Elbows Music Blog Community

Mike Mineo

do you have one? I still think Obscure Sound is not nearly popular enough for one, so I was wondering if other sites with similar popularity - say the top 20 on Hype - were forced to upgrade yet. I just want to make sure I'm not being unnecessarily pressured by my web host - who claims I use up too many resources on the server (despite not having one extraneous plugin and a very straightforward layout).

it's apparently pretty damn pricey at $89/month, but there's no way I'm sacrificing content or shutting down the site so I might not have another choice but to pay up and unfortunately serve up a few more ads. I didn't think a music site with 3000-4000 uniques/day would have to pay THAT MUCH for hosting (on top of $10/month I'm already paying to a separate MP3 host), but what do I know. Dreamhost is $69/month but the hassle of transferring all files (in the midst of finals season no less!) may just nudge me to pay the extra $240/year. with this in mind, I just have no clue how relatively popular ad-free sites can continue to operate.

if you have similar traffic, do you use dedicated hosting? and if so, who do you use? were you forced to upgrade from the normal $10/month to $89/month at any point? quite an irritating experience.

thanks,
Mike Mineo
http://obscuresound.com

Tim

What kind of traffic are you getting? Pageviews/uniques?
Who is your current host?

Also, are you running a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache?

Mike Mineo

3400 uniques/day, a bit over 6200 page views.
LunarPages
I am running W3 Total Cache - page cache and browser cache enabled. Super Cache never quite worked for me

I mean, you can even see from my template it's not like I'm running highly advanced scripts.

yet they claim this is how much usage I'm taking up on their shared servers:
CPU% 4.50
MEM% 2.35

must be a pretty small server, eh?

Mike Mineo

something tells me Dreamhost's $10/month would be able to handle it... doesn't GVB use that? I'm guessing he might use their $69/mo dedicated though.
but I can't for the life of me imagine how difficult it would be to import six years of posts, pictures, and whatnot to an entirely different host - along with my domain and e-mail account. this is why it's not even worth trying to me. as long as Lunarpages isn't trying to rip me off it's fine, but something tells me they are. I just want to have this resolved before year-end features.

Tim

6,200 pageviews/day is definitely not small by shared hosting standards. Most shared hosts will start to look into your account when you get to around 100,000 pageviews per month, and you seem to be at double that. I wouldn't say they were being bad hosts to try to get you to upgrade at all to be honest (great work on that traffic by the way!).

You have a few options though rather than going fully dedicated, which may still be relative overkill for your blog really.
1 - Use a cloud hosting provider like MediaTemple or Rackspace that just expands your resources and your bills as you use them.
2 - Go for a VPS (virtual private server) - it's like renting a portion of a server to yourself, so a server may have just 10 or 20 accounts on it rather than the 100s that shared servers do.

As for the moving, once you start paying those higher bills for better services (Cloud/VPS/Private server), you should also get a more personal service and they will do the move for you. Moving Wordpress is actually brilliantly simple which is a godsend compared to other CMSes.

I'm not saying Dreamhost's $10/mo service wouldn't handle it, but I would say it would be borderline as all of these shared hosts want to make money, and if they let a single shared account use 5% of the server's resources then that would only be 20 accounts per server max, meaning the price would have to be notably higher than the $5-$10 most people pay.

If it were me I would probably go down the cloud route as it is a fully managed service and will only cost as much as you use, but each to their own and I haven't tried any providers to give a personal recommendation for I'm afraid.

squashed

It's shake down time man. Did your discount price just expire/renewal?

Unless you generate income to cover your dedicated server with little money to spare, don't do it. It's expensive and over kill. It will be even harder to move from dedicated server back to low cost account. My advice: Reduce your web page load for few days/weeks and tell your reader the situation. And create work around program in the meantime. (put file somewhere else, reduce posting/chunkier frequency, redirect your reader to temporary stuff. reduce, image, file, heavy templating. shut down archive and search. Strip everything to minimum load.)

You can play brinkmanship against your host and tell them. see if I care you choke my site. (also, make sure you have your site name under control in case being hijacked. plus make certain readers are on your side and will follow you anywhere online.)

Mike Mineo

thanks for the advice. since they're essentially giving me 24 hours to do all this, I need to decide quickly.

oh and by the way, they say it's going to be $130/month instead because I require cPanel. that's WAY too much for me. I appreciate the tips so far and keep em coming! really horrible timing this whole thing is.

squashed

It is definitely a shakedown then. Do you see any traffic spike in the past few days to give them reason to force you paying dedicated server?

I'd say, take steps to reduce load and tell your reader to expect crimp down service for short period of time while you sort thing out. Back up, in case they play nasty.

Mike Mineo

yeah you're right.
Tim, which is better: mediatemple or rackspace?
any tips for dedicated hosting with a good price is appreciated

Tim

Do you *require* CPanel?

I completely understand that you are used to it and find it easy to use (it is!), but is there a reason you require it?

You will obviously require some kind of control panel - but maybe it would be worth asking for a cheaper alternative? There are numerous other options that are ok. I've used PLESK (not free) before and found it OK once you get the hang of it and there are many many more. Webmin is free and looks ok although I've never used it.

If you run a blog like me you will require FTP, PHP, MySQL (and free phpMyAdmin to administer your database), some form of control panel to set up databases, subdomains, FTP, etc.
You could move your email to Google for your domain (free), and take that issue away.

Do you use CPanel for anything else?

Moving your files/account from one CPanel to another is obviously the easiest way of moving from server to server, but for wordpress you can just download your public_html directory and export your database, and then upload them to your new account no matter what control panel you are using.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use CPanel by any means, just throwing some cheaper options out there.

