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On Friday afternoon I made some simple changes to my EVE Tools website and posted them as usual. But as you may have guessed, everything didn’t upload as usual. A major file for the site, a web user control used for the header menu, was locked by the server.
I called iHostasp.net tech support, and explained my issue. They agreed it was locked and tried to restart the web server, it made no difference. They then suggested that I wait fifteen to twenty minutes to see if the server will release the file. If it isn’t released send us a support ticket and we will restart the server. Well it didn’t release and now their tech support is closed (I knew when signing with them this would be an issue). So now, since Friday afternoon my site has been down, broken to the world. It isn’t used by a lot of people but I know I have a few regulars there, and that’s all that matters.
This tech support thing is a real shame for this company because they operate some pretty solid servers. Every application, either .NET or PHP, has just worked, and without fault. There are a few database bottlenecks once in a while, but hey, you get what you pay for. If they could just give some good support. Tickets can take weeks to get to, and that is just to long. Heck, a full day is to long.
Joel Spolsky wrote in his blog recently about visiting the new 7 World Trade Center building. The basis of the entry was about the elevator technology used in the building, I found this very interesting. Basically you choose your floor from the lobby and you will be directed to which elevator to wait for, thus grouping like floor requests together. Great idea. Joel, in his analytical way, found a bug with this system as such:
People who aren’t used to the new system come into the lobby and see an elevator with an open door. They jump into it, and then get stuck going to some random floor because they can’t key in their destination once they’re inside.
At first read, I thought, sure that could be an issue, then contemplated it for a moment. Joel is thinking about how elevators work now, where a door would be left open for convenience. This wouldn’t be the case in the new system as a floor needs to be chosen first. OK, small oversight on my part–there are already people in the elevator, and someone is running for it (no chance this person will wait another 2 minutes for the next elevator). The leap through the threshold before the door closes, of course causing it to open and forcing all on the elevator to wait until it closes. Now I see how this person has a very small chance to get to the floor they desire. So I guess the users learn to enter their floor first after their first building tour, kind of a hammer over the head approach.
I have a feeling a keypad will be installed on the inside of these elevators as enough people complain, or they will just have to remember and conform. It does sound like an efficient system for a large busy office building. Perhaps I will try to look this up, perhaps at Otis.
I found this at the Otis site, its a system called “Compass™ destination entry” I am curious to here their response to the hurried passenger who jumps into a car to find no floor selectors.
I think I have been using iHostASP.net for a month now, and I still think there service is good (3/5). I have come across a couple of settings on there servers which really kind of suck.
I asked about sub-domains, as one of my utility sites uses a sub-domain. I came across two issues, one, I didn’t see or figure out any way to user virtual directories with sub domains, and two, I wasn’t seeing any statistics for my sub-domain. So I emailed support to find out what’s up. After waiting a week for a response, I replied to the email to bump it back up in there queue and indicated that is what I was doing, and I finally received a reply. The replay I received is:
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Hi Brett, I'll try to address your questions: 1) Sub-domain is a third level domain rooted in a separate folder below the /wwwroot, a sub-domain does not have any other features such as virtual folders or statistics that are available for the hosted domain. 2) Internally sub-domain has it's own IIS site and a different subset of log files. The SmarterStats only reads log files associated with the hosted domain. IHost, LLC Customer Support
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To me this really sucks, as I like to segregate stuff with sub-domains, and I get no virtual directory support or statistics. The statistic thing really bugs me.
But as I keep having to tell myself, “You get what you pay for.”
They give you 3 separate directory spaces for three domains and 3 sql server 2005 database, which I can’t find anywhere for $15 a month. So I guess here I stay until I feel like putting a server in my basement and prey I get enough upload bandwidth for the site.
For those of you who enjoy EVE Online, I have built some tools for you. Sure there are others out there like these, but there are mine. They contain:
- Skill Calculator, with end date
- End Date Calculator, based of days, hours, minutes, and seconds left in training
- Mining Calculator, for a selected miner, shows you your rate of mining based on your skills. Displays time required to mine all types of ore.
- Miner Yield, put in the installed yield of your miner(s) and find out how long you can fill a can and how many batches of ore you will have to refine.
Find these tools at eve.brettski.com
Please use the feedback link if you have any comments or suggestion.
