For me, these two web hosts are both reliable, with better tech support and are both affordable. You couldn’t blame me if that’s how I look at the both of them because what I said is based on my observation and experience.

But of course I know that there are people who are not contented with the web hosting services offered by Dreamhost. The same is true to Media Temple. If you’ll search the internet for “Media Temple Review” and “DreamHost Review” you’ll find lots of negative reviews about them. And those reviews are based on what they also experienced with the web hosts.

In other words, the answer to the question mentioned above depends on the one who answer it. If you’ll ask an unsatisfied customer of DreamHost, then I know that he’ll tell you that DreamHost sucks. And if you’ll ask the satisfied customer of Dreamhost, you’ll be told that Dreamhost is the best webhost. This is also true to the Media Temple.

However, to help her decide which among the two webhosts, Media Temple and Dreamhost,  should she buy a web hosting account, … here’s my few observations regarding each of the two webhosts.

Media Temple

Media Temple offers three different web hosting solutions:

1. Grid Hosting for $20/mo. It has hundreds of servers working in tandem. I couldn’t really explain how the servers are connected. But what I understand is that your single website is driven by the hundreds of servers. Once a visitor visit your site, the data downloaded by his computer are coming from these servers. So, in this way, opening your website is faster compared to when your website is hosted by a single but shared server. But of course, the resources of these servers are shared by the websites hosted by them.
2. Dedicated Virtual ($50/mo, $100/mo and $150/mo). It is also called Private Server by the DreamHost or VPS (Virtual Private Server) by other web host or VDS (Virtual Dedicated Server) by few other web hosts. You can easily adjust your server depending on your needs. But there are only three options: Base ($50/mo), Rage ($100/mo) and Extreme ($150/mo).
3. Dedicated Physical Virtual for $750/mo. Other webhost called this as Dedicated Server. It’s a single server being rented by a single client.

DreamHost

DreamHost offers us three solutions too:

1. Shared Server. It’s a single server hosting hundreds or perhaps thousands of websites and accounts. The server’s resources are being shared by all the websites hosted by it.
2. DreamHost PS with MySQL in shared server. Your website’s files and Database are hosted by two different servers. Your website’s main files are placed in your VPS while the databases are hosted in a shared server. The price of it is $1/10mb of memory plus the standard shared hosting price. The memory allocation can be adjusted in realtime from 150mb to the maximum.
3. DreamHost PS with MySQL PS. Your account is actually using two different servers. A VPS for your website’s files and another PS for your databases. The price for each of the DreamHost PS and MySQL PS is $1/10mb memory but has 20% discount plus the standard share hosting price.

Comparison

1. Grid Hosting of Media Temple is faster than the DreamHost shared hosting. Except of course if most of the servers in the Grid Hosting that are serving your websites are down.
2. In DreamHost shared hosting, if the server is down, you couldn’t access your site. While in Media Temple Grid, you can access your site even if almost all servers in a group or cluster are down as long as there is 1 server running.
3. Upgrading your Grid Hosting to Dedicated Virtual in Media Temple takes few time but if you’ll upgrade your shared hosting in DreamHost to PS, the process takes days.
4. DreamHost PS is cheaper and affordable compared to Media Temple’s Dedicated Virtual.
5. In DreamHost, you can adjust the memory allocation for your PS account from 150mb above up to the maximum limit in realtime. In Media Temple’s Dedicated Virtual, you can upgrade your account from Base to Rage or to Extreme or vice versa in realtime.
6. In MediaTemple, if you want to resell hosting plans to your own clients, your clients will use a control panel for their own account only. While in DreamHost you are the only one who can access the accounts because there are no separate control panel that your own clients can use.

There are lots of differences between MediaTemple and DreamHost. If you know something, please feel free to share through our comment section.

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One day, he moved his blog to a foreign web host that offered unlimited bandwidth. He thought that his blog would be fine, but actually it became worst. His blog experienced downtimes everday not because of bandwidth limit but because of something he couldn’t figure out.

He emailed the customer support and sought help. But the customer support of the foreign web host told him that his blog is consuming too much server’s resources. He was warned that his account will be suspended and his payment will be forfeited if the blog continues to perform that way because it’s a clear violation of the terms and condition of that web host.

Now, he’s wondering why is it that his blog is accused of consuming too much resources when in fact the web host offers unlimited bandwidth? Is it just a scam when they offer unlimited bandwidth to us?

What is bandwidth?

Some of you understand already what bandwidth is. But for the sake of those who don’t know… bandwidth is the amount of the data transferred FROM the server and TO the server. Or it is the amount of data downloaded from the server and the data uploaded into the server in a given period of time. We can compare it to the amount of water that passes through the pipe going into or from the water tank.

