I am really sorry for not participating much lately, but for about the last month I have been in Web Hosting Hell.
The web hosting company I was with went out of business and a larger more stable company bought them and have started transitioning accounts to the new servers.
My transition took place on May 6th and since then I have been in hosting hell.
My website is written in ASP 3.0. Which works just fine on Windows server machines. I have had my site in ASP since its onset in 2002 and have spent countless hours refining it and learning the ins and outs of ASP.
Then two years ago I started my wordpress blog that I hosted directly on my site with a custom wordpress download I modified the wp theme to match the look of my website. This took a ton of time as well and learning the basic stuff of PHP and CSS to make the necessary changes.
My original web host had a very hard time running both ASP and the WP blog. So I moved it about two years ago to the host that just went out of business. But they had no trouble at all hosting both on their servers.
Now the new bigger host is having nothing but trouble keeping both the ASP site and the WP blog running.
They run Windows servers and a novel CGI pooling cluster that has multi-level redundency so that if one server gets overloaded or goes down any of the other servers pick up the load and keeps going.
However the problem they tell me is that with this pooled cluster, they have to treat each account as a single domain rather than a URL as a single domain. What this caused was that in my ASP site, all include file calls had to have absolute paths that reflected the the parent folder rather than the root www folder. This caused my ASP site to go down first which took me about four days to figure it out. At the same time the blog was not coming up at all but I would get a CGI error that the application could not return a complete http header.
This has taken the brunt of my time working with the tech suppport on this. And it turns out that the way they have the servers configured they are having translation issues between ASP and PHP and this is preventing the blog from loading.
I also have a second domain that I was going to be developing using just a WP blog. I am hosting that domain with them as well.
So I had them move the blog to a folder under the second domain and it worked for a few days and then suddenly started to return the CGI error. I had hoped that the files being under a different domain they would be called differently, but because the second site is under the same account, it is considered as the same domain under their architecture.
So they suggested that if I keep both blogs under the newer domain they could move them to one of their UNIX servers and run them there since they will only be PHP and the Apache server handles PHP much better than IIS which is the windows server.
This will force me having to handle 2 separate accounts and possibly two copies of some of my image files since the WP blog for my photo site calls photos from the images directory of that site. With the WP blog on the Apache server it will need those files there as well to upload them in the current blog posts.
I don't know if any of your folks are more experienced in web design but I have the following questions.
1. Should I dash this company and try to find another that can handle my ASP and WordPress site as it is? (The reason I have not just done this is that the current host offers the best hosting plan and features for the cost they charge that I can find. In addition, the new company boasts Green Web Hosting by purchasing Wind Energy credits, which is appealing to me that I can boast my site is 100% green hosted.)
2. Should I consider rewriting my ASP site in PHP and forget about Windows hosting altogether and just stick with Apache? (This I know will take me time to learn the ins and outs of PHP and then translate and test all my pages, a task I am not looking forward to)
3. And finally for those of you who have your own website, are you running on a Windows server or an Apache server? My site is database driven so currently I use MS Access as my database, which might need to change to MySQL for easier implementation with PHP.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to read this vent. And any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated.
I would much rather be on an Apache server and Linux/Unix than Windows, but I know ASP.NET and I don't know Java or PHP, so I went with a provider that uses Windows servers. I've been pretty happy with them. If you're looking to change hosts, check them out. http://www.3essentials.com
I had my own custom site for a while on a host which was rated highly. But I had all kinds of problems with performance mainly - slow loading pages. I eventually migrated things to Smugmug who now allows full customization of your look and feel. The big advantage is they manage the infrastructure and web framework under the hood. There are others ones which are taylored toward the professional photographers as well like photoshelter.
But if I were to continue with my own site it would definately be Linix/Unix, PHP, MySQL based as this has the most support industry wide and the best rates/packages available. I think ultimately you will run into these sames issues again and again with your current configuration. So its better to position your site for success both now and in the future with fundamental technologies which are considered more mainstream standards for all hosting companies. I would start with the ASP to PHP conversion. There are even open source PHP/mySQL frameworks designed for photo galleries such as Coppermine and Gallery2. Just looking at these open source projects could help you get your feet wet with the technologies used.
