Month: March 2007

Some of you may have noticed that this blog ground to a halt again recently, with occasional database connection errors. I contacted servage support and they suggested creating a new mysql database and moving the data over, as by default a new mysql database would end up on a more recent (and presumably more empty/lower load) database. It only took a few minutes for me to do this, as i’m used to doing stuff like this, being a web developer. This seems to be a pattern – If you leave your stuff on a particular server, eventually the server becomes overcrowded and your site starts to slow down. If you move it to another server it speeds up again, until that server becomes crowded, or one particular site on the same server as you starts causing problems.

However, it left a bad taste in my mouth, being the second time that i’ve proactively had to chase servage up in order to keep my site running, and this leaves me with a dilema – should I keep referring people to a host that haven’t been entirely reliable and therefore benefit from the two months free hosting I get each time? Well.. I went with servage because they were cheap, and I have about ten months of free hosting in the bag now, and I think I can put up with the occasional glitch (on this unimportant blog) considering how little I spent, but there is no way I could recommend their shared hosting for a (small) commercial project now as it would be embarrassing for a clients site to have these problems. It goes without saying that I wouldn’t put a large commercial project on shared hosting anyway.