Yes, can you believe it? The new host is working out for me. Feels nice to work with people who know what the heck is going on and what a developer likes in a host.
My host decision is with iHostASP.NET (Hosting for developers, by developers). It’s a shared hosting plan, so it doesn’t fit everything, but the areas it does are well done. They offer 3 levels of hosting, Standard, Developer, and Professional. I went middle of the road with the developer level. It includes all the standard host goodies, like, multiple domains, multiple domain subs, multiple user ftp access, asp.net 1.1 & 2.0, asp, php5, etc., etc. There are some really cool things they offer: 3 domains configured in separate spaces, that is separate application and memory pools. This was a big selling point for me. And better yet, 3 sql servers (size up to 10% of total storage 240MB), the biggest reason I chose them. I needed multiple databases. They do this because the site is bases on serving DotNetNuke, and the developer level if for three separate installations. Obviously, you don’t have to use DNN.
The allow 60 aliased domains with the mid-plan which can’t be pointed to other directories, you have to do this via code. Not a huge deal, I have ran into this with other hosts like CrystalTech and it’s an easy enough script to write. Not a real lot of control of iis, less than I would like, but I have found my way around every thing I have needed to do so far. They don’t have to richest offering but its pretty darn good, and the service and support has been excellent. I’ll write more as more info comes about.
Well my new life with WebHost4Life, isn’t so good. There are still some issues with the site. I need to ask to have anything enabled, which should of been anyway, and my site seems very flaky now, now always coming up, or long delays for a page to load. These pages are nothing special at all. One small graphic and around 1k in text/code. Twice now the iis settings in the control panel just didn’t show up. Of course I received the common answer of,
“we can’t find an issue with your control panel”, and when I go back to it all it working fine. I guess it could always be me, I have been told more than once that I am jinxed.
Well, I am tired of stressing over this and tired of talking to their tech support on site issues with such a new account. Plus I have a new host in my sites (you may want to warn them ahead of time) iHOSTASP.net, ‘Ran by developers for developers’, so they say. 🙂
I have been talking to their support personnel on their support offering and so far it seems to match pretty well to my needs. The site is tuned for DotNetNuke and the welcome developers too. The price is a touch higher, but you do get what you pay for.
If this one doesn’t work out, I am sure I will head to Crystal Tech I have heard nothing but good things about this host. The only reason I have not gone with them is that they only offer 1 MSSQL database, I require a minimum of 2.
Away I go.
I broke it down to a host I thought worth giving a try for my hosting. As you know I have been having a heck of a time locating a new hosting service. While investigating dotNetNuke, I came across WebHost4Life, and booked marked them. Today I was going through my hosting research bookmarks and came across them again. After reading through there offer and comparing it to others in the same price range $10, I decided to try them out.
Let me tell you, it has been nothing short of a nightmare! I am not kidding. They only take payments on a yearly basis, which isn’t a huge problem as there isn’t a contract and they will prorate you the remaining balance. Filled out the form, payed the yearly fee, and printed off the order id sheet. Well, that was the last time I heard from them, really. No email to indicate that they received my order and will be working on it, No email indicating how long it will be before the service is setup, nothing. I was quite surprised. I contacted their tech support, and we just where not understanding each other, and I was just getting more and more impatient. It seems that, for some reason, they where unable to send emails to my yahoo account. I really don’t know why perhaps they are black-listed or something, I am receiving emails from other places like newegg.com (whom could teach a few companies out there superior customer service). While on the train I opened a ticket with support about not receiving an introductory email, even supplied an alt email address, and yet they still didn’t get it. Their response to me was that the email I indicated in the email is not the same as the one listed in my account and I should check the proper account. So of course I had to email them back spelling out that I sent them an Alt email, meaning and Alternative email account, one for them to try instead of the one listed on the account, which we know isn’t working with them.
You may ask, what is the big deal about this email, well it seems that it contains instructions on how to get started with the site. No, I am not a complete idiot, I can break most things pretty well. I figured out dns servers, some other configurations, but I don’t have any way to enable my domain. The account is only using the tempory url which is used for initial configurations. I don’t have any ftp accounts, because there is no where to set them up in the control panel. It seems I need this darn email to get started, and nobody there is able to get me a copy of it. To top it off, I did receive an email from the ticket support system.