For example, you’ll visit the homepage of my blog, “Make Money Online by Blogging“. The size of it is 59KB according to the Google SERP. If in 1 month the homepage is downloaded for 60,000 times, then the total bandwidth consumed in 1 month is 3,540,000 KB or approximately 3.5GB.

The bandwidth can be computed by multiplying the size of the file by the number of times the file is downloaded.

Is there really unlimited bandwidth in web hosting products?

Actually, there is no such unlimited bandwidth especially in web hosting products. The use of the terms “unlimited bandwidth” is just for the marketing purpose only which means that the bandwidth of each of the accounts created will be unmetered. And you should not expect that you are allowed to consume bandwidth that is more than the maximum bandwidth of that server. To let you know, before you can consume half of the maximum bandwidth of that server, you’ll be kicked out of the server.

If your planning to get a webhosting account with unlimited bandwidth, you should check the terms and conditions first. Usually, if the bandwidth is unmetered, other features of that web hosting product have limitations. You are not also allowed to upload your personal photos and videos into the server because these things really eat up bandwidth.

Usually, webhosts that offer unlimited bandwidth set a limit of the server’s memory, ie. 250MB, and CPU resources, ie. 0.05, that your account can consume.

If your blog consumes too much memory and CPU resources (or exceeds the limit) which are usually referred to as “server’s resources”, the system automatically suspend your blog or make it inaccessible so that the server will not crash, and saving other blogs and websites hosted by that server from downtimes.

Now, if you couldn’t make your blog behave according to the terms and conditions of that web host, your account will be suspended and you’ll be advised to transfer to other webhost.

How can you enjoy the unlimited bandwidth feature of your web hosting account?

Just like what I already mentioned above, just make sure that your blog consumes the allowable amount of memory and CPU resources only.

But how?

1. Avoid using buggy plugins. Make sure that the plugins that you installed into your blog are working properly.
2. Install plugins properly. When installing plugins into your blog, follow carefully the instructions given by the writer of the plugin.
3. Install plugins that will minimize the consumption of server’s resources. If your blog is Wordpress driven, you have the option of using either of the two Wordpress plugins: (1) WP-Super-Cache Plugin; (2) DB Cache. Yuga has made the distinction between the two plugins. Read Yuga’s blogpost, “WP DB Cache vs WP Super Cache“.
4. Update Regularly. Soon as the new version of the Wordpress engine and its plugins are available, update them immediately.

More Reading

1. How to Transfer Your Blog to Another Server without Downtime?
2. What Webhost’s Server is Best For a Busy Blog?

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On the support ticket that I posted, I wrote this message:

Hello po,

For example, I will cancel my account on June 6, 2009, is there a refund na matatanggap ako from my 1 year payment for this year?

Thanks po,

SELBOY

The customer support did not answer me. So, on the next day, I wrote another message:

Hi!

I am planning po kasi to merge my blogs under my ****host Reseller Account to my other account in other webhost. Medyo mas malaki po kasi expenses ko don kaya napag-isipisip ko na tipunin na don ang mga blogs ko to cut few expenses, and to help your server as well.

My Reseller Account has been renewed last March 6, 2009 and I already paid 40,255PhP (35,940 + VAT).

If I will cancel my Reseller Account effective June 6, 2009 (3 months), may matatanggap po ba akong refund?

Sana po ay mabigyan po ako ng kasagutan.

Regards,

SELBOY

The customer support replied but it’s not the direct answer to my query. So I again posted a message:

Hello po,

just want to inform you na nag-abandon na po ako sa aking reseller acount “SELAPLANA.NET”.

I will be thankful po kung meron akong matatanggap na refund kahit ibabawas na ang March 6, 2009 to June 6, 2009 na subscription.

Pero kung sakali wala pong refund, just inform me po.

SELBOY

But after two days, there was no reply on that message, so I posted new message again:

Hello po,

Actually, gusto ko lang po malaman kung meron po bang matatanggap akong refund o wala. Hindi naman po ako magpupumilit kung wala e. Pero mas mabuti po sana kung masagot po ang aking katanungan.

Thanks po.

SELBOY

I again waited. And finally, after two days, the customer support replied:

Yes, you will get a refund for the months that was not used.

It took 11 days for the customer support of my previous webhost  to directly answer my query. It seems that they’re not interested to answer a query like this. That’s the reason why I am still doubting if I will receive the refund. And that doubt has made me decide to give this article the title, “How I Lost $642 to a Webhost?”

Why $642?

I have several accounts created with that particular local webhost: A Reseller Account and a couple of single-shared Accounts.

It’s the reseller account that I was paying for more or less $856.49 a year (if at PhP47.00/$1 exchange rate) or  PhP40,255 (to be exact). And there were several websites or blogs that were hosted under that reseller account.

And just like what I already mentioned above, this reseller account was renewed last March 6, 2009 and I already paid the whole year subscription.

