Why Bakkouz died yesterday: or how i learned to start worrying and loath my hosting company.


I'm sure most of you are familiar with the digg effect,  but what about the imdb effect? in short, imdb killed my website, shredded it to pieces, set it on fire, then scattered the ashes into the wind. and I'll get to that in a bit...

But first, what is the most important thing you need to look for when buying web hosting? and how can you make sure you're not making a huge mistake? Many hosting companies offer you fantastic plans, tons of storage, tons of bandwidth, unlimited domains, great prices.. etc.. etc.. but there is a catch. because all this means nothing, the most important thing to look for is the cpu and memory quote, how many processes you can run simultaneously, and finally, the tech support. this is the stuff that really matters when your website is put under the test.

I know this because i experienced it first hand with bluehost, before i bought my hosting plan from them i looked and looked and did my research well, and they seemed like a good credible reliable option so i went with them and all seems well at first.. but not until i re-gained the traffic rate i was getting, and the occasional influxes of traffic i sometimes receive, that i realized the truth, my website kept dying and my account got suspended very often, all because of their low cpu quota limit. it was intolerable..

which brings me back to yesterdays incident, yesterday some wise guy at imdb thought it was a good idea to post a link on the imdb front page to my top ten weirdest movies post, and as awesome as this might be (me getting featured on the front page of imdb!! Here is a screen shot), it was in fact the straw that broke the camel's back.. the huge amount of traffic forced my account to get suspended all day long do to cpu quota over use, naturally I did have caching running on the blog but that had no effect in this case since it was not a bandwidth issue. (its worth mentioning also that i had had my account suspended due to cpu quote over limit with bluehost sometimes even without any traffic spikes, but under normal traffic rates).

These fine details is what one must look out for carefully when buying a web hosting, its not how much hard disk or how much bandwidth or how many IP's, one must look past that and past the great price! its how much processes, cpu and ram quote you're  allowed. this is what distinguishes a really good host from a crappy one. I understand that all shared hosting plans offered by all companies probably have a cpu quota limit, but i feel that an important issue like that should have been specified clearly in the plan details.

website owners usually seek more traffic, but now, I fear it, and the sad thing is, there is nothing I can do about it. I am in no position to buy a dedicated server, and there is absolutely nothing bluehost are willing to do about it either. So, basically, I am trapped. Add to the above reason, their tech support is horrible, the help desk ticket i submitted yesterday is still not answered, i tried to try their live chat help, and all i got was a paragraph from the FAQ regarding the issue. but no live chat.

And this is how i learned first hand, how to start worrying and loath my hosting company.

Moral of the story: being popular is not always a good thing .... and bluehost sucks!