Well, GoDaddy yelled at me. Apparently they don't like the fact that I'm hosting videos and downloads on my web site. Their "web site hosting" packages are for hosting WEB SITES only, and not for serving videos or downloads. I've been with them for 3 or 4 years now, and this is the first they've said anything. I didn't realize it was against their rules, since it was in a clause buried deep in their "terms of service" (you know, that thing that nobody ever reads) so I'm taking care of that issue now.
I've set up a temporary server over at Amazon S3. I'm in the process of moving everything over there. The Theater videos have all been transferred already, and seem to be working fine. If you find something that's NOT working, please let me know.
GoDaddy wants me to buy a dedicated server from them. Right now, I have a standard "shared" hosting account where my site runs on a server with their other customers. I am NOT a high-bandwidth site. Even though I do have a lot of videos online, I never have that many concurrent users. Nevertheless, I understand where GoDaddy is coming from. If I had an explosion of traffic overnight, it might impact their network. Amazon doesn't care because (1) they have a much larger network, and (2) they charge for storage size and bandwidth, whereas with GoDaddy it's an "all you can eat" plan.
I don't feel like I need a dedicated server for this site. It's just not that heavily trafficked, but we'll see. I'm still considering it. The speed and performance of the shared hosting from GoDaddy has been just fine - nice and fast. Quick page loads. Decent transfer times. I mostly just don't want to have the headache of configuring and maintaining my own web server again. I had my own box from the time I started 599CD (around 2002) until I was hacked by someone in China (and had Air Force Intelligence knocking on my door) sometime around 2009. At that point I figured I would have someone else deal with maintaining the server (and firewalls, and hackers) and I could focus on just RUNNING my site (building content).
I much prefer having someone ELSE deal with the security problems! So, I switched to 1and1.com. They were good for a little while, but I had routine outages, usually at very inconvenient times. My server alarm would go off at 3am at least once a week because the site was down (I get a text message if my site goes down for more than 30 seconds). By the time I got out of bed and logged in to see what the problem was, it would be back online. This was a pain in the behind, however. Your site shouldn't go down EVER. Add to that the fact that 1&1 were real draconian with their email/spam policy that it basically made their service useless. I couldn't use my domain to send out customer emails, notifications, sales, etc. If you got even a few spam complaints, they shut your email off. With over 40,000 customers, I generate at least a couple of spam complaints every time I send an email batch because many people find it's easier to click the SPAM button than to take a few moments to unsubscribe.
So I left them and moved over to GoDaddy 3 or 4 years ago. So far, everything has been fine. A few minor outages (they were hacked a year or two ago and the site was down for over a day, but aside from that they've been very good). Their customer service is top notch. Wait times are usually pretty short. I still get the occasional 3am ten-minute outage, but that's only happened 3 or 4 times since I've been with them. Not bad.
Now, however, they're making me move all of my videos and downloads to another server - which I understand. It's just an unexpected block of work in my already VERY busy schedule. So I just wanted to let all of you know that if you find anything on the site that doesn't work, please report it and let me know.
Thanks for letting me vent. :)
RR
12 years ago
