Plan B Options?

[lgpiper]

Hi All,

When we switched to the new TxD2, I went with a plan B that had me migrate one of my domains to DreamHost. The end of the year at DH is about up, and I wasn't all that thrilled with DH, so I'm looking for a new plan B option. I'm thinking I might try Webfaction next. Anyone have other ideas? I know a lot of y'all love Gandhi, but it's too expensive for my permanently unemployed status. 

As for TxD2, I have no complaints. I moved my stuff myself and it's all worked for me with only one small hiccup when we were moved away from Joyent to Ubiquity hardware. That happened in the middle of the night, so didn't really affect me in any significant way. I'm planning on sticking with TxD2 until the bitter end, but I'm also a conservative kind of guy, and like to have back-up plans. Any ideas? 

[Walter Piovesan]

Having a plan B is what a prudent person would have.  I am in that camp. I had a Gandhi account, but i let expire. Their  CP et al was Bad! 

I would love to find an alternative that uses WebMin/VirtualMin or something similar. 

In the meantime I am happy with Textdrive, It's had its challenges but for me those lasted but a brief period: 48 hrs and another time  12hrs. Since then it's been all good. 

 

Interested in hearing of other providers with solid offerings. as i am a prudent person. 

Cheers you all.

[kerim]

I've been keeping a list on Pinboard:

https://pinboard.in/u:kerim/t:planb

I'm curious about your experience with Dreamhost. One of my sites is a 501(c)3 non profit and I see DH offers free accounts for nonprofits. (I think that means I can move all my sites there. They say that additional domains would require DNS fees, but I host my DNS offsite anyway.)

[lgpiper]

I haven't used DH much. I parked the site I made up for my students when I was teaching, and I stashed a WP site there while I was trying to learn theming from scratch (soooo much easier in TxP). Just transferring the WP site intact was an adventure. Then theming was another, but the latter is a WP problem, not a DH problem

I don't much like their web panel. I found it confusing and ponderously slow. I must have gotten spoiled by virtualmin ;-).

The server access is quite a bit more limited than I'm used to at TxD. There's no clear way to change settings on php.ini, or at least I couldn't find a way, so I couldn't install sexyFileManager, which would have been a problem were I still teaching (my school didn't provide html students with a way to post work on-line, so I gave them sFM accounts on one of my domains.). 

Overall, for simple hosting, DH is ok. The response times are a bit slower than TxD and there have been more failed pings (I'm using aboutMyX's watchdog service), but in general, DH has been reliable. I'll be shutting it down in a couple of weeks, however, so as to try something else (probably WebFaction). I'll keep anything that matters at TxD, but want to explore other options in case of emergencies and the like. 

[Jeremy Cherfas]

With the forum invaded by spammers I feel we really have reached the end of the road. 

Jeremy

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[lgpiper]

I don't think that's necessarily so. What happened was an update to the FluxBB software that had the unintended consequence of removing the sign-up gateway.  Such things happen all the time with software updates. That problem should get fixed soon enough.

I still think TxD has a good chance for success. Much of it works great. If Dean hadn't promised automagic migrations to the old Free BSD crowd, there would be very few problems or complaints. 

Still and all, it's good to have a back-up option, and that's the point of this thread. What else are y'all testing out? I tried DreamHost for a year and now want to try someone else's offering. At the moment, I'm thinking WebFaction. But, suggestions for other options are welcome (Ghandi is too expensive for my unemployed status). 

[Walter Piovesan]

I would be happy to hear how the WebFaction evaluation goes . i have briefly looked at Gandi and it's overly complicated or "busy" for my liking. I favour robust minimal interfaces to services. 

I agree with the observations about auto-migrations. Although mine went rather well I wish that I had chosen  for the tabula rasa option. I think that this option woulkd have been smoother. 

For me TxD is working perfectly at the moment. And I think they have a good chance at becoming a successful Hosting Environment 

I think TxD has gone the extra distance with the old BSD servers.... it would have been perfectly understandable had they left those servers just die. 

[Walter Piovesan]

just heard of this service. it's just about to ramp up:

ArcustechUSA

New virtual server solutions from the creators of EngineHosting. Coming Summer 2013 Managed Virtual Servers | 100% SSD/FusionIO Based Storage
Minneapolis, MN · arcustech.com

On Wednesday, 4 September 2013 08:01:13 UTC-7, lgpiper wrote:

[lgpiper]

I don't understand why Chrome isn't letting me reply under a specific post. Whatever...

I found a 50% off coupon for a year of WebFaction [http://slickdeals.net/f/5989592-webfaction-hosting-50-off-1yr-65-off-3yrs]

Even though the coupon is from April or before, it's still good. 

