OK I have had it with our "hosting" company Dreamhost.  Or should that be Nightmarehost?  As I am sure you have too.  How much downtime have we experienced lately?  And when the site is up, page load times are ridiculously slow.  Click a link, go make a coffee, come back, drink your coffee and it may have loaded.  If not go cook dinner and it should be done by then.

Enough is enough.

I have had enough of the excuses and promises that things are fixed/will be fixed, and when they aren't, getting told it can't be fixed, or it is "a bit of a headache to do" that. 

Well we have had nearly 12 months of headaches with this company, so it is time to leave.

We have been on 3 different servers and never had joy.  Now apparantly the issue is with the filer, and there is no cure in the immediate future.   The downtime last weekend (wed or thurs to mon or tues this week) saw many emails of complaint to support, who generously offered me a whopping $10 credit for my problems.

That is not going to fix anything now is it... 

There are of course a few downsides to moving.  First of course is the downtime and work associated with the move.  The new host company will also cost more, and offer less.  Dreamhost does offer a lot of space, unlimited databases, server space that increases weekly, as does the bandwidth allocation.  But I guess you can offer what ever you want if it never works cant you.  They could offer us 1 Terrabyte a day and it wouldn't make a lick of difference, because we can never access the site! 

We will have to look at things like email for users, mail forwards should be ok, depending on who we go with, some companies limit the number.  We probably wont be able to offer @erexion.org mailboxes.  Limits would have to be placed on filesize for the gallery, if we keeped it, and also the file upload feature in the forum, though that is already set fairly small, and most people host their images on Imageshack or Photobucket anyhow, which is a whole lot better as it reduces the load on our own facilities greatly.

I am still unsure of how to pay for the new host, but it is going to cost at least $20 a month.  I might look into adsense or similar, but I would rather not.  Maybe we might have to hold a raffle or seek donations.  Another sticker drive with larger stickers is another option.  Or if you know anyone with a business who might be interested in advertising with some banner ads (eek) let me know.  I never wanted to have banner ads on the site, or have to ask for donations, but I guess thats reality, and if it helps us get a better, faster and more reliable server, then I wont complain.  In fact, the better the client for the banner ad, the better the hosting we can afford.  Something to think about.

Another part of the problm is theat I need to include two other sites within the hosting plan (www.nigelhoneyphotos.com and www.lucashoney.com) so I will cover a portion of the cost myself if needed, though these sites equate to very little of space and bandwidth useage here, and I would like to think we could let it slide as some sort of "thanks" for my work keeping eREXion running (or at least trying to).  I do put a lot of work into building/maintaining the site, adding tweaks and improvements, doing software upgrates etc.  It is not really a "set and forget" type of thing.

I hate asking for money...

As mentioned, there will of course be another slight disruption to service during the changeover period, which I will warn you of well before hand.  If of course I can actually get into the admin page to create the article...

This will all happen by November 18 as that is when our current Dreamhost account expires.  If I can find a suitable webhosting deal before then, it will happen sooner. 

Please drop me a message on azenis  at erexion dot org if you have any ideas of possible site sponsors/advertisers, suggestions or know of any good web hosts.  I have a few that I am looking into at the moment.

I would set up a link to discuss this article in the forum, but of course, I cant access the code to do that because the page wont load...