However, the downtimes that experienced by that account since November 2008 up to December 2008 made me decide to upgrade that reseller account into a VPS.

I tried to contact them, asking them the price of their VPS. I also decided to stay with them as long as they can offer me services that I need whatever the price because I considered them as my beloved “SUKI”. But they did not respond immediately to my message. So, I was thinking that maybe they didn’t have any available VPS.

On the late March 2009, I noticed that the server hosting that reseller account experienced again downtimes almost every day. While waiting for their respond regarding my query about their VPS, I was already considering an option to transfer to other webhost. And that was the time that I remember my shared webhosting account in a US-based webhost which is hosting few of my other blogs.

That said foreign webhost offers a VPS which is just an addon of a shared hosting account.

While researching information about the VPS of that foreign webhost, the local webhost contacted me and offered me a semi-dedicated server for my reseller account. They transferred all my blogs under my reseller into that semi-dedicated server but it ended up to a mess and my blogs experienced longer downtimes.

That experience has made me decide to upgrade my shared account in a foreign webhost into a VPS. After that, I transferred my blogs from my reseller account of that local webhost to the newly set-up VPS of the foreign webhost. And by the midst of April 2009, I successfully abandoned my reseller account.

In other words, I only consumed at least two months of my 1 year subscription. However, if they will really give me the refund, they can simply deduct the charges from March 6, 2009 to June 6, 2009. So, I will be expecting PhP30,191.25 ($642.37 at PhP47/$1 exchage rate).

But I am not yet sure of it.

I will be very much thankful if they will really refund me. But if not, I will just consider it a lesson to learn.

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I guess, you already knew that blog downtimes will lead to the loss of traffic and loss of your blog’s income as well. That’s the reason why we need to avoid blog’s downtime when moving your blog from one server to another.

This post is actually inspired by the question asked by Ark which goes:

While I’m in the process, my site will be down for that period right?

If so, how can I put a message like, “This Site is Undergoing Maintenance” or a similar one?

So, instead of putting a page that says “This site is undergoing maintenance” especially when you’re in the process of moving your blog to the new server, why not find ways of avoiding downtimes?

So, how can we move our blog to the new server without experiencing the blog’s downtimes?

Okay, here’s the steps:

1) Open a hosting account from the new webhost.

I understand that you’re planning to move your blog from your current webhost because you’re not contented with the service offered to you by your webhost. Maybe your blog frequently experience downtimes, just like what this blog of mine had experience before.

In other words, you will be moving your blog to a webhost which for you is better than your current webhost.

Consider first reading my previous articles listed below.

• Why shared sever is not best for a busy blog?
• What’s the best webhost for your blog?

Now, once you already found the right webhost which you think could cater your blog’s needs, then sign up an account from them.

Before doing the next steps, make sure that your webhosting account and the servers for your account are fully set up already.

But you should take note of the following:

• temporary FTP URL.
• Your account’s username.
• Your account’s password.

2) Upgrade your current Wordpress engine.

It is better if you upgrade first the Wordpress engine of your blog. We are assuming here that the Wordpress software that will be installed into the server of your new webhost is the latest version of it. Upgrading your Wordpress to the latest version will lead you to upgrade your database too, making your blog’s database compatible to the Wordpress that will be used in your new server.

3) Download your blog’s files.

Check all the files of your blog and download them from your server to your computer.

Usually, the important files of your blog are found in the folders:

• wp-content/uploads. This folder contains the images you uploaded while writing blogposts.
• wp-content/themes. This is where you blog template files are stored.
• wp-content/plugins. This is the folder of the Wordpress plugins you used in your blog.

It would also be better if you’ll just include the following files which are all found in the root directory or sometimes in the Wordpress directory.

• favicon.ico
• sitemap.xml
• sitemap.xml.gz

And there might be other files other than these. You know better your own files, so just check your files in the server.

You need to use an FTP client in doing these processes.

4) Download your blog’s database.

Before downloading your blog’s database, optimize it first. How? Here’s the steps:

• Login to your blog’s admin panel at “your-blog-domain.com/wp-admin/“
• Open the Spam Comment page.
• Delete all the spam comments caught by the Akismet plugin.

Then access your database using “MyPHPAdmin” script. Almost all webhost have this script.

Next, check the database tables that exist in your blog’s database. Usually, your Wordpress blog’s database has these tables:

• wp_comments
• wp_links
• wp_maincounts
• wp_options
• wp_postmeta
• wp_terms
• wp_term_relationships
• wp_term_taxonomy
• wp_usermeta
• wp_users

If you found tables other than that, those tables are most likely created by the Wordpress plugins your blog is using. It’s your discretion whether to drop them or not. But those tables will only make your database large.

If you are using the plugin that send emails to the commenters or commentators, I think, it would be better if you will just delete all the data in the wp_users and wp_usermeta except the data of your own admin user.

