but, that is pretty normal for me.
Forgive the long dialog that follows…
So, today I came into the office to find our web site down.
Hmm. Call our “host”, I say “host” becasuse they are a re-seller of server space and I don’t get to alk with the real host.
So they’re response is that they’ll check into it. a few minutes later I get a call back informing me that we have exceded our bandwidth limit. Hmm, that’s funny becasue we are no where near our limit according to our cpanel stats. But, OK, what do we need to do to get this resolved? Well, you need to move off of a shared server to a dedicated server. OK, get us some pricing. OK, so we’re ready to pull the trigger for the dedicated box and ask the question…“how long will it take to get migrated and back up?” At least a week. Well that is not acceptable.
I contact the real host and somehow was able to get some information from a tech who was not supposed to be talking with me since I’m not the re-seller. This guy tells me that it has nothing to do with bandwidth but an attack from a single IP address that caused alarms to go off and that is why they shut us down. So we go through a long process which amounted to blocking that IP addres and I’m told problem solved you’ll be back up shortly.
Awesome! But we’re not back up. so another call to our re-seller informs us that it is not related to this IP address but the script running in the index.php file and needing to put a crawl delay line in the robots.txt file. That’s interesting. That file (index.php) has not been touched for over a year and this is now the problem?
So, if I have to somehow optimize the index.php file…where would I start?
Besides dumping this host!
If you made it this far, my armor is on so let me have it!
Thanks for your time.
Eric
What does the file look like? If it looks like the exact original, I would say you need to dump the host.
Based upon “everything” you explained, I would say you need to seriously start contemplating the move to a top notch host.
We are currently testing out a VPS server plan from www.Dreamhost.com
which they refer to as Dreamhost P.S. So far so good, however I don’t have enough long term experience with them to make a definite recommendation!
How many users do you have on the website?
As the host hasen’t referred to any rescource usage I guess a dedicated server won’t be necessary for you. So I would just recommend you to get a new host asap. It sounds like they are just making excuses to get you to move to a more expensive service.
thanks for the responses…
Tool Outfitters–the file is untouched (to my knowledge) since cs cart upgraded us over a year ago. Not sure what it looks like as I have never bothered to look at it.
Stuck–Thanks, we have a month to find a new host and get our site off of them
Eplebiten–we average about 26000 unique visitors a month right now and use about 65 gig of bandwidth a month
We went full circle yesterday with support…from bandwidth to ip address spam attack to the index.php file to modifying the robots.txt file for a crawl delay and then back to bandwidth. I have no faith in this host and will be leaving them ASAP.
Thank you for your time.
Eric
if you are getting 65gig of traffic through a reseller then i suspect the hosting environment is the problem. You probably on a shared host with quite a few other sites…
future hosting - follow the trends of your stats and predict the increased levels a year from now… you will at least be needing a VPS if not a dedicated in my eyes.
You should easily be able to clear the costs of a good dedicated host with that many visitors on average conversion rates!!!
with reference to dream host - i moved away from them in tears!!! Admittedly this was quite a while ago 2 years plus… Back then it just was not secure, steady hosting at all… plus i was doing the jump over the pond to the UK from their servers and this seemed to have endless delays… i have seen reviews stating improvements though.
[QUOTE]with reference to dream host - i moved away from them in tears!!! Admittedly this was quite a while ago 2 years plus… Back then it just was not secure, steady hosting at all… plus i was doing the jump over the pond to the UK from their servers and this seemed to have endless delays… i have seen reviews stating improvements though[/QUOTE]
Thank you for your input Nevsie!
I have been watching/observing our test sites behavior for several months now on Dreamhosts PS VPS server and it has performed very well & consistently “so far”. Although our site isn’t under load yet (still converting our ASP sites to CS-Cart), I do like the idea that within 10 minutes I can change our Dreamhost VPS servers available resources to whatever is needed, very cool feature. I will certainly continue to closely monitor their services though! 