Archive for In My Mind

It’s been a few long months owing to me having to take care of emergency familial issues, but remember that post I made back in March about Web Hosting Gone Wrong?

Shortly after I wrote that post, I spoke with Andrew from Media Temple about this matter and where he obviously was not allowed to go into situation specifics aside from what was publicly posted by Kyle, we were able to talk more in-depth about Media Temple’s policies and about specifics regarding theoretical situations which could result in the scenario that Kyle experienced. I aired my concerns – elaborated where necessary – and Andrew addressed them all quite thoroughly and we spoke at length about the various topics I had addressed in my previous blog posts.

At this point (actually, much earlier, but I have been unable to really sit down to write until now – sorry, Andrew!), I have to say that where I still have mild concerns about the potential ‘ease’ of going over resource allotment, I am satisfied with the results of the conversation and no longer have that sour taste in my mouth or the same misgivings I once had.

In case it wasn’t evident in previous posts or in case anyone needs a reminder, I will reiterate that my concerns were NOT regarding MT charging for overages (in other words, I wasn’t saying that MT shouldn’t charge for overages, period).

My greatest concern was how unexpectedly the overage-causing situation had happened (it was a total and complete accident and there was no prior indication that such a problem would happen), what the ramifications were (triggering the overage as the situation caused resource over-usage), what the implications might be (how easy would it be to go over resource allotment?), and then how MT INITIALLY handled the situation.

As a courtesy to Andrew and Media Temple, I will address the issues one more time and then close this particular ‘chapter’ of blog posts regarding Web Hosting Gone Wrong.

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Cheap(er) domain registration prices and cheap(er) basic web hosting packages have never and will never motivate me to choose GoDaddy for any of my domain registration or web hosting needs.

NEVER.

However.

Due to the old RegisterFly fiasco (not my fault!) that happened back in the timespan of 2005-2007, I had a handful of domains that I had been maintaining at RegisterFly get pushed on to GoDaddy while one domain ended up with eNom. Several got moved elsewhere (DreamHost, here I come!) while I let others whose purposes had expired… expire.

Also.

Due to working with various people over the years – paid, voluntary, because we’re friends, and otherwise – I have been forced to interact with GoDaddy as the go-between fix-it and fix-up person.

But those incidents and instances aside, I myself would never – if possible – choose GoDaddy.

Why?

Good grief, but where do I start?

I know! How about in alphabetical order?

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So that post I made a while ago about the $1000 a month shared webhosting?

EDIT: A follow-up post has been made to this. Please READ THIS for the final update and the resolution.

To refresh your memory (or simply read if you never caught it in the first place), click HERE.

Apparently, according to Kyle Matthews whom this incident happened to, there has been a resolution offered by Media Temple – namely, $6XX amount of overage fees are being/will be/were waived.

Click HERE to read his update!

According to Kyle’s post, Media Temple sent him an email shortly after his blog post appeared asking him to call them back in regards to the “unfortunate circumstance of the issue”.

Funny, that (in my opinion anyways), when the original customer support emails had stated that nothing could be done when Kyle had first asked.

But.

Media Temple DID get back in touch and did acknowledge at least part of the gaffe on their part – good for them! That’s called customer service gone right. At least… part way.

But.

Like Kyle’s blog post states, it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth, too, and mostly because of what I had explained in my earlier post.

A company trumpeting the robustness of their service and backing it up with percentages and statistics and saying that only 0.3% and 0.03% of users (basically, VERY VERY FEW for the first and out of a random 10,000 for the second!) ever experience overage problems ONLY to be keeled over by the 2 million 404 Apache errors from one website which generated a crapload of overage charges just…

It just doesn’t sit well with me at all in any way, shape, or form ESPECIALLY knowing that once upon a not very long time ago at all, the same site had done just fine on DreamHost’s shared web hosting service.

DreamHost talks about what they offer in their services, sure, and you can go poke at their fine print if you want to, and you can read up on their thoughts regarding ‘unlimited’ this, that, and the other, and they even regularly post status updates on their servers and all but nowhere have I seen the sort of reputation/credibility-building (more like hyping, really!) that Media Temple posted on their FAQs page.

