Last week, there was a period of inactivity in the site due to the hosting provider going through days of dealing with file system issues on the server that this blog happens to be in. I use web hosting instead of a blogging service for this website due to my desire to learn how to do web design and development from scratch, which resulted in what you see here. But it seems due to what happened and what I’ve learned of the hosting provider during that time, I may have to switch to another provider again.
The blog had already gone through a hosting transfer before back in 2013, which I talked about in this post. That time, it was because GoDaddy didn’t have a good reputation, and it seems like it still doesn’t. The website was even hacked back then while it was in GoDaddy, and I didn’t even realize it was “hacked” because I was an airhead when it came to web development stuff back then. After some deliberation, I transferred to the current hosting provider.
Site5
The blog was transferred to Site5 because it was fast, fairly priced, and had good customer support. For most of the time, it was indeed everything I wanted out of it. However, I wasn’t able to change plans from paying for six months at a time to annually, so I may have paid more than I should have. But with the good service I got for most of my time there, I gave it a pass each time.
Then the outage happened, and it was down for 3-4 days. That was really bad, and WordPress kind of got messed up along the way, so I had to get rid of some plugins to fix it. That latter part is fine, but the fact that it was down for so long was already a breach of Site5’s guarantees regarding uptime.
I then dug around a bit and learned that in late 2015, Site5 got acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG), which also owns GoDaddy. Getting into why that’s a red flag would make too long of a post, but it’s basically bad news. Hosting providers acquired by EIG turn into poop, and that was indeed reflected by the customer support.
During the crisis, I put up a support ticket and it’s still not answered to this day even when the site went back up. I logged into the live chat, which took a long ass time in queue for me to get help. The live chat support itself was alright once I got in there, but the fact that I had to wait for support meant something since I never had to wait before. The support team must have been downsized or something for it to go a full 180 from its former glory.
Even if the website is now back up, I’m definitely considering a transfer to another hosting provider. I’m not waiting around for things to get worse. In the meantime, I’m taking backing up the files and database more seriously, doing so at least once every month and having at least three copies in at least two formats and one copy offsite—the 3-2-1 backup rule.
Potential Future Hosting Provider
I’m looking at Siteground and A2 Hosting right now. They’re both outside EIG and are well-reviewed, so it seems like they’re the shoe-ins. I’m currently leaning towards the latter, but maybe there’s something to the former that can make me go there instead.
My wishlist for a good web hosting provider is a simple one—fast loading speed, sufficient bandwidth and file space, and good customer service. That’s all I want, but a subdomain, another database slot, some extra features, and good security won’t go amiss either.
Hopefully, things turn out alright as far as this website goes, aside from getting more readers once I actually get more likes and follows on social media and give people enough reason to read my shit in the first place.
Got Feedback?
Please leave whatever reactions, questions, or suggestions you may have on the comment section below. You may also leave a message on either Facebook or Twitter. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel for more content as well. Thank you for dropping by.
