Short moving break
Jul18
on July 18, 2018
at 1:17 am
Please excuse the filler doodle for today’s update. I am preparing to move the website to a new webhost, and have been spending my comicing time looking up options, talking to support staff, etc.
We had a downtime moment earlier this evening that required the current host to do a server restart, and it’s the second time this week of that on top of all the other times they’ve fizzled out and… welp. Time to move on.
Today's edition of the Secret Commentary is empty, because Dave failed to come up with something for it.
There’s a voice, keeps on callin’ me’s,
Downs the roads, that’s were I’ll always be’s…
You’ve certainly given this server host more than a gracious amount of time to get their pants on straight. I hope you can locate a much better host!
(And that someday we’ll be able to edit out typos from our comments on here. Would be nice!)
As I said on Discord: I’ve heard really good things about this web-hosting company called “literally anybody else”.
I can’t blame you. I noticed this site had a bit of trouble with hosting…
I would have expected the “Horrors” box to be a lot bigger, honestly.
This is one trip. The next will probably be three more ‘horrors’ boxes. ;-}}
Box 1 of 50.
Of the small boxes. She has medium sized boxes of horror, large sized boxes…
And horror-sized horrors boxes.
Protip: Locate an up-to-date listing of Endurance-owned hosting brands, and then go with pretty much anyone else. Moving from ASO to, say, HostGator or Bluehost won’t actually take money out of their pockets.
Thank you! I never realized I needed to lookout for that. Taken from here:
“In very short, the main reason is that EIG has a very bad reputation of ruining the hosts it acquires. HostGator, Arvixe, A Small Orange, Site5 and so on – we all have heard a huge mass of horrible stories from former clients of these hosts which sharply deteriorated their services after being bought by EIG. EIG “optimizes” cost structure of the hosts it buys out, fires great (expensive) support staff and migrate clients to a worse hardware infrastructure.”
And sadly, this matches up to my experiences with them. When I first joined ASO it worked out fine, things went smoothly and they were very knowledgeable about helping me migrate over. But somewhere along the line they started having more frequent trouble spots, and the support staff started becoming clearly outsourced (not a big deal) and fumbling over what to do about the problem at hand (kind of a big deal).
I probably should have dropped them much sooner than this, when the site went down for several days earlier this year. But… well. Hindsight and all that.
I am currently setting up with DreamHost for the new hosting.
It will also remove you from being held hostage. EIG also owns a company called SiteLock that will shut your site down after “finding” malware in it then use pressure sales tactics to get you to sign up for their absurd $200/month “protection” service. Usually, when people who get hit with this manage to get in touch with an actual host administrator, they find nothing at all wrong.
EIG is not only a bad service, they’re borderline scam artists.
Sounds more like blackmail with threats. Or the mafia, especially the “protection” service… 😛
Not quite as much of a scam as it sounds, but the end result is the same. For liability reasons, the abuse team locks down “infected” sites pretty much instantly. This runs into a couple of issues:
– The abuse team’s criteria for an “infected” site is, effectively, “did someone send us an email telling us this site was infected?” or something particularly nasty showing up on the (usually pretty accurate) server antivirus sweeps.
– The first couple of times a site is compromised, all they need to unblock the site is for you to call support and tell them you’ve fixed the problem. After that, they want third-party verification.
– Per policy, support agents are supposed to recommend a SiteLock cleanup every time someone gets shut down for malware. Which isn’t quite as overpriced as it looks, but there’s no non-scummy way to say “you need to pay SOMEONE $200 before we’ll let you bring your site back up, so why not us?”
Source: I used to be an HG support agent.
might be time to look into self hosting if its remotely feasable, or looking into making it feasable. i used to self host in the past so i know its posible but i had farrrr less trafic when i did
i´m really glad that you´ll be getting yourself another, better host, all those downtimes were serious moodkillers, and i´m sure weren´t good for selling adds either 😉
Dave, i’m pretty sure i speak for the majority here, but please do us a favor and before you do the whole “IGOR… Throw the Switch !!” and swap out the back-end host, please give us a prior heads up, both HERE and on S&K, that way we can be prepared for the just-in-case scenario where IF something goes wonky, we aren’t swamping you with “OMG THE SITE IS DOWN!!!” panicked posts, etc… and give you a bit of time to hash it out with DreamHost FIRST before we resort to that…
I can definitely do that. The Facebook and Twitter would also be good to watch for info on that. I’ll post something there.
The transfer may not go down until this weekend anyway, due to some migration hiccups.
Have you ever thought about posting on Webtoon/ Line Webtoon? They are a free platform to upload on and if you get enough subscribers they’ll even pay you and make Selfie featured so the comic gets more publicity. Right now they even have a contest for new comics where you could win $80,000 USD. Just some food for thought as it would be a way to reach a wider audience.
You intrigued me at $80,000