Mike Mineo

just got with mediatemple. hope it works out...

Tim

Good luck!

Mike Mineo

thanks Tim and squashed, you guys have been of great help!

chris

maybe too late to offer any advice (sorry bout that), but my 2 cents: - dreamhost was terrible for downtime ---> switched to Knownhost, which was really nice but too much for me ($40-$50/month, including cpanel--which I never really used that much anyways) ---> am now with Danica Patrick's favorite hosting company and have been for about a year (?) - aside from some recent issues with malware attacks on godaddy which leaked through to me, it's been nothing but rainbows and unicorns ($14.99/month, unlimited everything)

best of luck with the struggle of having to make the decision so quickly

Mike Mineo

thanks Chris. I'm going to try Mediatemple and I'll report back with my results at some point.

Tim, how can I move my mike@obscuresound.com e-mail to Google? that would provide loads of stress relief, as you all know all the opportunities you could be missing if your e-mail account was non-existent for a few days.

chris

Good call with MT.

This might depend on hosts, but some offer one-click (or as Tsuru might say, easy peazy) mass forwarding... like, any and everything sent to everylastemailnameyoucouldthinkof@obscuresound.com would go to your gmail. or maybe i'm reading the question wrong and am thinking of an easy alternative to something that wasn't asked. Regardless, goodnight.

Mike Mineo

no you got it, Chris. Mediatemple offers some form of that so it shouldn't be much of an issue.
even though Lunarpages is pressuring me time-wise, at least they're commendable enough to tell me they'll keep my site online until everything is transferred. they're being quite helpful knowing that I won't be continuing business with them. at least they're not playing too dirty

x4a

Hey Mike,

Probably late also but anyways...

Not sure about that mass forwarding to gmail. Seem to remember trying something like that, in the past, and didn't work.

Anyhow, you might want to checkout google apps at gmailhelp.com. The major difference between gmail and google apps is with google apps you can use/keep your own domain name as part of the email address - username@obscuresound.com and still benefit from all the Google goodness. With just plain gmail it's - username@gmail.com.

One slight drawback is there is a one time only installation fee of $49, otherwise it's completely free. Plus, you can add additional addresses and other things that plain gmail won't do.

Looks pretty easy to setup. Check it out at gmailhelp.com if you haven't already made a decision/worked it out.

Best of luck with everything. Obscure Sound was a fav of mine "back in the day", just don't read much music blogs these days. Excellent to know you and the blog are doing good!

Tim

There are two ways you can set up mike@obscuresound.com on GMail...

If you already have and use a GMail account mikesomethinsomthing@gmail.com, then you can just set mike@obscuresound.com to forward all mail to mikesomethinsomthing@gmail.com. Then in GMail's settings >> Accounts & Import you can set up having the option of sending from mike@obscuresound.com

If you don't already have a GMail account, or want a completely separate account for your Obscuresound email, then you can sign up for Google Apps for your domain at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new
Put in your domain and follow the instructions (it will involve changing your domain's MX records which you do with wherever hosts your DNS (domain registrar or MediaTemple depending on how you have things set up). It is pretty easy I promise, but just follow the instructions word by word.

x4a

Umm, no offense, but isn't that what I said in my post above yours? Most specifically the Google Apps part? I realize that my posts tend to be invisible but maybe a "Yeah, Merz is right" or something like that. I know I'm not part of the club but.... Just sayin...

Tim

Yeah, I saw you explained the options, but I thought I'd add how to actually set up both.

But, having read your post in more detail - Google Apps for your domain is *free*. It only costs money if you want enterprise features to all extents and purposes, and then it is far more than a $49 one off fee. GMailHelp is just charging you to do the set up which there are detailed instructions for and only takes 10 minutes max, and that money does not go to Google.

Tim

If you want to part with your money though, I'll do it for $40 :)

x4a

I realize you were providing real technical details, something I can't do. My only purpose in commenting was to suggest to Mike that it might be worth checking out Google Apps.

I have no clue what "Enterprise" means related to this. All I know is from what I read, that there is a $49 one time installation fee. And the *free* part appeared to offer quite a bit. I don't know about any other "Enterprise" fees. Also, gmailhelp.com has good information explaining Google Apps and you can also access the same link you provided from there.

That's the extent of what I know on the subject, incorrect or not. Glad that you corrected things and filled in the details.

Nate

Just thought I'd chime in here with my experience since I went through almost the exact same thing.

I run a blog called Chemical Jump on Dreamhost and a few weeks ago they kicked me off of shared hosting because I was using too many resources (they never told me exactly how much though)

The site was getting around 22,000 pageviews a day so I thought it was probably about time I make the switch and upgrade the server anyway. I moved to their VPS service and honestly it was a nightmare for the first 2 weeks. The site kept getting errors and crazy load spikes all the way up to 16 which I knew couldn't have anything to do with PHP or MySQL calls since the site is highly optimized for that.

So I contacted them and they kept saying I needed to raise my memory limit more (even though it was well over what the usage graph displayed) and that's when I finally decided to check my error logs one day and found the problem.

The log file had grown to a beastly 10+mb and was filled with "Client exceeded concurrent connection limit of 30"

Basically I had a bunch of people running scripts to read through all my pages and download every single mp3, at the same time which would result in the server flipping out and load going through the roof.

Once I realized this was happening I started checking the log everyday and banning those IP's that cause that error.

So what I'm trying to say is, if you get a Dreamhost VPS it'll definitely be able to handle the load. Mine is only using 600mb of ram for an extra $15 a month over the normal hosting so I'm pretty happy with that.

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