Server on the move [Site]
2010 Apr 10
Which provider are you going with?
I only have experience with Host Papa - and am not impressed. The site runs well enough but the mailing lists are terrible, and I find it to be a real PITA when doing anything system-level because I only have cpanel access. That is for the dojo - I would never move my main site to that provider, but would consider something that gives me full Linux-level access.
I only have experience with Host Papa - and am not impressed. The site runs well enough but the mailing lists are terrible, and I find it to be a real PITA when doing anything system-level because I only have cpanel access. That is for the dojo - I would never move my main site to that provider, but would consider something that gives me full Linux-level access.
2010 Apr 10
We are now live on the new server! Things should feel faster now, especially at peak times (e.g. lunch hour on weekdays).
The only thing I know to be broken is the wiki. The hosting provider does support our wiki system but they're addressing problems with the installer so we'll be without a wiki for a short while.
Now my basement is a lot less critical, which should help the quality of my sleep! :-)
The only thing I know to be broken is the wiki. The hosting provider does support our wiki system but they're addressing problems with the installer so we'll be without a wiki for a short while.
Now my basement is a lot less critical, which should help the quality of my sleep! :-)
2010 Apr 11
good stuff warby! the load time difference of the "what i ate last" thread is staggering ;)
2010 Apr 11
Oh wow, it's immediately noticeable how much faster things are now. I was shocked when I found out you were self-hosting the site before - most ISPs get huffy about that sort of thing and don't offer decent enough upload speeds to do it anyway.
I've heard of webfaction before - an associate of mine was using them to host a ruby app before ruby hosting became more "mainstream". Uptime was an issue - he was forced to manually restart the app fairly frequently. However, I don't know how much of that was due to webfaction and how much of that had to do with the stability of the app itself.
I'll be interested to hear your experiences with them hosting OttawaFoodies. The one thing my friend did rave about when it came to webfaction are how accommodating they are. They responded to his issues and questions really quickly and even adjusted high-level settings for him,
I've heard of webfaction before - an associate of mine was using them to host a ruby app before ruby hosting became more "mainstream". Uptime was an issue - he was forced to manually restart the app fairly frequently. However, I don't know how much of that was due to webfaction and how much of that had to do with the stability of the app itself.
I'll be interested to hear your experiences with them hosting OttawaFoodies. The one thing my friend did rave about when it came to webfaction are how accommodating they are. They responded to his issues and questions really quickly and even adjusted high-level settings for him,
2010 Apr 11
James, my ISP has no problem with hosting sites on their network, but as you know upload speeds were not sufficient. The bottleneck, though, was often my CPU, so I needed to upgrade the server as well as the network!
Webfaction seem to have decent uptime (except for the explosion a couple of years ago that killed a bunch of servers for several days). My app should never require manual restarting -- it restarts itself when the first user hits the site. It worked like that in my basement, and webfaction offers the same capability. The only unknown is whether I'll surpass my allotted memory limits. I'll share more experiences once we've had some soak time.
I opened a ticket against the wiki problem, and their front line workers are very responsive and helpful. Now we'll find out how responsive their "back end" workers are... ;-)
Webfaction seem to have decent uptime (except for the explosion a couple of years ago that killed a bunch of servers for several days). My app should never require manual restarting -- it restarts itself when the first user hits the site. It worked like that in my basement, and webfaction offers the same capability. The only unknown is whether I'll surpass my allotted memory limits. I'll share more experiences once we've had some soak time.
I opened a ticket against the wiki problem, and their front line workers are very responsive and helpful. Now we'll find out how responsive their "back end" workers are... ;-)
2010 Apr 12
Hmm... I certainly don't get any pop ups with my browser (Google Chrome). Does anyone have any ideas, or can anyone tell me where the pop ups are coming from?
I'll likely disable the ads later tonight until I can solve this. Anyway, I'm not happy with the ads or the negligible revenue they generate.
I'll likely disable the ads later tonight until I can solve this. Anyway, I'm not happy with the ads or the negligible revenue they generate.
warby
What does this mean to you? Presumably nothing more than a snappier browsing experience when using the site.
More technically, it means that instead of running this site out of my basement on outdated computing hardware and a consumer-level connection to the internet, it will be running on an 8-core Xeon processor (albeit shared with other sites) in a datacenter that has generators for backup power, round the clock security, etc, etc.
I'll have to take down the site to take a final snapshot of the database and transfer it to its new home, but that shouldn't take more than an hour or so. What will likely take longer is the propagation of DNS records that allow ottawafoodies.com to point to the new server. That could take up to a day.
Anyway, I'll be live-blogging the changeover via our twitter feed: twitter.com/ottawafoodies