So, I'm with WebFaction as my plan B and so far I'm having an absolute hell of a time migrating a WordPress installation. I'm not sure that's WebFaction's fault. I had a hell of a time moving that same installation from TxD over to DH. In short. WordPress is overly complex, and should probably be eschewed in favor of TextPattern. The problem, of course, is that everyone has different naming conventions for their DataBases and just exporting and importing never works until you've gone through endless fiddling with editing config files on the server (thank God for ExpanDrive), rearranging things in the actual DB itself, changing passwords in multiple places, saying lots of naughty words, and so forth. 

Overall, I can't say much about webFaction yet. I got spoiled by the more rational approach to setting up servers and so forth under TxD. WebFaction requires silly names for things and has rules for naming that they don't tell you. Even so, I'm finding the interface a bit more sensible than the one at DH. Believe it or not, I miss virtualmin over there. With luck, 95% of my stuff can stay put. 

[lgpiper]

So, moving to WebFaction went ok. I was surprised to find that they are a "foreign" entity, even though they bill in U.S. dollars. So my credit card had a foreign transaction fee tacked on. Who knew? 

As for the service, the WatchDog status updates indicate similar response times and reliability to DreamHost and TxD. At the moment, at least, I'm getting less spam through my one email address than I got on DH. I don't know why DH went crazy over that one particular alias, but it did. Weird. 

[gtcaz]

I've got a Digital Ocean "Droplet" set up for a client and it seems to be working quite well. It's a VPS, so I'll have to keep the updates going, but for a stock Ubuntu LAMP stack, that's not too hard. 

I still have quite a few legacy systems on TxD2, and they seem to be chugging along. Stats show response times as good as Joyent hardware. My real sense of uneasiness stems from the lack of communication, apparent business plan, and updates.

[Walter Piovesan]

what kind of updates should we have seen by now?

[Joel Dueck]

gtcaz, I have a DigitalOcean VPS as well. Re updates, you can set up automatic security updates using the instructions here: http://plusbryan.com/my-first-5-minutes-on-a-server-or-essential-security-for-linux-servers

Running a jpcached Textpattern site on Apache using an apache config appropriately dialed-down for a 512MB VPS, I ran a simulation of 1,000 hits with a max 100 concurrent from another server. Memory usage maxed out at 250MB, but server load climbed right up to 3.1, which is ruther high for a single-core VPS. Hits were served anywhere from 1.3 to 2.1 seconds.

Of course the next step would be to replace apache with nginx, at which point I could probably handle getting fireballed without breaking a sweat. All for $5/month.

I have had zero issues with my TxD2 account, but there really is no point in waiting for business stability indicators to improve at this point. We should help each other find exit strategies, and not necessarily to one particular host. The experience of the past couple years should teach us to be skeptical of the sustainability of efforts spearheaded by any one individual, as well as not to be cheap misers looking for special treatment that will inevitably expire. 

If we form a monolithic cooperative, someone will have to run it, handle finances, servers, etc. I just don't see that kind of arrangement lasting.

I'd much rather see us just continue to help each other out, each of us using (and paying for) whatever service matches our needs, and migrating from place to place as new platforms emerge and old ones sink.

[grassl...@googlemail.com]

I recommend http://iwstack.com/ - a cloud service from Prometeus. I think you would struggle to find a better offer (let me know if you can!)

[lgpiper]

Well, now that I seem to be forced into moving to WebFaction, I'm liking it less and less. The file structure makes no sense, I've yet to figure out how to install basic php utilities like sexyFileManager, and one can't do a bulk creation of email aliases unless one knows how to write a complex python script that calls the system API. At least that's my impression from a quick perusal of their forum. Hell, even DreamHost would let me do bulk aliases. I could teach myself to write the script, but that would take longer than creating some 30 aliases one . a . time, and we've got too many medical visits going on for concentrated efforts. WTF? 

[Walter Piovesan]

It took me a awhile to get used to the WebFaction way of doing things. But once i got used to it it was dead easy to transfer my five sites over to WF.

Mail. Is a bit tricky. first you need to create a Mailbox and then an email address to use that Mailbox... or 20 emails to use the same mailbox.

As for aliases not sure.

their FAQ states: 

While mailboxes generally correspond to one person, email addresses can point to, or target many mailboxes. In other words, email addresses can be thought of as aliases for mailboxes.

As for PHP i think you can add them anywhere in your web apps dir:

http://docs.webfaction.com/user-guide/websites.html#applications

Their forums are good for getting help fro mothers or fro support. I'd be curious to hear what they have to say about the PHP issue.

