Need Help! Web Hosting Issues & WordPress

  • nrepair

    (@nrepair)


    14 years, 3 months ago

    My web hosting account was suspended today and will be closed shortly because of a spike in traffic. My site normally gets 500 hits or less per day, but due to a recent news story dealing with a subject that I blog frequently about, my site was bombarded with traffic today. I had around 5,000 hits by 2pm. That’s when my web host closed the account.

    I recently moved my blog from WordPress.com to self-hosted because WordPress.com lost scores of my older images and couldn’t recover them. They claimed they had never seen such a problem before, so I figured the safest solution would be to move to my own server so that I could perform my own backups.

    Fast-forward several weeks, and I’m loving being self-hosted and having complete control over my data. The problem is that my web host said they can’t allow me site to put such a load on their shared servers because of other clients. They said it had nothing to do with bandwith, just overload on their servers.

    What are my options besides moving back to WordPress.com? Since my traffic will quickly return to normal, do I risk moving to another host and running into the same problem in the future? I never had to worry about bandwith and server load on WordPress.com, but there is so much about my self-hosted installation that I will miss if I move back. Not to mention it’s going to be a freakin’ nightmare.

    Any ideas???

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • dragonsjaw

    (@dragonsjaw)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    Well somehow I don’t believe that is normal practice for hosts. I know my host will sometimes post about unusual traffic & slowdowns if a site has been slash dotted or something like that.. certainly not close you down.

    Perhaps you need to look into a dedicated account ?

    I would be interested in what others have to say about this?

    Thread Starter nrepair

    (@nrepair)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    Can you recommend a good host that isn’t going to shut me down if my site gets an unexpected spike in traffic?

    Thread Starter nrepair

    (@nrepair)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    I just had a chat with BlueHost and they basically told me the same thing. They said that they couldn’t guarantee that my site wouldn’t be shut down by them under the same circumstances. Unbelievable! I guess I’ll have to move back to WordPress.com.

    bh_WP_fan

    (@bh_wp_fan)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    I doubt that any shared hosting company will be able to ‘guarantee’ that they won’t shut you down, but of those available, when it comes to traffic spikes, BlueHost is a good option because they have a system in place which monitors user accounts and if there are major spikes or large amounts of resources being suddenly consumed, it causes the site to run in its own core and only slow itself down instead of slowing down other users, and thus they rarely ever have any reason to shut anyone down.

    Traffic spikes then would only slow the site down, but not make it go away completely. This makes Shared hosting just about as close to Virtual hosting as it can be. I keep up on BlueHost’s CEOs blog. You can read about it here: http://www.mattheaton.com/?p=208

    Thread Starter nrepair

    (@nrepair)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    That sounds good, but scanning through the comments on that blog entry wasn’t very reassuring. Have you had any experience with the technology referenced?

    I moved my blog back to WordPress.com and have had almost 8000 hits today without a hiccup. Don’t know if I could beat that kind of service anywhere… and it’s FREE.

    bh_WP_fan

    (@bh_wp_fan)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    I’ve been with BlueHost for several years and had no problems with them. Many of my friends have switched to them as well and are happy with them, however, I also have had blogs hosted with wordpress.com and it is a great service. If it works for you, there is no reason why you should need to move away. The only problem with it, for me, was that it was too limited.

    Another host which I have seen recommended by some users on this forum is A Small Orange.

    On top of wordpress.com’s great service, like you said, its completely free. I think BlueHost would work for you, but if you are happy at wordpress.com, I wouldn’t recommend moving away from it.

    Thread Starter nrepair

    (@nrepair)

    14 years, 3 months ago

    I agree that the main drawback of WordPress is the limitations. I was growing quite fond of the ability (and responsibility) of installing plugins, editing my CSS, themes, and managing my database. It was also a little overwhelming knowing that I could screw things up so easily. 😉

    I might make the jump to self-hosted again in the future. If I do, I will certainly consider BlueHost. Thanks for the info!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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