on top of it, they're rebuilding me with a RAID1 drive arrangement in the offending machine to prevent this from happening again. But in the meantime most of my services are running in contingency mode on my remaining hardware, so at the moment I don't think it would be a wise move to enter.

But it seems I'm either going to be a late entry or have to wait on this round until everything is up and running again. I'm not dead yet, just delayed. Hopefully this will be the last time in a good while that I have to take unplanned downtime in excess of my target values.

Will get in touch with LSN about their entry, though he's been pretty busy lately with his reseller program.

You were hosting on a server with only one HDD?. Are you mad?. What type of Hard Drive was it?.

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm having technical difficulties over here. Wasn't sure when you were going to start this thing, and last night my best server lost it's hard drive. Apparently I passed a factory defect, the drive failed in service after only three weeks of uptime.

The datacenter is on top of it, they're rebuilding me with a RAID1 drive arrangement in the offending machine to prevent this from happening again. But in the meantime most of my services are running in contingency mode on my remaining hardware, so at the moment I don't think it would be a wise move to enter.

But it seems I'm either going to be a late entry or have to wait on this round until everything is up and running again. I'm not dead yet, just delayed. Hopefully this will be the last time in a good while that I have to take unplanned downtime in excess of my target values.

Will get in touch with LSN about their entry, though he's been pretty busy lately with his reseller program.

Actually, you are doing the right thing by holding off until things stabilize. The "rounds" are loose, mostly when some kind of mini epoch seems to complete itself. Fasterhost got stuck with the worst possible glitch right out of the gate, but I think I've dug him out of "out of fire only into soup". There are ZERO benefits to aggressively entering early - it's not a "day counting contest". Hosts only earn creds racking up months of "No Bad News Today". If you get stuff squared away and you really think you have it locked securely, you may still be able to enter Round 3. There aren't that many tiers - there isn't much difference between a host entering in February and one from April.

[Seraphim]

You were hosting on a server with only one HDD?. Are you mad?. What type of Hard Drive was it?.

500GB Western Digital. Failed 20 days out of the box. This is why you always make backups. Though usually such a drive will either fail in the first month of operation, or will survive several years without incident. Unfortunately for me this one was the former, and I was at least prepared for it.

Heck most of the dedicated servers available out there only have a single drive in them unless you pay extra. Either way, they're installing two hard drives in RAID1 as a replacement, so it won't matter anymore unless my luck is that bad that I have both of them fail on the same day.

I still have the backup from when I moved to that machine in the first place, the only major change was an update to my own site scripts and those are all edited off the server and uploaded anyway.

Either way, I had been bug tracking the new server for some time now and holding off on entering until all of the issues were resolved. It seems that the true source of the issues has been found in any case, faulty hard drive certainly explains the quota errors when I tried to run test accounts to prove all of the features.

I'll let you know when I am good to go again, I doubt it will be more than a week unless I get more problems.

[Tyler]

500GB Western Digital. Failed 20 days out of the box. This is why you always make backups. Though usually such a drive will either fail in the first month of operation, or will survive several years without incident. Unfortunately for me this one was the former, and I was at least prepared for it.

Heck most of the dedicated servers available out there only have a single drive in them unless you pay extra. Either way, they're installing two hard drives in RAID1 as a replacement, so it won't matter anymore unless my luck is that bad that I have both of them fail on the same day.

I still have the backup from when I moved to that machine in the first place, the only major change was an update to my own site scripts and those are all edited off the server and uploaded anyway.

Either way, I had been bug tracking the new server for some time now and holding off on entering until all of the issues were resolved. It seems that the true source of the issues has been found in any case, faulty hard drive certainly explains the quota errors when I tried to run test accounts to prove all of the features.

I'll let you know when I am good to go again, I doubt it will be more than a week unless I get more problems.

..Green drive by chance?.

[Seraphim]

..Green drive by chance?.

Blue they tell me.
I've just been notified that my server is good to go again, so I'll be setting things up as soon as possible.

[TaoPhoenix]

Heh I posted so many messages this weekend the user status thingie flipped over into "FWS Addict" range!

[Tyler]

Blue they tell me.
I've just been notified that my server is good to go again, so I'll be setting things up as soon as possible.

That's lovely, a host that doesn't even know their own hardware configuration.

If your server was using a lot of disk I/O that drive was getting hammered and probably would fail. I use blue myself, but at least I use RAID10. Blue is not a black drive, and they are not really designed for server use.

You should go with a raptor drive for a single disk server, or a RAID configured system. RAID1 in my books doesn't cut it unless your just using it purely for redundancy. In my honest opinion you should be looking at RAID5 or RAID10.

I hope that you take measures to continue backing up your data at any rate as when it comes to redundancy with RAID, the only thing that it will protect you from is a disk failure. If data gets corrupted it still gets corrupted on both drives.

[Seraphim]

That's lovely, a host that doesn't even know their own hardware configuration.

If your server was using a lot of disk I/O that drive was getting hammered and probably would fail. I use blue myself, but at least I use RAID10. Blue is not a black drive, and they are not really designed for server use.

You should go with a raptor drive for a single disk server, or a RAID configured system. RAID1 in my books doesn't cut it unless your just using it purely for redundancy. In my honest opinion you should be looking at RAID5 or RAID10.

I hope that you take measures to continue backing up your data at any rate as when it comes to redundancy with RAID, the only thing that it will protect you from is a disk failure. If data gets corrupted it still gets corrupted on both drives.

Drive shouldn't have been getting hammered upon in a new build that for the most part was sitting very close to idle. And yes I am going to continue routine backups, that's a given. the RAID is just for better performance and to reduce the probability of this happening again.

[Tyler]

Drive shouldn't have been getting hammered upon in a new build that for the most part was sitting very close to idle. And yes I am going to continue routine backups, that's a given. the RAID is just for better performance and to reduce the probability of this happening again.

RAID1 wont increase write performance.

[colorhost]

Just coming with my Status: Were currently doing backups, so if anything appears out of ordinary then you know why!

Thanks
ColorHost