Lunarpages and jerked me around enough times that I'm considering other options. I won't go into too many details, but they recently moved me to a new server that was configured completely different and my forum ended up being down for 4 days. During that time, their support was non-existent. Now, they keep sending me emails that I'm exceeding my alloted CPU usage. They want me to upgrade.
Admittedly, I am using their lower end hosting, which I think I paid $100 for the year or something.
After the way I've been treated, I can't imagine spending another dime at Lunarpages. So I'm looking for new hosting options. My forum is growing, but it certainly isn't a large forum. I have about 30-40 new members join each day and I usually have about 1,000 active members. I'm running vbseo and a few mods, but my unique hits per day is probably around 2,000 uniques per day for the forum give or take. My forum does use quite a bit of bandwidth as people upload songs they have recorded and submit them for review frequently.
I've considered the notion of having a server built for me and paying $100 per month for colocation and being done with it, but I'd prefer to avoid this cost, if possible.
My site has outgrown my current host and I'm strongly leaning towards a vps. I am relatively inexperienced with web hosting as for the last 18 months I've had very few issues with my current host (Stream101.com). They are currently saying my site is very memory and processor intensive which is why I'm going to have to leave them soon(I can't pay the dedicated server prices that would give my site the stability I desire).
About my site:
My site has 18,000+ users, its about 18 months old. 5,632 threads, 78,967 posts. It used about 150gig of bandwidth last month. The site is growing quickly (IMO). The site makes some money, but not enough to justify spending what it would cost for a dedicated server.
I'm happy to provide any other information, but what I am looking for is suggestions on:
1) Is a VPS the right choice for my site in your opinion.
2) What hosting company's would you suggest I look into.
3) How much ram/processor speed should I be looking for
4) any other information you feel I should know about this.
I am the owner of the vbulletin forum. The forum is young but it is growing rapidly. It has 11000 posts, 800 members and about 30 users online. I use many mods which are server intensive.
I was on a semi-dedicated hosting (Westnic), which I shared with my friend to reduce the costs. Now I feel I should move on, because this package is becoming too small for both of us.
I wanted to upgrade my hosting package to a bigger one, but now when I have read so many horrible stories about this host, I really don't want to stay with Westnic.
So I am looking for a reliable host for my forum.
I am still now sure whether I need a semi-dedicated, VPS or a dedicated server. Also, I am not sure how much dedicated memory a forum like mine would need. Also, I am not sure about the location of the server - does it really matter?
I am about to purchase a vbulletin license in a few days and start a site. I will start the forums first and get the talking going and build the main site afterwards. Of course the site will suck at first as far as visitors. But what is a good hosting plan to support me for a good little while? I project we'll get up to 150 active users at a time within the first 6 or 7 months with about 50 browsing the main site....(nothing wrong with wishful thinking )
So, what hosting plan is best to hold me for a while? Not which company, but what specs of the plan are best to hold 100 active users at a time? I dont want to continue to upgrade my hosting plan alot. I'd rather just buy a nice shared hosting plan now to hold me for at least a year or so....until I have to upgrade.
For those who have dedicated servers, at one point is it time to upgrade to a dedicated server?
I'm promting a new Joomla! website and a new vBulletin forum. The website serves to news articles, some statistics (related to a football club) and also a small photo and video gallery. The forum would have an average of 40-50 online users.
I'm considering to choose the baby package offered by Host Gator. Would that be a good choice?
I have formated my linux Centos 4 server with PHP 4.4 and install Centos 5 with PHP 5.1 ( will upgrade to 5.2 soon ).
I succeed to restore all of my web sites and forums except one which has 110MB sql file, VBulletin 3.6.8.
I think the problem is related on my hack's and modifications I have done before...
Now I decided to install a new and fresh forum with version of 3.6.8 to be the same with ex one ( I will upgrade it after transferring ( migrating ) every threads, posts and members to new forum to 3.8.4)
But the problem is: when I restore the whole sql to new forum I had come across many problems.
THE QUESTION IS:
how can I transfer just "threads", "posts" and "members" to a new and fresh vBulletin forum ?
please note that my forum is not working now and I just have a "whole-website-backup.SQL" file and also back up of whole database folder in the linux ( it contains .frm , .MYD , .MYI files like: mst_post.frm , mst_post.MYD , mst_post.MYI and others...)