And DH managed to host the site just fine.

Blegh.

So yeah.

Resolution posted!

… But the sour aftertaste is still there and I still can’t help but wonder just what kinds of sites those 10,000 were that MT randomly picked out which generated a grand total of 0.03% of sites going over their resources.

I guess trust (or something like it) once broken is hard to fix and I guess after all the hype, I’m not sure what’s ‘realistic’ to expect from MT or not after seeing something like this happen.

… We’ll see.

~ EMG

… is it…?

Over here it sure isn’t!

So after a few long months of having very empty Rabbit Hole and Giving Props widgets staring at me in the face asking me, “Why haven’t you worked on your links yet?”, I finally sat myself down to wrangle around with them and only them.

Three hours later (actually five, but the first two hours were kinda scattered around)…

Behold – my Giving Props list! *points to the sidebar Giving Props widget block*

What do you think?

The list isn’t fully finished yet as there are a few people and things that I need to add on, but you get the general idea, right?

Maaan, but the list ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be and it also ended up taking up more of my time and concentration than I thought it might!

Initially, the list was going to be a simple list of text-only links like the list of links in a typical Blogroll widget block (to maintain cohesion with the rest of my site which is very minimalistic in terms of graphics), but after thinking about ‘giving back to the community’…

I decided that maybe I could turn my simple Giving Props link block into a personal project to ‘give back’ to the people, services, and places who/that have helped me along my journey as a WordPress junkie, front-end web developer and designer, and blogger.

And that’s where all those icons/buttons come in.

To show my appreciation for these people, services, and places, I ended up creating sixteen – 16 so far! – unique slimline buttons for each and every one of these people, services, and places and boy oh boy, but did I have one heck of a blast doing so or what!

There are still more to come – there are still a few people yet whom I want to put in the list, but haven’t decided on the graphic for – but I think I’m doing good so far.

After I get the others done, I will officially send them off to their ‘owners’ and hopefully, I will hear back from some of the people and get some feedback on what they like or what they don’t like.

*crosses fingers*

… I hope nobody takes offense to what I’ve done.

~ EMG

Yes, for SHARED HOSTING!

A hosting plan that first started out at $20 a month suddenly jumped to over $1000 for the month due to some majorly insane and nonsensical (read the rest of this post and go read the original article yourself!) overages!

Before any conclusions are jumped, let me clarify a few things upfront first:

1a. As of March 08, a different resolution was offered by the hosting company in question. Please read THIS POST for the most current updates on the situation. For my own response to the ‘resolution’, please read THIS POST.

With that said:

1b. The person who had the webhosting gone wrong incident is not me.

The person in question is Kyle Matthews who owns and runs the ModMy network. The site in question for this particular situation is a client’s site: NegriElectronics.com.

Edit – 03.08.10: In an earlier version of the post, I forgot to mention which site it was that was specifically involved which could lead to a person thinking that it was the ModMy sites involved (since I credited Kyle with the ModMy network and didn’t mention the proper website involved). Not true! Sorry about the confusion and I made the proper edits accordingly! Thanks Kyle for the correction!

and

2. I don’t know the person whom this incident happened to. I came across this story via a link someone posted in my Twitter stream.

The original story is posted on Kyle Matthews’ own blog, which can be accessed HERE.

and last of all…

3. I try to be as objective about things as possible when I write and I really try to not let the opinions and even experiences of others color my own perception.

Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear, right?

BUT.

4. Sometimes, the experiences of others have a great enough impact that it clearly affects my judgment.

Why? Because some experiences are so AWFUL that you really DON’T want to and CAN’T afford to risk experiencing something similar.

Therefore…

5. This is one of those times.

With that out of my system, here’s my reaction:

HOLY %$#@ING YIKES!!!

and

What the HELL is going on at Media Temple?!

Read the rest of this page »

… to the WordPress community.

So I was reading Andy Peatling’s post on giving back to the community in regards to open source projects (like WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress, etc) and it got me thinking.

How have I given back to the WordPress (and other similar) communities?

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