5) Install Wordpress into your new server

You might be wondering if you can really access your new server without changing first the DNS of your domain. That might be true that you can’t access your account if you are going to access the CPanel of your new webhosting account using the domain of your blog which is currently using the DNS of your current webhost.

But there’s another way of accessing your CPanel of your new webhost without using the domain of your blog. This time, we will be using the other domain that is hosted already by the same server of your new webhosting account.

So, you need to know first what domains are hosted by that server. You can ask your webhost about it. I’m sure they’ll give you one.

However, if your new server is a VPS or Dedicated Server, then you need to use another domain of your own, and add this domain into your webhosting account as your additional hosted domain. After that, change the DNS of that domain into the DNS of that server.

Once the DNS changes have been totally resolved, access the CPanel using that domain that is using the DNS of your new server. Usually, in accessing the CPanel, you just point your browser to “domain-in-your-new-server.com/cpanel” or “domain-in-your-new-server.com:2082” without the quotation marks.

However, if your new webhost is DreamHost or other webhosts that have similar system used by DreamHost, then here’s what you need to do:

• Login to your Dreamhost account.
• Add new domain to be hosted  into your DreamHost account. This domain should be the unused one.
• Go to the “One-Click-Install” feature of DreamHost and Install the Wordpress (Advance option) to the new domain. Make sure to create a new database server, ie. “msql.your-unused-domain.com” without the quotation marks. Take note also of the database name, database user and database user password. You will use this in your wp-config.php file.

6) Upload your files to your new server

Just like what we did on the previous step,we will use other domain hosted by your new server as your access key to access your account.

Use FTP client here. In the FTP URL, enter the domain you know that is hosted by that server. But the username and password should be the username and password for your webhosting account. Then upload all the files to the right or proper folder.

After uploading all the files, CHMOD the “.htaccess”, “sitemap.xml” and “sitemap.xml.gz” files to writeable using your FTP Client. If you don’t know how to do it, read my article, “How to CHMOD files using FTP client software?”

However, if your new server is a server from DreamHost or other webhost with similar system, upload the files using the temporary FTP URL that the webhost has given you.

7) Import your blog’s database

Access your CPanel just like what we did on the step 5. Then click the MySQL icon at the CPanel. In the MySQL page, open the “PHPMyAdmin”. Usually the link to “PHPMyAdmin” is found at the bottom of the page.

While you are at the “PHPMyAdmin”, empty or drop all the database tables found in the Wordpress database. Then import your blog’s database or the database dump that you downloaded in step 4. If your database is large enough to be uploaded using the “PHPMyAdmin” script, do the steps in importing large database that I wrote before or if not, you can just divide the database dump into several files and import them one by one.

If your server is one of the servers of DreamHost and similar webhost, access your database using the URL “mysql.your-unused-domain.com” that I mentioned in step 5. The username and password are those I told you to take note in step 5. Then import the Database. However, you should know that DreamHost and similar webhosts are more strict in the file’s size and memory limit. So you need to divide the database dump or the database that you downloaded earliear into several files. If you don’t know how to do this, I think I need to write a separate article about that.

Change the DNS of your domain

So, it’s now time to change the DNS of your domain. But make sure that your account from the old webhost is still live so that your visitors can still access your blog even if the DNS changes is not yet totally resolved.

The Result?

With that steps, your blog’s visitors will never found problems in accessing your blog. They won’t even notice any changes in your blog.

If you don’t understand something from what I’ve written, kindly drop your comment at our comment section or just reply the email you received if you’re a subscriber of our blog’s feed.

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• Picking the right webhost for your blog
• Best webhost for your blog

But I think those articles are already obsolete. I wanted to edit them but I think, it would be better if I will write a new one.

And few days ago, I also published an article related to webhost or webhosting. The article has a title, “Avoiding Blog Downtimes“.

On that article, I mentioned that “a shared server is not the best server for a  blog that caters thousands of visitors a day“.

Why shared server is not best for your busy blog?

The shared server is a server that hosts hundreds or thousands of webhosting accounts in which the total server’s resources are being shared by websites of every account hosted by that server.

The number 1 disadvantage of a shared server is that when a website caused trouble to the server by simply eating up the resources, all websites hosted by that server will be affected.

That’s what this blog (SELaplana) had actually experienced since its early existing up to the time when I decided to transfer it to a VPS server.

Before, you’d always noticed that when accessing this blog, your browser would tell you an error had been encountered by this blog. Most of the time, this blog had the error in connecting to the database. But there were also times that the server of this blog was simply inaccessible due to its firewall problem or was simply dead.

So, what kind of webhost’s server that is best for a busy blog?

