Back Online (Finally)
By Sean at 2 December, 2008, 6:45 am
The past five days have been an utter nightmare. On Thanksgiving morning I got an email from my hosting company, BlueHost, saying that they unceremoniously pulled the plug on my account. There was no warning. No clear explanation. The email they sent said, “It has come to our attention that your site is using an extreme amount of resources on our servers and network.” I had no idea what this meant and calls to their technicians offered no explanation. I was constantly referred to their terms of service agreement, which like most legal documents is littered with vague and roundabout ways of saying that they can do what they want, when they want. One tech even told me that my account was “deactivated” by order of the president of the company. I didn’t believe him since each of the five techs I talked to gave me a different answer. Apparently it was true.
I was left at a total loss all weekend. What would cause my little blog using “an extreme amount of resources”? What does all of this Internet-ese even mean? Was the site hacked? Are there FSB spooks out to get me? No tea, thank you.
I was unable to get a hold of BlueHost’s Abuse department until Monday morning because of the holiday. They told me that there was something in my site that downed their entire shared hosting network. The president of the company was notified and he gave the ukaz to axe me. My immediate question: “Is he Russian?” He isn’t. And no they weren’t going to restore my account. BlueHost wanted no part of me. And at this point I wanted no part of them. I had to pack my bags and go elsewhere. The only question was where?
I eventually signed up for a Virtual Private Server with InMotion. Yesterday was a elementary crash course in the difference between Shared Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Dedicated Servers. Words like SQL Databases, phpAdmin, and Cpanel are now part of my everyday vocabulary. I must have called tech support 10 times. All of that and I still barely understand what the hell is going on.
I’m just happy that the site is now back up. Thanks to InMotion for their assistance. Thanks to everyone who sent emails asking where I went. A pox on BlueHost for ruining my holiday weekend.
Now back to the regularly scheduled program . . .
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Comments
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Good to see you back. V. disturbing to read that their customer relations are so bad.
I came across this for technical details on why a site might be booted:
http://www.cheap-web-hosting-info.com/hosting_review.php?id=8
Bluehjost Review By: Jason Mitchell, Salt Lake City, UT
Site Hosted:http://www.feedthehabit.com IP Address: 68.142.138.4
Not good if your site grows too big
My site grew too large for Bluehost and they essentially put a gun to my head and forced me to move away. Prior to that, I loved their support and for the money, you cannot beat them. Just be aware that if your site uses several PHP scripts and gets 50,000 unique visitors per month, they will boot you.
Review Added on: 2008-10-29
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There’s nothing on the CEO’s blog: http://mattheaton.com/
Did you ever figure out what it was on the site that caused the crash?
I thought because of constant and harsh criticism of Vladimir Putin in here as well as Kasparov-biased presentation of the current events in Russia, he ordered the website to be shut down. Welcome back~!
Welcome back
Look at all this mess in positive way, Sean – you got rid of Bluehost and their “super” service.
Hope that new provider is up to its promise in service (prices looks cheap…
but let’s hope)
PS. I think one of the problems – number of links on the page.
Like everyone else, I’m happy you’re back, Sean. I hope not to sound presumptous, but I think that for the sake of others you should write about your problems with Bluehost. The site Aleks found seems very useful, but I would even cast a wider net.
Years ago, when I did considerably more stuff on the Internet, my ISP was a good, local and small company. I was among the first few hundred of customers. I talked on the phone and exchanged emails with the founder of the ISP several times. They got bigger, were eventually bought by another company, and slowly the service became not only more impersonal (to be expected) but it became worse and worse.
Finally I can see the site from UCLA. The domain transfer must be going through.
From what I can gather, there was something sucking resources from one of my databases. But that is as far as my expertise goes on this matter. Part of me thinks that it was one of the sites plugins just because the error log had frequent mention of it. One of the tech people suggested that this might be a problem.
As for the cornucopia of links. You’re right ivanov, it is a problem. I’ve been planning on cleaning house but I just haven’t had the time.
The email they sent said, “It has come to our attention that your site is using an extreme amount of resources on our servers and network.”
Averko’s been lurking again?
However, if you continue your biased approach to presenting the news from Russia (i.e., \”truth about Russia is in the eyes of Kasparov and Novodvorskaya\”), I will (and you know that I can) shut down your blog for good. Think about it.
P.S.: Stop bullying Dima Medvedev through ignoring him.
Nice to see you’ve pulled through, Sean.