I have tried to copy these .frm .MYD and .MYI files on the new database folder but it was not worked!
I think I must restore by the help of .SQL file but I dont know how! when I recover whole the .SQL file forum does not work good and had some problem ( I can't log in to admin panel for example, and my VBSeo configurations gone and can't be repaire...
Please show me how can I transfer just my Posts and members to a NEW installed VBulletin forum with same or different "database name" and "database username".
I recently started hosting a large vBulletin forum (14,014 registered users... 30-60 online at a time) on one of my dedicated servers. When there's a lot of activity on the forums, things start getting really slow. There will be like 50 php-cgi processes running. Some users get blank pages, others get this message:
Notice: Undefined variable: errfile in [path]/forums/includes/functions_log_error.php on line 163
Specs of the server are: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 160GB SATA HDD 2GB DDR2 RAM FreeBSD 6.2 (Hosted at AwkNet)
Could there be any Apache modifications I can make to increase performance, or anything else I could try?
I've problem with my system (Dell vostro200) I've Mcafee security center and it will block some scripts running in the system during the browsing. I can't use any of vBulletin forums ( registration and posting ) I can't do even Mcafee online registratation also. I'm not an expert in os configurations.
I am looking for a new VPS and once again I think I am going to ditch Servint VPS in preference of a cheaper VPS. I know Servint is well known and they have a very good reputation here in this forum. I been longing to sign up with them but Lunarpages' offer looks very attractive.
What about Lunarpages?
It is $10 cheaper than Servint.
Lunarpages has 1000 GB bandwidth but Servint has only 500 GB.
Lunarpages has 20 GB storage but Servint has only 15 GB.
Lunarpages has 500 MB RAM but Servint has 384 MB guaranteed RAM (1 GB burst RAM).
Is the 500 MB RAM here http://www.lunarpages.com/virtual-private-server/ GUARANTEED RAM or SHARED BURSTABLE RAM?
The only thing that Lunarpages lost to Servint here is the number of IP address. Lunarpages comes with 1 IP but Servint offers 4 IP which is good for SEO.
I wanted to contact Lunarpages but couldn't find their contact email. Anyone know their contact email?
Some friends and I have started a Movie Site at [url].
We currently are averaging around 14,000 Unique Visitors per month.
We run wordpress with several plugins, a flash player for podcasts and an image rotator.
We have lots of bandwidth and don't have a problem there but we have a big problem with CPU usage.
If we enable the WP and Super Cache plugin then the site pretty much instantly gets the Exceeding CPU Usage.
We are considering switching hosts (we are currently with HostMonster) but I am unsure of who to switch to. With only 14,000 Unique visitors we won't make much at all in advertising and since this is a hobby most of us are unable to put large amounts of cash into hosting.
here is the error page but I'm sure you all have seen it before...
This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota
Please contact this site's webmaster.
Wait a few minutes and use your browser's "Back" button or click here to try again.
If you are the webmaster, your account may have gotten this error for one or more of the following reasons:
* Your account has used more than its share of the cpu in the past 60 second sliding window. * Your account has too many concurrent processes running simultanously. * Your account has consumed too much memory. * Your site was recently very busy trying to run inefficient scripts.
The solution would be to optimize your applications to use less CPU. Adding appropriate indeces to your SQL tables can often help reduce CPU. Using static .html documents instead of painful .php scripts will practically eliminate CPU usage.
I just moved data centres here in the UK. I've paid for a 47U rack with 8amps of power. I plugged everything in and the meter is reading 8.9 - 9.1 amps. Seems fine at the moment, should I be worried about it tripping or is it just a case of if they find out they'll hike my bill up?
What's the feasibility of getting 1.5 tb out of them.. anyone know?
I'm not looking for that much.. just 200 Gb or so at the moment and 300-400 Gb in a couple of years.. I run a gallery2 site with no traffic, think they could work as a host?
(I would be coming over from dreamhost.. which seems to give you the space)
I want to share my terrible experience with one of most famous hosting - Lunarpages.
I'm on Lunarpages (basic account) more than 3 months and I sent them few email that my server is often down.
Thay didn't want to move my accunt to some less overloaded server and send me each time automatic message
In order for us to investigate the issue, please capture three separate instances when the site is down and provide a Traceroute to the server for each instance. After we have documented three separate instances of the site being down we will be able to look into the situation and possibly offer you a server move...