I will give this chance to straighten this mess out so I can get back online (currently brettski.com is down). Personally I don’t think they have the will to continue and will fall flat again, where I will have to pull the plug and continue my search. <sigh>
I am exhausted looking for hosts, so to divert my energy elsewhere I thought I may try something new. I have some stupid EVE Tools I built for EVE Online and figured I would try building them in PHP. Why PHP? Simple, everybody is doing it. I don’t know why really, I have seen the language around for quite some time now and there are many, many websites and applications which use it, so what the heck.
I will say it doesn’t take long at all to get up to speed, it’s a pretty simple language. Having to write html just sucks, but that’s something I haven’t enjoyed, ever. Basically, I hate html and it’s different support between browsers (why do table never layout properly?). The tools have to be on the web, so html it is.
I have to say the one thing I really, really don’t like about PHP is that you can’t declare explicit/strict variables. That is, variables must be declared before they are used. This is achieved by using ‘option explicit’ at the top of asp (vb script) pages. Perhaps I am just not smart enough to remember all of the variables I have used, or misspelled; I’ll just let the parser handle it. I have just burned myself too many times in the past missing a capital letter in a variable, or something like that. This made me think, well, why not just use vb script then. Well, they way PHP works with web elements is a lot nicer then asp. I have only done some basic stuff with database access in PHP, so I cannot speak to that just yet, and being a long, long time user of ado, I may be a bit skewed. I have a lot of database work to do on the EVE Tools, so I will get my feel for it’s use with databases pretty quick. I have also noticed that PHP is OOP, it supports classes. Pretty cool, makes things a bit cleaner. Of course the first thing I noticed about the PHP classes is that they don’t have setter’s and getter’s for the properties. It seems properties are created by making a variable public. Well, I don’t like that type of access to my variables and using methods to set and get property values just seems wrong, but manageable.
Saturday night I was working on the PHP version of EVE Tools and discovered that godaddy have depreciated their support for PHP on their windows servers. They run PHP 4.3.11 (I wonder if there are any security holes there?), and have no plans to keep it up or move to version 5, which I am utilizing. I figured, ‘what the heck’, lets get a Linux host, it’s only $4 bucks a month, then I could also try out some of them Linux only web tools available (e.g. gallery). That failed as godaddy was having trouble accepting my shopsafe credit card number.
I guess since I am just playing around, the need for a better host isn’t required just yet. If I stay on the Linux side of things, there are hosts that also have svn support, which is very attractive. It would be cool to find a hosting plan that supported both Windows and Linux, but I am sure it wouldn’t be cheap.
Man I cannot believe how difficult it has been trying to find a new web host. This is a nightmare (almost). I have a feeling it’s my price-point that is hurting me. It’s very true, you get what you pay for. Crystal Tech seems to be a great option, I am just not ready to shell out $16 a month for a host. I was surprised to see Steve is unhappy with Dreamhost, as they have a great amount of services, and they would of been the hosting site for me on the UNIX side, but it turns out they view SLA’s and downtime flippantly, which sucks for a host, $10 a month shared or not. Perhaps I should grab one of my really old pc’s, set it up in the basement and host from there? Anyway the search goes on.
I have been using GoDaddy.com for a few weeks now and I am quickly realizing that you get what you pay for. They have a lot to offer for a small price, but this causes shortfalls in some undesirable areas. The biggest one for me is backing up databases. GoDaddy doesn’t allow any external connections to their databases (a little fact not mentioned in pre-sales info), and do not give you the ability to create .bak files (mssql). The only way to back up data and schema’s is though text files, and frankly that just sucks. I have read a post here and there that there are tools which can purchased which will automate the task a little bit more, but it just doesn’t seem right.
Since I write my code in .NET I went with a Windows host, and have been checking out DotNetNuke, a pretty neat portal application. I would like to use this for my website, but am very hessetent because I don’t know how to get a solid backup of the app. I don’t want to spend hours configuring a portal to have something crash and loose all my work. What if I want to move it to a new host, I will not be able to that either (which I am sure is attentional on GoDaddy’s part).
So I am in search of a new web host, and it hasn’t been very easy, there are just so many of them out there. Another issue, is I really don’t want to pay more then $10 a month (I know, you get what you pay for). Well I am not looking for mass amounts of space or bandwidth, just a place to host my self-built apps and a family web site.
Stuff From an IT Slug 