I’ve moved/renamed my blog to http://www.sublimeoblivion.com and I now have a self-hosted WordPress hosted by…wait for it…Bluehost!
Although, if Aleks data is accurate I still have an order of magnitude difference in visitor numbers before I get booted.
One question…when your site went down, did they delete your info, or just block access? (I suspect the former, since unless you’re a backup maniac you’d have lost quite a few posts).
DR, they only blocked access to the site. They gave me two weeks to get my stuff off. I don’t know if this will give you any comfort but I didn’t have a single problem with them until last Thursday. What really bothers me about all this is what when there was a problem they basically told me to f-off.
Based on Alek’s research, I can only think that your participation in the NYC Klebnikov Foundation event was such a PR coup that SRB has about 49,975 new lurkers.
Sorry for your trouble Sean and thanks for bringing SRB back.
Operation Kick Ass 2008 laid waste to another not so Russia friendly.
I’m still being ignored, my contributions (in particular to the success of this blog) have not been recognized.
I think they aren’t bullying you.
They just ignore you
But maybe I’m wrong
At least I’m reading you!
I hope he does not get too much grief for dissing Russian football.
http://www.goal.com/en/news/699/tottenham/2008/12/05/996930/tottenham-ace-pavlyuchenkos-russian-rant
BTW one more question Sean.
Did you at least get some of your money back? (I assume you weren’t at the end of your contract?).
Stop bullying Dima Medvedev through ignoring him.
I think they aren’t bullying you.
They just ignore you
But maybe I’m wrong
At least I’m reading you!
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Thank you, Ivanov, for the kind words, but ignoring is a form of bullying, – treating one as he or she doesn’t exist. I get a lot of that treatment. People still assume that Puint runs the show, and I “don’t exist”. How unfair!
Ivanov,
See below in capital letters. I AM being bullying. Do you think I should complain to Kasparov, Novodvorskaya and other people who really care about Russia and human rights? Please advise. You are the only one here I can trust. Regards, DM.
P.S.: the anti-spam word: “connect”.
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/amibeing.htm
What is bullying?
* constant nit-picking, fault-finding and criticism of a trivial nature – the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication
* simultaneous with the criticism, a CONSTANT REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOU AND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OR TO RECOGNIZE YOUR EXISTENCE AND VALUE
* constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential
* where you are in a group (eg at work), being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong – however trivial – action is taken against you
* being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what’s going on, marginalized, overruled, ignored, sidelined, frozen out, sent to Coventry
* being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others
* being humiliated, shouted at and threatened, often in front of others
* being overloaded with work, or having all your work taken away and replaced with either menial tasks (filing, photocopying, minute taking) or with no work at all
* finding that your work – and the credit for it – is stolen and plagiarised
* having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away
* having annual leave, sickness leave, and – especially – compassionate leave refused
* being denied training necessary for you to fulfil your duties
* having unrealistic goals set, which change as you approach them
* ditto deadlines which are changed at short notice – or no notice – and without you being informed until it’s too late
* finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented
* being subjected to disciplinary procedures with verbal or written warnings imposed for trivial or fabricated reasons and without proper investigation
* being coerced into leaving through no fault of your own, constructive dismissal, early or ill-health retirement, etc
For further information on what bullying is, click here. For an answer to the question Why me?, click here.
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[Coming slightly late to this conversation]
Wordpress can use up crazy amounts of system resources at times, as it can make hundreds of database requests each time a page loads. I’ve found that caching plugins like wp-cache and wp-supercache that serve up static pages work really well for me when I’ve been overloading the system.
Were you getting an unexpected boost in traffic, as this combined with Wordpress’ inefficiency can take a shared server down.
Hopefully you’ll be ok with your new host, but if you, or anyone else, are looking for a good quality, low cost host, I can recommend AQHost, which I’ve been using for a few years now. In terms of hosting, they’re nothing particularly special, but their customer service is excellent.
Andy, I knew I should have asked you for some advice. I believe that the Wordpress databases were the problem. I wasn’t experiencing any increase in traffic. I’ll check out those plugins. Thanks!
Oh, I also forgot to answer DR’s question. Bluehost said that they will give me a refund. The questions is when.
Bizarro think Averko plot theory better explain blog shutdown. Me see smartypants Lex Luthor do this to Superman before.
On Bizarro World, Bizarro Averko know how to write correct English language and eat with fork.