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Blog going offline.

by Ed on 5th June 2008

If you visited this blog at all over the last few weeks you may have seen the whole site was offline.

You may even have just seen a page like ‘page not found’ or ‘Database not connected’ or similar.

Quite embarrassing. Zen Internet, the award winning ISP who hosts this blog, and many of my friend’s and clients blog and corporate sites appear to be suffering an unfortunate run of server problems.

I know that because I setup a special service called IP Patrol that checks my site every 2 minutes and automatically sends me an email and mobile phone SMS text message alerts every time my site has a problem.

It shocked me. I found out my blogs been offline so much lately that all my SMS text alert credits got used up in a short space of time.

This is quite disappointing because I recommended Zen in my web marketing book — they used to provide an excellent service — and I’ve passed a lot of custom their way.

I’m moving.

I take my online business seriously enough that I won’t accept much — if any — online downtime, so it’s time to move.

After the move, the cost of hosting this blog and my other sites will increase by a factor of at least a few hundred percent… but it will be well worth it.

Here’s a line pulled from Rackspace’s SLA (Service Level Agreement) sent with my quotation…

We guarantee that when not undergoing scheduled maintenance, the network infrastructure will be available 100% of the time in each month.

I’ll try and minimise downtime during the move, but it’s possible my site may appear broken again for a while.

Hopefully it’ll be the last time that happens for a long time.

-Ed.

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Article by Ed Rivis

I'm the Amazon 5-star rated author of three books about web marketing, and since 2008 have spoken to more than 4,000 business owners at conferences and seminars around the UK. I've also developed software that automatically generates lead pages and home-study programmes that help small business owners like you generate more sales-leads and win new customers and clients, online.

Ed has written 326 awesome articles.

  • http://www.barbarasaul.com Barbara Saul

    Good luck, Ed

    What a nightmare – and foolish, foolish Zen.

    Babs

  • http://www.stevenlohrenz.com Steven Lohrenz

    Rackspace is supposed to be pretty solid. My former employer was moving to it when I left and they acted like they knew what they were doing.

    Good luck!

  • http://cindyking.biz/the-management-tools-i-use-for-content-created-to-be-re-packaged/ Cindy King

    that’s a shame, but you are smart for moving now, before your reputation gets dragged down.

    Make sure you post who you choose. I am considering moving right now and would rather hear of your pain than have to live through it myself.

  • Mike

    Ed,

    I’m sorry to hear about your blogs downtime and problems with your current hosting company.

    Check out the following:

    1) Blue Host
    http://www.bluehost.com

    My brother who does major programming for AOL, Netscape and many other major companies thinks very highly of them.

    2) Amazon
    http://www.amazon.com/AWS-home-page-Money/b/ref=sv_hp_4?ie=UTF8&node=3435361

    I know that many of the major internet marketers use Blue Host and many of the others use Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) S3 (Simple Storage Service) service.

    I will be putting my domains on Blue Host starting this week.

    -Mike-

  • Richard

    After some big, big problems with BusinessServe (who renamed themselves as LEGEND) (who took over DSVR) we moved to Rackspace almost two years ago.

    Rackspace is very expensive, but it is the only host in 12 years that I have not had any downtime problems with.

    Rackspace every time. Throroughly recommended.

  • Adrian

    We use Rochen, their support is second to none. I think they have packages to suit most. We had terrible experiences with 1&1 before that, if you ever had a problem thier support was worse than none at all.

  • http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk Karin H.

    A known and irritating problem. All my websites and ‘domain-mapped’ blogs are hosted by a rather local company. Downtime was increasing constantly over the last few months and my friends decided to change to a better server – this was done last Wednesday morning.
    There must be some minor ‘moving’ problems still, once every three – four hours everything is down again! But I’m patience – still ;-)

    I find it very frustrating if my email isn’t working – we get loads of submitted through an AWeber question form (webform) we like to answer as soon as possible, we email quotes and confirmations and of course we use our websites for sales, prospects etc. Reliable service is a must nowadays if most of your prospects, clients etc contact you/communicate with you using the Internet.

    I’m hoping it will go more smoothly with your move Ed than it did here.

    Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)

  • http://www.sumatrix.com Ed

    @Barbara – Yes it’s a shame this has happened, for reasons that will become apparent on this blog over the next few weeks.

    @Steven – RackSpace were recommended to me a while ago by another blog reader who said they were expensive but first class. (The fact Rackspace have given me free server monitoring as part of the package says it all!)

    @Cindy – Yes, my only embarrassment/annoyance is that I recommended Zen in my book, and some of my products.

    However, for businesses that are not ‘web critical’ like mine I think they’re probably still OK — but I’d definitely recommend using a service like IPControl.co.uk (and that’s not an affiliate link :-) to keep an eye on it.

    @Mike – Thanks for the links. I’ve wondered about Amazon – I’ve seen some big Internet Marketers use them for major product launches where the servers are expected to get a hammering during 24 hour launches so it must be very reliable.

    @Richard – I have a feeling it’s you who recommended me to Rackspace in a blog comment here some time ago. If it was you then thanks for that, I’m looking forward to trouble and stress free hosting in future.

    @Adrian – I haven’t heard of Rochen – I’ve done a quick search and assume the link is http://www.rochenhost.com – is that them?

    @Karin – Absolutely. One of the most annoying things is that I was just about to announce a new customer service web site I’ve set up, but that site is also hosted with Zen and has also been disappearing and breaking over the last week or so. Not good! (I’ll move the site to Rackspace before I announce it properly.) Even a small percentage of downtime — with me being an Internet-only business — is (and looks) bad. Hence the decision to spend a small fortune on my hosting in future! Looks like we’re both on the same page with custoemr service and I wish you the best of luck getting your server sorted out as well.

    Lots of recommendations and advice in the above comments — thank you all for commenting.

    -Ed.

  • http://rackspace.com Racker

    Welcome to Rackspace, Ed!

  • http://www.sportsbikeshop.co.uk James Mitchell

    Hi Ed, I moved our hosting to rackspace over a year ago now. We were with 1&1 which cost £80ish per month for the server. After several problems and possibly the worst customer service I’ve experienced, we moved. Now paying several hundred per month and its worth every penny. Zero downtime, unbelievable customer service, you won’t regret it for a second.

  • http://www.sumatrix.com Ed

    @James — yes I’m already in awe of the customer service. It’s incredible.

    I’ve spent more than a decade on shared hosting and dread to think how much time my staff and I have spent ‘on hold’ in a phone queue waiting to speak to someone. (Zen have actually been the best for telephone support by a long way. And until recently their service was top notch. Sadly not any more.)

    Actually it was you who recommended Rackspace to me a long time ago! I mentioned that fact to the Rackspace sales team, so if they have a referral scheme you deserve something from them! Thanks.

  • http://www.sportsbikeshop.co.uk James Mitchell

    No problem Ed, you’re welcome. Enjoy the stress free hosting!

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