Now Hosted on A VPS

Posted by Allen
March 13, 2007

5 days after paying $500 for my new VPS from Media Temple, I finally get my sites up and working on their server. The damage done to me by the recent downtime is significant and not everything is working perfectly so far; the funny thing is - I may be moving again in less than a week! why?

- Media Temple’s primary support method is a US toll-free phone number, the number is not toll free for international callers.

- Somehow, this very important piece of information is not mentioned anywhere on their site.

- Why is this information important? here’s an email I received from their sales department after complaining about slow responsiveness for my submitted support tickets:

If you are having an issue that requires immediate assistance, please call our technical support at 310-841-5500. Please note that our primary method of communication is by telephone. The email system turn-around time is normally 24-48 hours.

This basically means that if you’re not from the US, you’re either spending extra $500/year for international calls, waiting 4 days for technical support via email or fixing your (and their) problems on your own.

Things aren’t looking so promising for me, neither the earnings or the traffic rates this month, and moving one more time can be another serious hit. Nevertheless - I will try my best to maintain the content quality that has been seen here ever since the launch of this blog.

AlleNation hasn’t updated for the last 5 days, that’s a new negative record since I started marketing and promoting this blog, I expected my traffic and RSS subscription rate to drop, and while the first did, my RSS count actually jumped..tells you something about a loyal readership base!

Thank you.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Information and Links

Join the fray by commenting, tracking what others have to say, or linking to it from your blog.

Information: March 13th, 2007; 13 Responses

Feeds and Links: Get the Feed; From This Author; Del.icio.us; Digg; Technorati

Categories: AlleNation

Other Posts: My Best Earner; I Hate Dreamhost

Reader Comments

Comment Number:: 1
Written by:: Gary Jones
Posted on:: March 13, 2007 at 3:46 am

I am curious why a VPS?

Your making $1500 a month from your sites and want to spend less then 3% of your revenue on the vehicle that makes them all work?

Comment Number:: 2
Written by:: Gregg
Posted on:: March 13, 2007 at 6:36 am

Hope you get things figured out Allen Best of luck to you

Comment Number:: 3
Written by:: Jacob
Posted on:: March 13, 2007 at 7:48 am

What I want to know is why you would spend $500.00 on a VPS when you can get a dedicated for $200-$300? Gary Jones is right, though. Why spend so little of your revenue on the most important part of your network?

Comment Number:: 4
Written by:: Allen
Posted on:: March 13, 2007 at 11:11 pm

& Gary: I have no problem with getting a dedicated server, and I’ve checked with Media Temple that migrating to a dedicated plan wouldn’t be complicated. Right now a VPS is more than enough for my needs, hopefully I will need a dedicated server soon :).

@Jacob: Where can you get a dedicated server for $300/year?

Cheers,
Allen

Comment Number:: 5
Written by:: Gregg
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 1:45 am

I think Jacob thought 500 a month. I don’t think you can find a dedicated for 300 year, if you could that business would be losing so much money aha

Comment Number:: 6
Written by:: Yaro
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 2:31 am

Hi Allen,

I just made the switch to media temple too. I didn’t know about the phone number issue, which is a little different.

I suggest if you don’t do so already get yourself a skype out account. I use it all the time to call the USA and Canada and it costs about 3c a minute, so a short say 10 min support call to media temple now and them will only cost you 30cents. I can’t see the cost getting to more than $10 a year at most.

And yes, if you can show me a $500 a year dedicated server with a history of reliability I want in too!

Yaro

Comment Number:: 7
Written by:: John
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 5:58 am

I don’t understand? How are you making money off this blog? Are where is all this high quality content you speak of? I see a random post from you every five days..and 50% of it is a joke.

Comment Number:: 8
Written by:: John
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 8:21 am

(Different John than the one above.)

I use 1and1 (shared server I think). So has anyone had bad luck with them? Just curious. They seemed like the best deal to me, but mediatemple seems reasonable too. Should I worry about anything? I think most website could probably be run from wordpress.com for free right?

Another question, have you upgraded to 2.1.2 yet Allen?

Comment Number:: 9
Written by:: broc
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 4:07 pm

im using bluefur atm and highly recommend it dude
i was up and running the day i decided to host with them
and have emailed them with problems at all times of the day and night and weekend (my blog has been very buggy lol) and they have always responded in a timely manner

Comment Number:: 10
Written by:: John
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 7:03 pm

Bluefur seems really expensive to me Could they be a reseller?

Comment Number:: 11
Written by:: oscarsito
Posted on:: March 14, 2007 at 10:22 pm

Well, it all depends if you will need all the support. IF they’re good and you know what you’re doing you would only need to contact them maybe once or twice per month at most.

I’ve had HostGator, 1and1 and Banana Hosting on couple of websites. HostGator is arguably the best when thinking of professional service. Banana comes good at second with fast responses and little to none downtime.

But I’ve had terrible experiences with 1and1, wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Comment Number:: 12
Written by:: Allen
Posted on:: March 15, 2007 at 12:06 am

Yaro: Thanks very much for your suggestion, this may be the solution for my dilemma, thank you!

As for 1and1, I never heard much about them so I wouldn’t know.

Cheers,
Allen

Comment Number:: 13
Written by:: collis
Posted on:: March 18, 2007 at 6:22 am

I’ve used MediaTemple for a couple of years for various projects and their support isn’t too bad, they get back to you usually within an hour or two by email, sometimes less when you have an active support ticket going.

They’re good for what they do, if you are good at setting up your own server I also use SliceHost.com now (because i have a dev to set these things up or else I’d be lost!)

In any case glad you resolved your dreamhost issues, I fell victim to DH last week too!