The Problem
Yesterday morning shawnblanc.net got a whole lot of traffic all at once. The best kind of traffic too: Mac loving, Daring Fireball Readers. As grateful as I was for the skipped heartbeat, my server was even more excited and celebrated by crashing.
Having your site go down right when people want to see it is like getting de-pantsed when you’re at the drinking fountain. It’s a bummer.
My preferred strategy would be to keep the server up and zippy while all everyone surfed to their heart’s content, and then later that night while everyone was sleeping it could go down.
But no. Like a 90 pound freshman on the football team, my server got schooled.
This pushed me over the edge to do what I have been wanting to do for the past year. It was time to get a new hoster.
But not wanting to blindly go with (mt) Media Temple just because their website is incredible I asked around.
Responses included a handful of recommendations. I had a conversation with each hosting provider, telling them my needs and expectations and what they would recommend. The options were like a joke. I couldn’t believe nobody had at least something to compare with Media Temple.
The Solution
(gs) Grid Server is the perfect solution for the website that gets a steady amount of traffic with occasional heavy spikes. And the (gs) is especially great for the guy who doesn’t make any revenue from his website. (I think text link adds are ugly.)
The Process
I set up my new account and had the nameservers pointed to (mt) by 9:30 pm. I didn’t know how long it would take for the redirect to kick in so I threw up a splash page and went back to finishing up a design project. An hour later, just before closing up shop I checked the site, and lo and behold the new server was live. Well well well. knuckles crack Who needs sleep anyway?
I proceeded to download, upload, copy, paste, and double-click until everything looked just right. Minus my sql database.
Confession: I don’t know jack about SSH. But I called MediaTemple at 1:30 in the morning to get some help. Between the two of us we tackled the problem. At 1:30AM! That is customer service.
The Result
When all was said and done shawnblanc.net looked exactly like it did before. (I suppose I half expected it to look shinier or something.) But now it’s got a strong, reliable host to back it up.
If you’re looking for hosting I totally recommend (mt) Media Temple.