So, thay asked me to sit next to computer and wait my site to be down and make traceroute.
I sent them monthly report from host-tracker.com :
Day 2008-04-30 Uptime:100.00% Day 2008-04-29 Uptime:93.17% Downtime:1 hour(s) 38 min(s) Day 2008-04-28 Uptime:98.23% Downtime:25 min(s) 31 sec(s) Day 2008-04-27 Uptime:99.92% Downtime:1 min(s) 11 sec(s) Day 2008-04-26 Uptime:98.64% Downtime:19 min(s) 37 sec(s) Day 2008-04-25 Uptime:97.44% Downtime:36 min(s) 49 sec(s) Day 2008-04-24 Uptime:98.28% Downtime:24 min(s) 47 sec(s) Day 2008-04-23 Uptime:97.58% Downtime:34 min(s) 50 sec(s) Day 2008-04-22 Uptime:96.43% Downtime:51 min(s) 22 sec(s) Day 2008-04-21 Uptime:92.43% Downtime:1 hour(s) 49 min(s) Day 2008-04-20 Uptime:99.77% Downtime:3 min(s) 17 sec(s) Day 2008-04-19 Uptime:98.83% Downtime:16 min(s) 18 sec(s) Day 2008-04-18 Uptime:98.51% Downtime:20 min(s) 27 sec(s) Day 2008-04-17 Uptime:99.71% Downtime:4 min(s) 5 sec(s) Day 2008-04-16 Uptime:98.92% Downtime:15 min(s) 36 sec(s) Day 2008-04-15 Uptime:98.76% Downtime:17 min(s) 53 sec(s) Day 2008-04-14 Uptime:99.47% Downtime:7 min(s) 41 sec(s) Day 2008-04-12 Uptime:98.85% Downtime:16 min(s) 33 sec(s) Day 2008-04-11 Uptime:99.92% Downtime:1 min(s) 7 sec(s) Day 2008-04-10 Uptime:99.84% Downtime:2 min(s) 17 sec(s) Day 2008-04-09 Uptime:100.00% Day 2008-04-08 Uptime:99.73% Downtime:3 min(s) 56 sec(s) Day 2008-04-07 Uptime:98.30% Downtime:24 min(s) 26 sec(s) Day 2008-04-06 Uptime:99.89% Downtime:1 min(s) 32 sec(s) Day 2008-04-05 Uptime:100.00% Day 2008-04-04 Uptime:93.52% Downtime:1 hour(s) 33 min(s) Day 2008-04-03 Uptime:99.16% Downtime:12 min(s) 7 sec(s) Day 2008-04-02 Uptime:99.10% Downtime:12 min(s) 58 sec(s) Day 2008-04-01 Uptime:97.40% Downtime:37 min(s) 26 sec(s)
But thay told me that monitoring services are not good...
Anyway I use host-tracker to montor other accounts on hostnine and hostforweb and both of these providers have 100% uptime.
Today I wanted to move some files (3GB of images) from another hosting to one of folders on Lunarpages.
I asked support just to do 2 SSH commands for me, but thay told me to buy SSH access, that is $2 per month.
On the end when I wanted to buy it, thay told me that thay need to move my account to another server that has SSH and that will cost me $75 (per hour of work).
I really understand what is business but this is terrible customer care.
I use other two hostings - Hostine (reseller) and Hostforweb (VPS) and each time I aksed them for this kind of help thay do it without any charge.
I checked my email this morning and had a spam email from Lunar Pages (See below). Not only did they spam me, they obviously have a list which they used to spam others. Not only that, but anyone who received their spam email can reply back to the email and their email reply then is sent to everyone on their list.
Amazing.
Lunar Pages, I don't appreciate your spam emails. If you run your hosting business as well as you run your spam operations, then I am sure you will be out of business soon. That gives me some satisfaction.
From: Domain Name Support [mailto:domain@worldswidedomainname.com] Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 10:17 PM To: info@worldswidedomainname.com Subject: Notice Regarding Your DOMAIN NAME ***************************************** Important Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s) ***************************************** Dear Webmaster, .....
I am trying to launch a website for a youth group. Since this is a non-profit organization I am trying to host the site for a reasonable price but I am not sure which company to go with. I have looked at lunarpages and 1&1. There are so many out there I am not sure which one to chose.Has anyone dealt with these companies and if so how are they?