Since I do software for my day job I prefer taking the headache out and letting smugmug handle the majority of the stuff under the hood such as the DB, page flow, auto thumbnail generation, etc... And the cost is reasonable for the unlimited storage which also functions as my off site backup as well. Just to give you an idea of the flexibility take a look at these sites which are run on top of smugmug:
Really sorry to hear about your hosting troubles. It shouldn't be that much trouble. It's just suppose to work. :-)
I would agree that Windows servers and MS Access are not as widely used or available as hosting platforms. However, there are so many hosting companies and there are GOBS of options available for your setup. I know because I have exactly the same configuration; using an MS Access database using ASP. I personally did not write the database code (traded services) but over time I know how to port it, how to modify the code and how it works now.
I designed and coded my site myself with the exception of the database queries and my java based nav menu. I also know what a TIME CONSUMING task it is to write and/or rewrite code; let alone learn a new language and/or syntax.
Dan would know more than me, but I am guessing there are a lot of similarities between Access and MySQL, but the syntax and PHP coding and commands are sure to be different and there will be a learning curve. And it would be one thing to learn and start from scratch, than it would be to port and convert your current site. I suspect tons of troubleshooting. which EQUALS TIME.
Like I said there are tons of companies that can host your setup. The big question might be who can do it AND HOST WordPress. I'm using the advertising-bloated GoDaddy.com for hosting (domain registration as well.) and they do not offer hosted a hosted Wordpress account. So I'm just basically using the direct free Wordpress site. Many disadvantages of course. For starters you can't modify the CSS, so you're very limited as to how much you can modify.
I know you can find hosting companies that offer WordPress as an option, but that also raises the cost. For my basic GoDaddy account, it's a mere $5.62/month! (2 year payment.)
In the end, I personally would find a company that fits your needs, rather than spending the time and effort to fit your needs to a company.
Just some ramblings. I sure hope you get it figured out. Good luck Youssef!
I'm using MS SQL and not acess on my account. I'm just using Wordpress for my blog. I haven't had the time to try to host it myself.
3 Essentials also has Linux packages so they may be able to give you a Windows server that also runs PHP. I'd check out their website and send them an email if necessary.
Stinks to hear about your problems...sounds like a complete nightmare. If it were me personally, I'd ditch ASP and go for PHP so you can be consistent across the board (I'm also more personally biased towards linux and apache servers). Depending upon whether you have a database you might have to migrate it over to MySQL as well (if it isn't there already). If you went this route you might have to 301 redirect your current .asp url's as well (or, if you are on linux do a mod-rewrite so .asp's are parse by php). Php is a pretty basic language to learn, so it may not be that difficult to translate from asp.
Discussion
6 repliesThe web hosting company I was with went out of business and a larger more stable company bought them and have started transitioning accounts to the new servers.
My transition took place on May 6th and since then I have been in hosting hell.
My website is written in ASP 3.0. Which works just fine on Windows server machines. I have had my site in ASP since its onset in 2002 and have spent countless hours refining it and learning the ins and outs of ASP.
Then two years ago I started my wordpress blog that I hosted directly on my site with a custom wordpress download I modified the wp theme to match the look of my website. This took a ton of time as well and learning the basic stuff of PHP and CSS to make the necessary changes.
My original web host had a very hard time running both ASP and the WP blog. So I moved it about two years ago to the host that just went out of business. But they had no trouble at all hosting both on their servers.
Now the new bigger host is having nothing but trouble keeping both the ASP site and the WP blog running.
They run Windows servers and a novel CGI pooling cluster that has multi-level redundency so that if one server gets overloaded or goes down any of the other servers pick up the load and keeps going.
However the problem they tell me is that with this pooled cluster, they have to treat each account as a single domain rather than a URL as a single domain. What this caused was that in my ASP site, all include file calls had to have absolute paths that reflected the the parent folder rather than the root www folder. This caused my ASP site to go down first which took me about four days to figure it out. At the same time the blog was not coming up at all but I would get a CGI error that the application could not return a complete http header.
This has taken the brunt of my time working with the tech suppport on this. And it turns out that the way they have the servers configured they are having translation issues between ASP and PHP and this is preventing the blog from loading.
I also have a second domain that I was going to be developing using just a WP blog. I am hosting that domain with them as well.
