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Web Host Uptime - What It Really Means

June 8th, 2008Domains & Web Hosting No Comments

Most of the time your Web Host’s uptime is not an issue. Weeks, even months go by without a glitch. But then there comes that dreaded time when your site is down. It happens to everyone. Most of the time they don’t even know.

Web hosting companies do a lot of maintenance at night. Traffic is lower then, and less users are affected when they shut down a server. Of course, if your business is worldwide, you are going to lose some traffic.

Your web host probably has a guarantee for uptime. It is basically meaningless, as most outages are brief and are almost impossible to notice. Even the services that monitor your site for uptime generally only check every fifteen minutes.

To get an idea of what real world uptime is, you can visit a site like realmetrics. They check every 30 seconds. That’s good. The problem is that they cover a limited number of web hosting providers.

You’ll notice that they give code letters to certain web hosts. I assume these are hosting companies who don’t cooperate with them in some way or another, but they at least continue to provide the info.

I’ve been following this site for over a year and thus have info on these coded companies before they passed into the land of the unidentified. I review this info at my Bizaddy.com site.

But there is a problem. You will notice that HostGator is still very highly rated at Real Metrics. The problem with this is that many Hostgator users experienced outages the weekend of June 1 due to a server room fire at ThePlanet, a server center in the Dallas TX area. I know I was a victim of this, with some of my sites down over 24 hours.

Real Metrics’ Hostgator site, the one they monitor, must be on a different server cluster at some other location, because the Hostgator uptime still shows 100% at Real Metrics. And this is the problem with comparing just these numbers to select a host.

So what’s the real way to find out about actual uptime?

I do a very crude monitoring of my sites this way:

At present I use three different web hosts and have WordPress blogs at all of them. In most cases I have static sites at the same web hosts.
I set up the blog feeds in my Netvibes home page. this also helps get the blogs indexed right away.
If the feed isn’t responding then I know all the sites, even the non WP ones, are most likely down at that host.

The other part of this is that I always use at least three different web hosting companies and have never had more than one down at the same time. My hosts are geographically diverse (their servers, not their office) and my sites are spread out among the three. So some portion of my sites are always up even if one host is down.

If you have only one website, always have an up to date backup ready to go. And NEVER buy your domain name from your web hosting company. Using GoDaddy, or preferably NameCheap, keeps you in control of the DNS settings for your website should you need to move to a new web host in a hurry.

Web host downtime shouldn’t happen often, but it does happen, and it WILL happen to you, sooner or later. Be prepared, have a plan, and most of all, make sure you backup your sites up on at least a weekly basis. That way, when your web host’s uptime turns into downtime it becomes a task, not a crisis.
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Hostgator Alternatives

July 21st, 2007Domains & Web Hosting No Comments

HostGator web site hosting gets a lot of plugs from Internet Marketers. They have a reseller program, they take monthly payments, they’re not too bad when it comes to features and services.

But is HostGator really the best solution for you?

At my Bizaddy site, I review web hosting companies, based on some simple criteria:

uptime
page load speed
support response time
consistency of the above three items
company viability

I’ve found a couple of web hosting companies that I think are superior choices to Hostgator. In spite of this, when you go to Bizaddy.com, you might be surprised though to see that Hostgator is still one of the recommended hosts there.

There are three reasons why HostGator rates there:

They allow adult sites if that is your thing.
Reseller WHM/Cpanel plans are offered.
They bill monthly.

So if even one of those three reasons fits you, HostGator still may be the way to go. But take a look at two of Bizaddy’s top rated hosts, HostiCan and Ipower.

Hostican is month after month the top rated web host at Bizaddy, no one else even comes close. IPOWER rates as the best affordable web hosting I’ve found. Either one might be a good HostGator web site hosting alternative.

Web Hosting Review Site

February 2nd, 2007Domains & Web Hosting No Comments

I’ve been looking for a decent web hosting review site for a while. Not being able to find one that wasn’t simple and clear, I decided to convert a dormant domain reseller site into a web hosting review site.

Here’s the email I sent to Marketing No Brainers subscribers -

When it comes to making more money online, nothing can suck up your time more than dealing with web site issues.

When it comes to this web hosting topic, I’ve been around the block a few times. I’ve learned what to look for in a good web host, and what is really important if you’re wanting your web sites available 24/7. You do want your customers to be able to spend their money with you 24/7, right?

Mostly it is just common sense, but I see people promoting web hosting review sites for all the wrong reasons.

I won’t name any names, but some of the biggest web site providrs are not necessarily the best. And some of the affiliate marketer’s favorites are based more on the income they’ll get from a sale rather than how good the hosting company really is.

To help clear up all this confusion, I morphed my Bizaddy.com site from being a domain name reseller to an affiliate review site. You can click here to go to your common sense guide to web hosting and domain name registration.

If you see a host recommended there, you can be sure it’s passed the crucial tests I think are critical.

uptime
page load speed
support
reasonable price

Bizaddy exists to help people find full-featured web site hosting at a fair price.

In the spirit of our February “saving and making more money” theme, I thought you’d be interested in this informational site on domain name registration and web site hosting. Having or choosing the wrong web host can eat up a lot of your time and cost you some money too.

What I Learned From a Server Crash

August 22nd, 2006Domains & Web Hosting No Comments

A visit from Murphy

Sunday evening I found out that five of my web sites weren’t working. After a quick try to fix the problems at the web host (ex web host now :-)), I realized that they weren’t going to be any help at all. They are in Germany. It was the middle of the night there. Two days later they still haven’t called me back.

Most of my sites I host on my own server at Bizaddy.com, but for the sake of security, having links to my own sites from different IPs, etc., I had maintained a hosting account at 1and1 for a few years. I have even recommended them to people in the not so recent past. And probably for most people they are ok.

The problem was that I was in the middle of a JV giveaway event. The site for that was one of the ones on 1and1, and was totally dead. I needed to get it up in a hurry. Also the site I use for tracking my affiliate links was kaput on the same host.

So I did the intelligent thing and put them back up on my own server.

I was able to get the tracking site back up in practically no time, but the JV giveaway site gave me fits with the dns resolving. It didn’t help that I was trying to figure this out in the middle of the night. Finally I just gave up and went to bed.

With a fresh mind the next day I was able to get it all sorted out, and of the five sites, only one is totally gone. It was a new site, not backed up yet. I think I have most of the content saved here and there but I’m not sure where.

I learned (re-learned?) three things from this.

1. Customer support is more important than price.
2. Back up your sites, even your brand new ones.
3. Be your own customer, always.

Backing up your sites is elementary. Just do it as soon as you put a site up.

You’d think customer support wouldn’t be an issue with your own server. But it is. One of the reasons my Bizaddy site is such a no-brainer is that I get customer support 24-7, just as any customer does. Sometimes I need it just as much as a newbie. Or more!

Oh and I realize not all of you know Murphy, that guy who said, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” So be prepared.
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