From Me to Support I noticed that my inodes are set abnormally low to 200,000 we just upgraded to VPS plan per lunars request at we are at 160,000 on second day of operation on new vps server. From Sarwan singh Jassi to siteadmin(ME) When you reach 200,000 inodes you will need to upgrade to dedicated plan However and Email from the sales guy states the following. We do not force upgrades do to inodes, we just increase your inodes as you need them. Server crashes occur all the time about 1-3 times a month. Do not use lunar
They also run the old 90's upgrade scam, they claim your script utilize high resources for php, mysql.
Their claim
CPU%: 3.15 MEM%: 1.70 MySQL: 0.9 Top Process %CPU 50.0 /usr/bin/php Top Process %CPU 48.0 /usr/bin/php Top Process %CPU 44.0 /usr/bin/php
After fighting with these people telling them that their server is configured incorrectly because we have load tested each and every script and that these scripts are used on 1000's of sites and the traffic we have does NOT warrent the useage they claim we went a head and upgraded per their recommendation.
So we get a brand new vps plan(see complaint above) and on the VPS server our usages look totally normal with proves they don't know what they are doing.
Directly from Pesky Plesk on the second day of getting our upgrade
CPU%: 0.15 MEM%: 0.19 MySQL: 0.2 Top Process %CPU 17.0 /usr/bin/php Top Process %CPU 19.0 /usr/bin/php Top Process %CPU 15.0 /usr/bin/php
1. I have chosen Windows hosting from Lunarpages, I have hosted 3 websites in a shared hosting.
2. Among the three, 1 site is alexa 100K website, 2nd is an asp website which is under development, 3rd is a simple HTML site.
The "tortoise" support:
- Lunarpages doesnt provide a Chat support for any urgent issues!! Imagine if your site has gone down and you are losing 100$ because of that and you wanted to contact the support! Major hosting providers give Chat support so that the issues can be resolved immediately. But you must raise a ticket in lunarpages which will be responded within 24 hrs during business days !!!
Scenario 1:
Ok.. Some of you will feel that a support within 24 hrs is quite fine. But you know what happened to me in most of the cases when my site was down? - The customercare responded after 24 hrs asking me to provide the verification details.
Then I gave the details immediately but the customer care responded after 20 hrs asking for more information!!! and my site was still DOWN !!! They really dont seem to understand the criticality!
Scenario 2:
Once they have suspended my site and I received an automated mail that I must contact support to know why they have suspended it. I contacted them, BUT I KNOW THEY WILL ASK FOR VERIFICATION DETAILS and I proactively gave all the information in my ticket itself!!, but Surprisingly, I got the standard mail asking me to provide the verification details!!! I really got pissed off and replied back, which took one more 24 hrs. Then they replied back saying that there are a lot of visitors coming to my website and is affecting their server! But I have not exceeded the disk space, bandwidth,or whatsoever mentioned in the plan during the signup!!
They asked me to take a VPS or Dedicated hosting.
Then I had few arguments and finally agreed to take a VPS hosting and sent a mail to the customer care, but 3 days later they have suspended the site again saying that the account usage is more. I really doubt if the customer care reads the mails properly!! I have lost a lot of money due to this!!
I maintain a single blog in wordpress in the subdomain blog.e-healthgr.com. I continually had problems with their servers. They suspended my account without any logical reason. Their reasoning is that i overconsume resources. CPU usage: 6.49 MEM usage: 0.42 MySQL usage: 1.0 Top Process %CPU 64.0 php Top Process %CPU 56.0
We are talking here about a single blog in Wordpress. The theme was not mine but was one used by many blogs out there.
I find their excuses lame. My blog is neither wikipedia nor techcrunch to have such resources consumption. They are incapable of giving trustworthy support to a single blog in Wordpress.
They are asking me more money to move my blog in a dedicated server! Of course I am not going to give them any money for extra services plan.
Does anybody here now what legal actions i can take? They have occupated my account, i can not control my own data and they are not giving me the services which i paid for.
I've been helping a friend with a site hosted at Lunarpages for a few years, a very low traffic business site in a shared hosting account, no real complaints.