By the way I don't think you have to use sexy f m with WF you can create and jail users.

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/4334/give-user-ftp-access-to-webapps-directory

so far ( 3 months)  it has been a rock solid service for me  

I may give DigitalOcean a try also  if i loose total access to TxD. For now WGF is perfect for my needs.

[Walter Piovesan]

ps found this. not sure if it applies to your case:

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/13198/migrating-emails-mailbox-name

[Walter Piovesan]

pps. can't you just load your SFM to your home directory?  each site is under the webapps dir:

home/user/webapps/mysite
I'll give SfM a go and report back.

[Walter Piovesan]

installed and runs but there is this error:

Warning: include_once(): Failed opening '/home/me/webapps/bicilogic/util/sysMain.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/share/pear54') in /home/me/webapps/bicilogic/user/index.php on line78

not sure how to debug 

[lgpiper]

Yeah, I installed it and got some similar error. Then I started doing debugs. Then we got other domestic problems that take up most of my time. Eventually, things will settle down and I'll get back to it.

[lgpiper]

Yeah, I got the email figured out, finally. An alias is just an email address, that goes into the same mail box, i.e. l...@dogsr.us, what...@dogsr.us, l...@dogsr.us, and so forth all go to the dogsRus mail box. Something like that.

I'm not worried about making php work per se. It's just that I'm used to having web sites served from a public/ folder that resides under web/ . So sometimes we stash things in web/ and refer to them in public/ via a ./ thingie somewhere. But others can't access the stuff in web/ That's where I need to do a work around. But first I've got to create dozens of email addresses and back up stuff and so forth. 

[Walter Piovesan]

It seems that the webapps folder takes the place of /public. but without the one directory that is useful for putting things that shouldn't be in public/ but is more secure in web/  like some admin login stuff that would be better and safer being in web/ 

I am not sure what the solution would be although i think there should be one. 

[Walter Piovesan]

this is the webfaction way: 

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/10531/wordpress-installation-moving-configphp-up-one-dir

I may try that trick with one of my EE installs.

[lgpiper]

I'll have to check that out...perhaps after grocery shopping and napping. In other news, I've moved most of my important email accounts off TxD. Unfortunately, it was only the unimportant ones that I backed up just a few days ago. TxD email has been dead to me since Tuesday night. WTF? 

[Walter Piovesan]

At the moment I only have 4 play sites up on TxD. Plus ALL my sites are stil there, but DNS pointing to WebFaction,  in case something miraculous happens and Mr Sanity returns to the TxD universe and i can resume to using TextDrive.  But I think that is now a long faint possibility. 

It would have been much simpler and pleasant  to have received a message to:  "Buzz off you little prick" ,  than to have this non-sitution that is now TxD. 

luckily i am heading into retirement and am scaling all this internet stuff down. 

On Thursday, 13 February 2014 12:49:14 UTC-8, lgpiper wrote:

[lgpiper]

Well, I got all the email accounts moved to WebFaction and the static web sites. The php-contact pages for the static sites all worked out of the box. That is I didn't have to do any fiddling. I've now moved over a TextPattern site as well, and that was easy enough. I moved a WP site over there back in the fall. So, it looks like I'll be webFaction for a while. I'm not sure I'd go back to TxD even if it did become functional again, unless "someone" came up with a very good reason that things will be different the next time around, i.e. "I was in an insane asylum and couldn't break out/be cured for the past 9 months. But now we've got some meds that are working great". Something to that effect. 

On Friday, February 14, 2014 7:53:55 PM UTC-5, Walter Piovesan wrote:

At the moment I only have 4 play sites up on TxD. Plus ALL my sites are stil there, but DNS pointing to WebFaction,  in case something miraculous happens and Mr Sanity returns to the TxD universe and i can resume to using TextDrive.  But I think that is now a long faint possibility. 

It would have been much simpler and pleasant  to have received a message to:  "Buzz off you little prick" ,  than to have this non-sitution that is now TxD. 

luckily i am heading into retirement and am scaling all this internet stuff down. 

On Thursday, 13 February 2014 12:49:14 UTC-8, lgpiper wrote:

[Walter Piovesan]

jailing secondary users is rather easy with this scrip mentioned in this post:

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/10613/grant-permissions-to-extrasecondary-users

Used the one that is in the Background Colour Purple. 

But i stil think that SFM would be a better solution.