So I had them move the blog to a folder under the second domain and it worked for a few days and then suddenly started to return the CGI error. I had hoped that the files being under a different domain they would be called differently, but because the second site is under the same account, it is considered as the same domain under their architecture.
So they suggested that if I keep both blogs under the newer domain they could move them to one of their UNIX servers and run them there since they will only be PHP and the Apache server handles PHP much better than IIS which is the windows server.
This will force me having to handle 2 separate accounts and possibly two copies of some of my image files since the WP blog for my photo site calls photos from the images directory of that site. With the WP blog on the Apache server it will need those files there as well to upload them in the current blog posts.
I don't know if any of your folks are more experienced in web design but I have the following questions.
1. Should I dash this company and try to find another that can handle my ASP and WordPress site as it is? (The reason I have not just done this is that the current host offers the best hosting plan and features for the cost they charge that I can find. In addition, the new company boasts Green Web Hosting by purchasing Wind Energy credits, which is appealing to me that I can boast my site is 100% green hosted.)
2. Should I consider rewriting my ASP site in PHP and forget about Windows hosting altogether and just stick with Apache? (This I know will take me time to learn the ins and outs of PHP and then translate and test all my pages, a task I am not looking forward to)
3. And finally for those of you who have your own website, are you running on a Windows server or an Apache server? My site is database driven so currently I use MS Access as my database, which might need to change to MySQL for easier implementation with PHP.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to read this vent. And any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated.
Youssef
- Dan.
But if I were to continue with my own site it would definately be Linix/Unix, PHP, MySQL based as this has the most support industry wide and the best rates/packages available. I think ultimately you will run into these sames issues again and again with your current configuration. So its better to position your site for success both now and in the future with fundamental technologies which are considered more mainstream standards for all hosting companies. I would start with the ASP to PHP conversion. There are even open source PHP/mySQL frameworks designed for photo galleries such as Coppermine and Gallery2. Just looking at these open source projects could help you get your feet wet with the technologies used.
Since I do software for my day job I prefer taking the headache out and letting smugmug handle the majority of the stuff under the hood such as the DB, page flow, auto thumbnail generation, etc... And the cost is reasonable for the unlimited storage which also functions as my off site backup as well. Just to give you an idea of the flexibility take a look at these sites which are run on top of smugmug:
http://infocusnyc.com/
http://www.athenacarey.com/
Derek
Is 3essentals hosting your wordpress blog as well or did you go with wordpress.com for that?
Really sorry to hear about your hosting troubles. It shouldn't be that much trouble. It's just suppose to work. :-)
I would agree that Windows servers and MS Access are not as widely used or available as hosting platforms. However, there are so many hosting companies and there are GOBS of options available for your setup. I know because I have exactly the same configuration; using an MS Access database using ASP. I personally did not write the database code (traded services) but over time I know how to port it, how to modify the code and how it works now.
I designed and coded my site myself with the exception of the database queries and my java based nav menu. I also know what a TIME CONSUMING task it is to write and/or rewrite code; let alone learn a new language and/or syntax.
Dan would know more than me, but I am guessing there are a lot of similarities between Access and MySQL, but the syntax and PHP coding and commands are sure to be different and there will be a learning curve. And it would be one thing to learn and start from scratch, than it would be to port and convert your current site. I suspect tons of troubleshooting. which EQUALS TIME.
Like I said there are tons of companies that can host your setup. The big question might be who can do it AND HOST WordPress. I'm using the advertising-bloated GoDaddy.com for hosting (domain registration as well.) and they do not offer hosted a hosted Wordpress account. So I'm just basically using the direct free Wordpress site. Many disadvantages of course. For starters you can't modify the CSS, so you're very limited as to how much you can modify.
I know you can find hosting companies that offer WordPress as an option, but that also raises the cost. For my basic GoDaddy account, it's a mere $5.62/month! (2 year payment.)
In the end, I personally would find a company that fits your needs, rather than spending the time and effort to fit your needs to a company.
Just some ramblings. I sure hope you get it figured out. Good luck Youssef!
Lon
3 Essentials also has Linux packages so they may be able to give you a Windows server that also runs PHP. I'd check out their website and send them an email if necessary.
- Dan.