You have actually two options to choose:

1. VPS (Virtual Private Server)
2. Dedicated Server

VPS or Virtual Private Server

Virtual Private Server or sometimes called as Virtual Dedicated Server acts like a dedicated server even if it is part a server shared by other webhosting accounts. It can be best compared to an apartment building which is divided into the apartment units and each apartment unit has its own and independent power and water supply.

In other words, a VPS is a server divided into partitions of servers of which each partition acts like a dedicated server. Each of the partitions has its own operating system, disk space, memory allocation and can be rebooted without affecting other partitions.

VPS is more expensive that a shared server but is cheaper than the real or physical dedicated server.

Here’s few of the VPS offered by popular webhosting companies. It includes  info about them. Some bloggers that I knew got hosting solution from them.

• InMotionHosting
  - Plan 256M – $49.95/mo (if monthly billing)
  - Memory: 256MB – 1GB
  - Disk Space: 40GB
  - Bandwidth: 500GB
  - Websites to host: Unlimited
  - Park Domains to use: Unlimited
  - IP : 2
• Media Temple DV
  - $50/mo (if monthly payment)
  - Memory: 256MB
  - Disk Space:  20 GB
  - Bandwidth: 1,000GB
  - Websites to host: unlimited (can be used as reseller)
• DreamHost PS + PS – MySQL
  - 256MB DreamHost PS: $25.6/mo + 150MB PS-MySQL: $15/mo = $32.48/mo with 20% discount. (DreamHost PS and PS-MySQL are adjustable from 150MB up)
  - Plus $119.4/1-year hosting
  - Other features: unlimited

Dedicated Server

A dedicated server is a single unit of server which is offered to a single client. In other words, if you’ll get a dedicated server, there’s no other client who can share that server from you. Except of course if you’ll share it with your friends.

So, a dedicated server is more expensive than the VPS, considering that the whole server is being rented by you.

Few of my friends recommended to me the Host Gator’s Dedicated server.  The price of the Linux server at the HostGator ranges from $174/mo to $374/mo depending on the processor used by the server.

More VPS and Dedicated Server

I know that some of you got your own VPS or Dedicated Server for your websites of blogs. Please share something to us about your servers, for to learn something that would help us decide what webhost is best for us.

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Downtime is also called outage. It is the period of time when the system is failing or malfunctioning.

In the blogosphere, when bloggers mentioned “downtimes” they usually refer to the time when their blogs are inaccessible due to an unexpected problem in the blogs itself or of the server hosting the blogs.

For example:

Since the start of the month of April 2009, you always find this blog, SELaplana, not accessible. There were times that the browser told you that there was an error accessing the server. There were times that the error is in the connection to the database used by the blog. All those times that you failed to open this blog, those were called downtimes.

Causes of Blog’s Downtimes

I know that you hate to see that your own blog is down. Every time it happens, you lost visitors who supposedly visited your blog during that particular time. And while you lost visitors, you also lost money, especially if your blog’s income is fully dependent to your blog’s traffic.

But what really are the causes of the downtimes of your blog?

There are actually many reasons why your blog is down. But I categorized them into two:

1) Server Problems

These problems include the following:

The limitations set by the server on the bandwidth, resources, diskspace and database resources. Your blog is allowed to eat up resources, diskspace, and database resources only up to the maximum limit and beyond that point your blog or your account will be automatically suspended temporarily.

There are also servers that do not have the ability to automatically suspend accounts that go beyond the limitations. But everytime its resources are eaten up by the websites and blogs being hosted, they automatically stop responding not because they are programmed to act like that but because they simply fail.

Another cause of the server’s downtime is its failure to connect to the internet or to the datacenter. I couldn’t explain well how the servers are related to the datacenter because I am not really knowledgeable about them. But if the server hosting your blog failed to connect into the internet, we’re sure that your blog will be inaccessible too.

There are also times that the webhost needs to perform a maintenance to the server. During that time, they intentionally switch off the server. Once the server hosting your blog is taken down by the webhost, then for sure, your blog is down too.

There are actually other reasons why the server hosting your blog is down. You might know some of them. Please feel free to share your knowledge to us by dropping your thoughts into our comment section.

2) Blog Setup Problems

I think, all of you who have self-hosted blogs are using the Wordpress software in running your own blog. So far, Wordpress is the best blogging platform that I knew.

Installing the Wordpress into your webhosting account is just simple. Adding plugins and installing blog’s theme are also easy. But if you miss something, then that will be the start of your headache.

Mostly the problems on your blog started in the plugins and themes you installed into your blog’s system. Plugins and themes that contain bugs will most likely bring your blog into trouble, thus resulted into downtimes.

But there are also cases that a problem started when you wrote something into your blog’s “.htaccess” file. Like for example when you tried to clean up URL with duplicate contents, or redirecting few of your blogposts into the other external pages, most like you edit the content of the “.htaccess” file.