On Thursday, 13 February 2014 16:47:17 UTC-8, Walter Piovesan wrote:

[Mark James Adams]

I was comfortable with the SmartMachine environment so I got a 256MB one from Joyent. That size isn't advertised on the main pricing page but if you log in you can see it. It's priced by the hour and comes out to about $5/month. It does take a few command line procedures and mucking around in Apache config files, but they have some handy custom scripts for creating domains and what not. I'm hosting 1 textpattern blog and 2 static sites there. My only complaint about it is the upload speed is horrendous, but the sites all load fine

I moved domain email over to a family plan on Fastmail with the smallest quotas since all email gets forwarded to Gmail and other personal accounts. 

I had one custom app made for running a photographer's portfolio, made with Camping/Sinatra but it was stuck on Ruby 1.8.x and I didn't have time to rewrite it for more recent versions. I moved it over to Squarespace, which works great. 

Very sad to see TextDrive go. I still remember first discovering them and deciding between TxD and Dreamhost and whoever else the players were then. What one me over was the forum :)

- Mark (madams)

[lgpiper]

Well, in case anyone is still paying attention, it turns out that my "year" at WebFaction was only 10 1/2 months. They have some weird billing scheme it seems. I never did figure out how to make @ngungo's little apps work over there, but then I've not had much free time (In theory we'll all be back to normal by Labor Day). I'll probably move a bunch of stuff to Kaizen Garden soon, and look elsewhere for a plan B in case KzG runs into unsolvable issues. Part of my planB might be learning enough sysAdmin to work with Joyent, but I'm not sure I can easily get reliable email working over there. 

[Walter Piovesan]

Hi all. Yes I also noticed that my Annual plan seems to be up for renewal after 10 months. So i filed a ticket to see what their rational is for renewing after 10 months. ( I'll post what i find out) 

I will be renewing for another year. I am very happy with their service, and besides many of my clients do not want to go through email hell again after i had to migrate them away from TextDrive 2.0 . Everyone is happy with the email support and the webmail interface.

I find the performance to be excellent and i am able to have as many website domains as my quota supports. So far wit h20 website i have never hit any where near my monthly / annual quota. I have had no down times, worth noting. my Pingdom reports are a pleasure to read. It's been pretty well worry free for me. Support is excellent and the forums provide some good knowledge as well. But the Forum is a weak spot with Webfaction as there doesn't seem to be that many folks on them... but for me the answers do get answered in a good timely manner. 

I found out how to have users "jailed" to their own account. It wasn't easy but once i was given the various commands it's pretty starightforward. I needed this as i have a couple of friends wanting to host their domains with me... small sites that i am glad to provide to them for free.

I had thought of moving some sites over to Kaizen Garden, but as it turns out i am no longer that interested nor inclined to want to spend time with hosting sites. I have scaled back to doing only Textpattern sites and WebFaction provides a worry free hosting environment. All my scripts are running beautifully: i have scripts to monthly backup my DBs and to monthly rysnc ( backup) domain directories to Strongspace. But i may try a hobby site on KzG after i retire at the end of the year. My Plan B has become my Plan A.

[Walter Piovesan]

Hi All - here is an update to my post. I just received clarification regarding Renewal Dates for Annual Subscriptions:

"There was an error in the processing, and you did not receive your discount.  I have added a $12.00 credit for the discount, and you are now paid until Sept as you expected.

Regards,
WebFaction Support "

 cheers

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/wp/hastings/

[lgpiper]

Yeah, WebFaction contacted me as well to say they'd messed up their billing and have added back the missing one and a half months. I'm tempted to move just to see what else is out there, but then, moving other people's email accounts annoys the crap out of them. For some weird reason, they are not amused by an annual move.

I did have a few service issues with WF recently. My email timed out a number of times for a few days just after Bastille Day. Things seem ok again now. 

 I am slowly moving a few things to Kaizen Garden, but will likely have a few things remain with WebFaction for a while still. 

[Walter Piovesan]

"For some weird reason, they are not amused by an annual move”   — that made me laugh out load!

While no one has reported any issues with their email i am curious what you mean by “email timed out”  …. was it that it would not fetch email or you were unable to send? 

Just checked and my account is now  up-to-date with additional funds that sees me through to end of September as i expected. 

My workflow is now so painless with WF that i can;t see me moving to another service anytime soon. After i retire in a few months I may have a hobby site to move to KzG. We’ll see…  

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[lgpiper]

I was sending some illegal e-books to Amazon so they'd put them on to my kindle. There was a kind of spinning beach ball effect when I clicked "send" (whatever the Windoz equivalent of the spinning beach ball is). I got some mail.mydomain timed out messages, which in retrospect was related to things not showing up in the "sent messages" folder. It seems that messages themselves were eventually sent because later on Amazon alerted me later on that I had some new ebooks to download.

[Walter Piovesan]

Yeah that sounds weird. not sure if its related to anything specific  

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