But 48 hours ago they got an odd email from Lunarpages describing the relocation of their server to a new datacenter, which involved 3-4 hours of downtime to drive the server from LA to San Diego, plus another hour or so of setup.
Now this was confusing because I thought that the internet was not a big truck -- it's a series of tubes, right? In fact, I thought that the whole point of the internet was not having to move your data by truck. But hey, this is an inexpensive shared account, so maybe Lunarpages does move all their data by truck. Kinda short notice on that, but okay, fine. A couple hours downtime. The website and email go dead at noon. The exact time was not announced in the notice, and mid-day mid-week seems like an odd time to deliberately schedule downtime, especially when it involves a long drive in traffic on the 5 freeway. But it is an inexpensive account, so... we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Six hours later, we contact Lunarpages support asking what's up with the server. This being my friend's business website, business email, gone for most of the day. Was there an accident on the freeway? Did the truck driver get lost? Did the data end up in a cul-de-sac in Orange County? Were they stopped while making a run for the border?
An hour later, we finally hear back on the ticket -- Lunarpages hasn't heard from their "admins" (presumably due to a bad battery in their CB radio) but they hope to have things migrated "soon." So we wait.
Eleven hours after the site and email went down, we send a reply on the ticket asking a few more questions. 1) Any update on that migration? 2) Could you explain this whole deal with the truck driving the data from city to city? 3) Do you have any compensation for ridiculous downtime? An hour later, the Lunarpages reply: Migration done soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. No compensation at all, especially for "scheduled" downtime.
As of now, the server is still down and has been offline for about 14 hours. While I do hope the driver of the truck is okay, I have no such benevolent feelings for Lunarpages. When (if??) the site comes back up, we're transferring to a host that doesn't rely on the the LA freeway system to migrate their data. I hear there's this newfangled "network" thing the kids are in to. We'll probably try that out instead.
Lunarpages sure is cheap. And most of the time, they work okay. But you should probably avoid them if you value advance scheduling of downtime, rapid support, clear communication, or reliable access to your website and email.
I bought their hosting 8 months ago and they are simply jerk for hosting a big site on their shared hosting plans. Now I have transfered my domains to one.com which is very good for huge traffic sites.
I want to tell you guys about my lunarpages experience. First, I found them through a top 10 website review. BIG mistake I understand now. Not really that big of a deal if I can rely on them which is reall all I want. But I don't think I can.
First thing I did after creating my account was go to setup my email. I was very excited, this is my first domain ever. I set it up and then find out I can't receive email! After reporting this to their staff and setting up a ticket, I find out the next day that I wasn't receiving email because I had set my mailbox quota limit to 5000mb. Apparently that was too high they said! Why would they give you the option of doing that if it's just going to screw things up? That's just stupid. I knew I didn't need that much but I figured I'd set it and forget it and it would be no problem.
Then the next thing was just yesterday when I went to check my website and it was down. And so was their LPCP (control panel). I don't know how long it was down for but I noticed it for about half an hour.
I'm still within their 30 day refund policy since I only started the account on tuesday. What do you guys think I should do? Is it commomplace for websites to go down from time to time?
I would really appreciate any suggestions you guys might have as a reliable host. Also, how do I go about tranfering my domain name? Do i tell lunarpages I want to cancel first and then tranfer the domain or do I setup an account where I want to domain to go, then cancel?
I started off my website which consisted mainly of a Phpbb forum (Always running the latest version), a basic chatroom incorporated into the phpbb's mysql DB, and a few html pages with Yahoo Small Business. I found Yahoo to be terible after a while, so I moved to Lunarpages.
Everything went so smoothly and I was impressed by there custumer services, and everything had been running great over at Lunarpages..... Until last week.... Apparently my "Top Process" is to high. A Php script consuming to much cpu/ram????
My forum Mysql DB is about 133Mib in size. It's pretty much untouched phpbb 3.0.2 forum apart from using a basic ajax chat for the last year or so.
It has 600 users, of which no more than 20 online at once. Posting about 100 posts per day.
The only thing that has changed since I signed up with LP is that my Mysql DB has grown by about 30MiB.
Ok, so fair enough if I have outgrown a shared server, but now they recomend I moved to a dedicated VPS.
I saw so happy using Cpanel but they tell me it isn't available on their VPS. I feel I'm going way out of my depth with a VPS. Is it hard for a total newb to use?