However, even if you’re too careful in using Wordpress plugins and Blog’s Themes, and in editing some files in your blog’s directory, your blog will also fail if someone infiltrated your webhosting account, placed something there and or destroyed some parts of your blog’s system. I am actually talking about the hackers.

To let you know, in early days of this month, April 2009, I always called up the attention of the owner of the webhosting company previously hosting all my blogs under my reseller account because of downtimes. Downtimes happened almost everyday. And most of these downtimes happened around 8:00PM to 12:00MN (Philippine Time).

Worried of what’s happening to the server, they investigated the server and the accounts under that server. Then they found out that a certain script was found in one of my accounts.

They immediately told me about it. But since, I don’t have a tool to use to investigate how did my account get that malicious script, I just used the backup files I downloaded from the server.

From that I found out that the script is called “PHP Offender” or “PHP Konsole” or “PHP Shell”. It’s a kind of backdoor which hackers usually used to infiltrate a server.

My further investigation lead me to realize that this kind of script was already there in the server even before December 2008 because the backup files of my blogs I downloaded from the server last December 2008 contain this script already. That script have spread in all the “images” directory of all my accounts hosted by that server.

In other words, hacker who infiltrated the server hosting my accounts might be the cause of the constant downtimes that my blogs had experienced.

Now, how could we avoid the blog’s downtime?

We already have identified the possible causes of the downtime of your blog. So, to avoid this downtime, you should have to anticipate what might happen.

For example:

- If the traffic of your blog is increasing to the point that your account might reached the limit, then shared server will not be good for your blog. Getting VPS (Virtual Private Server) or Dedicate Server will be the best thing to do.

- If you want to use a certain Wordpress plugin or Blog’s Theme, try to read first how to implement it into your blog. It will be better if you will read the review of the other bloggers using that particular plugin or theme.

- Try using plugins that could help your blog in minimizing the consumption of the server’s resources.

- Be careful and responsible.

Finale

Before I’ll end up this article, I want to tell you that downtimes of your blog should be considered as challenge to you. Don’t be embarrassed if your blog sometimes experienced downtime. Just stay calm and be patient, especially in dealing with your webhost, and try to think of ways on how to resolve the problem.

This kind of challenge will lead you to the higher stage of your success…. that is if you handled it wisely.

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To make it clear here’s the list of advantages and disadvantages of free webhosts:

Advantages of Free Webhost:

1. Free Webhost is of course free. You don’t have to pay anything.
2. Few free Webhosts offers unlimited bandwidth. Whether your blog will receive huge traffic or eat up huge bandwidth, your blog remains running.
3. Blogs are networked. Most of the free webhost has their homepage where the blogs recently featured and recently created are being featured. Other Free Webhost offers a navigation bar which is placed at the top most area of the blogs and one of the links on this navigation bar is the “NEXT BLOG” wherein if it is clicked, it opens a blog from the network in a random.

Disadvantages of Free Webhost:

1. Free Webhost offers limited features. Most of the webhosts offer limited bandwidth and limited space.
2. There are Free Webhosts that requires its users to retain the company’s code at the users’ blogs. These codes often times are advertising scripts, or links to the company’s home page.
3. There are Free Webhosts although they do not require you to do a thing as stated in number 3 however they do not allow you to make money from your blog.
4. Some Free Webhosts has its own engine that monitors the activity of its users’ blogs. If this engine identifies your blog as spam, the system automatically suspends your blog, and after several days, you’ll find your blog deleted already.

Therefore, free webhost is good only if you want to create a blog but don’t have plans to make huge money from them.

Since our purpose of starting our own blog is to earn huge money from it, so we better get our own webhost. But first, here are the advantages and disadvantages of the paid host.

Advantages of Paid Hosting:

1. You can freely take off all the restrictions if you want.
   • You can increase the bandwidth
   • You can increase the space
   • You can install features which you think useful to your blog
   • You can customize everything.
2. You can have your own email using your own domain.
3. Paid Hosting is not really that expensive.
4. Paid Hosting has customer or tech support. If you experience problems with your site, you can call for a help from their support services.
5. And of course, you can make money online from the blog hosted by paid host.
6. One more thing: You can transfer from one host to other host without losing traffic.

Disadvantage of Paid Hosting:

1. Actually I found only one problem with Paid Hosting and it is being a paid hosting. All the things you want for should be paid.

Actually, you don’t have to worry if you are spending money for your blog especially in getting a host.

Remember that blogging for money (making money online by blogging) is a kind of investment. The money you spent for your blog can be considered as your investment capital. However, it doesn’t end up with just spending money for your blog. If you do the right thing, then you’ll earn enough money which is enough for your blogging expenses including your own salary as professional blogger of your own blog. And if you continue to work hard for your blog, then time will come that you’ll earn huge money from your blog that is enough to buy your own house, own car, and finance your trip around the world.

So, how to pick the right web host?

Here’s the list of the things that you need to consider in picking a webhost that will host your blog:

1. Uptime. Uptime is the percentage of time that your website or blog is viewable. So you need to know what the uptime of that webhost is. Best webhost has the lowest uptime of 99.5%.Servers of any webhosts are just made of human. So there is no perfect server. From time to time, the server hosting your website or blog will experience problem which causes your website or blog to be down or not viewable.
2. Disk Space. Check the disk space that the webhost is offering in every package that it offers.
3. Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the capacity of data being transferred from the server of your website or blog to computers of your blog’s or website’s visitors.
4. Support. Good webhost has 24/7 support system. You really need support from your webhost because there will be times that you’ll be experiencing problems with their services.

Can you recommend us few best hosts?

From the review made by other bloggers who happened to transfer from one host to the other in search of better webhosting, I found that the following are better webhosts:

1. DreamHost Webhosting (http://www.dreamhost.com/)
2. Host Monster Webhosting (http://www.hostmonster.com/)
3. BlueHost Web Hosting Provider (http://www.bluehost.com/)
4. In Motion Hosting (http://www.inmotionhosting.com)

However, these webhosts are all based outside the Philippines, thus you need to pay them using Credit Cards.

Now what if you don’t have credit cards? Actually, there is no problem with it because there are good webhosts that are based in the Philippines. From several webhosts that I tried with, only two of them passed my preferences:

1. PlogHost. Learn why I decided to remain my blog hosted by PlogHost by reading my article, “What Makes a Webhost Better than the Other?“.
2. NokiaHost

And if you want to pay for your obligation to these local webhosts, you have to options to pay through bank to bank deposit, smart money or GCash.

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Your blog goes down at least once a week and sometimes, I get a phishing site alarm when I log in here.

I’m sorry for this. But I just want to make it clear that not all the downtimes experienced by this blog are caused by server’s problem. Most of the time the downtimes are due to the problem of this blog.

You see, I bought a hosting account (reseller hosting) from a Filipino webhost. And almost all Filipino webhosts that I knew limit all their clients site to use up to 80% of server’s resources. Once a site exceeds the limit, it will automatically be suspended. And then visitors will receive a message which says “Database Connection Error” or “The site is temporarily suspended”.

Currently, our blog receives more or less 2,000 visitors a day. And it’s already considered a huge traffic which sometimes bring my blog to the limit. That’s why you sometimes failed to log-in to this blog.

Of course, I am aware that there are lots of webhosts (foreign or non-Filipino webhosts) that are better than my provider. However, there are reasons why I prefer to use the Filipino webhosting services than those owned by non-Filipino company.

And I want to let you know that since 1999 I already experienced 5 Filipino webhosts. But among these 5 webhosts, only 2 of them are considered by me as better webhost in terms of Support and Uptimes. And they are currently my webhosts that are hosting my current blogs and websites: Ploghost.Com and Nokiahost.Com.

What about the other 3 webhosts?

Well, those 3 other webhosts were good only when my site receive few visitors a day (100 unique visitors or lower). But when the traffic increased to more than 500 visitors a day, my site went down and I received a notice from the webhost that my site was suspended due to the violation on the webhost’s terms and condition that my site experienced. And the worst thing is: they simply abandoned me… I couldn’t reach them in phone, in email and even their offices were closed.

Need a Dedicated Server�

I understand that time will come that I will really need to upgrade my webhosting account from shared to dedicated. Remember that one of my dreams is to own a site that will cater a million visitors a day. And I am always working hard to reach that dream.

Just like what I said, this blog has more or less 2,000 visitors a day already. I am still too far from my dream but I know, I will successfully reach that dream.

And I understand also that to minimize the downtimes due to the limitation set by the webhost to all accounts under the shared hosting, I must upgrade my account to dedicated one.

But the problem is, dedicated server is too much expensive. It’s true that I am earning an average (rough estimate) of $500 per month but it is my earning in all of my blogs including those that are hosted by other webhost. And besides, an earning of $500 a month is still the gross income.

Actually, it’s my current problem too.

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Anyway, I am very much thankful to the Ploghost.Com support personnel for informing me about it and for giving me hint on how to deal with this.

Now in order to minimize the losses, I decided to take down some of the Wordpress plugins installed:

1. Ad Rotator.� I use this plugin to run the free banner advertisement program of this blog. The banners supposed to be showed at the header of this blog.
2. Better Comment Manager. This is the plugin that helps me manage the comments posted on this blog.
3. Comment Relish. It allows me to send a short message to first time commentator.
4. Email Users. It gives me the opportunity to send important announcement and invitation in the form of email to all registered members of this blog.
5. Filosofo Enroll Comments. I use this plugin to automatically enroll commentators as comment subscribers on the post they commented.
6. Show Top Commentator. It is used to show the top commentator at the sidebar of our blog.
7. WP Digg Style Paginator. This is the one responsible in paginating our blog.

Well. After disabling these plugins, this blog runs better again.

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The Webhosts

As we all know, there are two types of webhosts that exist today:

1. Reseller Webhost are webhosts that sell webhosting solutions of other webhost. They are selling their own webhosting brand but are actually using the facilities of the real webhost.
2. Real Webhost are webhosts who really sell webhosting solutions through their own facilities. The term “Real Webhost” is my own term that refers to the webhosting company that sells webhosting solution through their own facilities.

And I also categorized these webhosts into two (2)

1. Webhosts with poor webhosting management.
2. Webhosts with excellent webhosting management.

And to understand these webhosts, let’s consider the comment of Derek (view the comment here):

sel,

my site is down and my hosting company said that my domain shouldn�t be placed under shared webhosting. I explained to them that the traffic generated by my post regarding pacquiao is unexpected and told them that I don�t think that the same amount of traffic will happen in the next few days. Can you give me some advise on this? thanks

What Derek really means is that the Webhosting company that hosts his blog suspended and terminated his account due to the violation on the hosting TOS. Consider the email sent to him by his host:

Good Day,

I regret to inform, that we can no longer continue sponsoring your account due to the following violations.

1.) Bandwidth usage = Suspension (Confirmed)- Your account had excessive bandwidth usage that peaked several gb�s early this morning (10/07/07).

2.) Resource usage = Termination (Confirmed) – as per section 2-4 of PagePH TOS, �To maintain the integrity of our service, traffic/usage limitations apply but is not limited to the following. 1) Sites with immense graphic archives or galleries (in GB�s). 2) Sites offering immense download archives, such as .zip, .tar, .ra and .GZ (in GB�s). 3) Sites running large chat room gatherings. 4) Sites using more than 20% of system resources.�. That said, yuwoncedric.com used more than 80% of CPU resources of the whole nod; have caused instability to all of the accounts on the server.

Our manila server uses dual Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU, yet your account used nearly all available resources. This clearly indicates that your account is not suitable for a shared hosting environment, you will need to have a dedicated server to accommodate a domain with such amount of traffic.

To let you know, almost all webhosts in the Philippines have similar TOS with that of Derek’s webhost. Just like my webhost, the Ploghost.com of Yuga, webhosting companies impose this rules to protect their business and their clients.

Webhosting Solution Terms

It is true that high traffic blog, such as this blog, is not really good to be hosted in shared webhosting account because other sites and blogs hosted by that server will be affected. Once the server became down caused by the surge of traffic of your blog, other blogs and websites served by that server will be down too. That’s the reason why other low-traffic blogs sometimes went down. But this problem is not actually caused by poor-quality server but of a site that experience the surge of traffic which caused the downtime of the server.

To understand it, let’s consider the example situation below:

Let’s say for example you have a server that hosts 100 blogs. The 99 blogs are low-traffic blogs and 1 blog is a very high-traffic blog. When this high-traffic blog receives a tremendous traffic and eats up server’s memory and other resources, the server will be slowed down, and worst will be downed. Since the server is already down, then the other 99 low-traffic blogs will be downed too.

So, to avoid this problem, webhosts issue a rule that blogs or sites should not exceed the 80% usage of server resources. Those webhosts that have better webhosting management automatically suspend a blog or site that exceeds the 80% usage of server resources to avoid any server’s downtime.

Better Webhosting Management

I think, you now understand why I decided to rather stay with the Ploghost Webhosting Solutions rather than looking for a webhost that offers higher bandwidth limit. Ploghost is really better than the other hosts I’ve known because of reasons such as:

1. Ploghost has better webhosting management. They automatically suspend a site that eats up more than 80% server’s resources but send the blogs or sites automatically after several minutes. This is the reason why my blog is sometimes down. The downtime is not actually caused by server’s poor quality but because of the huge traffic that flock my blog.
2. Ploghost offers ladderized webhosting packages. Once your blog eats up more bandwidth, you can immediately upgrade your webhosting account to the higher level of package. And if your blog really needs to be hosted through a dedicated server, Ploghost offers this too.
3. Ploghost is owned by a popular and celebrity blogger. He understands what we feel as bloggers because he’s a blogger too.

The Lesson

With this, I think, you already know and understand why webhosts sometimes send your blog offline. However, the lesson that I want you to learn is on how to choose a better webhost.

For now, just digest the ideas I wrote on this post. However, one of these days, I will be posting more tips on how to choose the right webhost for your blog.

consider reading my posts:

What Makes A Webhost Better than the Other?, Best Webhost For Your Best Blogs, and Reason Why My Hosting Account Eats Too Much Bandwidth.

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