Goodbye Powweb

[bplinson]

Well it is time for me to say goodbye to Powweb for my commerical site. It has been an eventful six month!!!

I am gonna keep one of my domains here at Powweb since it is just my personal family website. Seems that Powweb is good for small low traffic sites.

But after having them take my commerical website down two times within the last 30 days I have found a more reliable hosting company that can handle the traffic my website www.xlforum.org gets (which is really not that much). Go to www.xlforum.org right now and you will see what Powweb does when you hit your limit. They do not even put up a page that explains to the normal visitors that the site is temporarily down. Nope, just a white screen with a powerweb server name and IP address.

Come on Powweb at least put something nice up there stating that there is a problem and maybe a message that the site will be back up once the problem is fixed.

They say my website uses too many CPU resources but it is just running straight PHPNuke. I know PHPNuke is a hog, but mine only has 1200 users and about 10,000 hits a day. The servers should be able to handle that, but no.

I guess you get what you pay for.

So if you are planning on building a large website with a database and php and expect a lot of traffic, or if you are running a commercial website and want dependable service I would recommend looking elsewhere.

I understand that we all all sharing the same servers and that it is unfair for one site to use most of the CPU resources but dang I have never had this problem with other webhosting companies.

I moved over to Powweb because they offer more webspace then most and a high daily and monthly transfer rate. I guess they can since you can never hit the transfer rate limit as their servers can not handle the traffic.

Good thing I did not open my osCommerse webstore yet. I am pretty sure the Powweb servers could not handle one of them even though they list it as a benefit.

Oh yeah, sorry to anyone on www09.powweb.com if your website ran slow for about an hour today. It won't happen again...or probably it will, but it won't be my fault this time. :D

I really wonder how long this message will be up before the admins delete it.

Peace

[tbonekkt]

Originally posted by bplinson
I am gonna keep one of my domains here at Powweb since it is just my personal family website. Seems that Powweb is good for small low traffic sites. I get almost 4GB a day on one of my sites here and I don't have a problem.Originally posted by bplinson
They do not even put up a page that explains to the normal visitors that the site is temporarily down. Nope, just a white screen with a powerweb server name and IP address.

Come on Powweb at least put something nice up there stating that there is a problem and maybe a message that the site will be back up once the problem is fixed. Why should they? There isn't a server problem, the site isn't temporaily down. The 'problem' is that you exceeded a limit PowWeb has in place. It's up to you to take measures that prevent it from happening.Originally posted by bplinson
So if you are planning on building a large website with a database and php and expect a lot of traffic Sounds like you need a dedicated server. Like I said above, I have a site here that gets 4GB transfer a day using php/MySQL and I don't have a problem.


Seems to me you're blaming PowWeb for you exceeding bandwitdh limitations and for using resource-intensive scripts.

[bplinson]

Nope. Did not exceed bandwidth restrictions...not even close. Abotu 15 GB per month.

The problem is with PHPNuke and the Powweb servers not being able to handle PHPnuke which I admit is resource intensive.

I did not have this problem with my other company that I am going back to (at least for my commerical site). Like I said Powweb inticed me with their larger amount of disk space and data transfer.

I have no problem with Powweb and think they are great for small non-PHPnuke websites and would recommend them to people who are looking to do a simple website that does not require much power.

Peace

[Chase]

I'd say if you need the following:

a) commercial
b) large database

I would reallllllly look into dedicated servers, or simply hosting your own. I am using my powweb account to start my internet end of my business which has PHP, audio, video (neither streaming so don't have a cow people), product database, ecommerce, and hundreds of text files to be in turn manipulated by Perl for content delivery. Powweb is doing fine so well in my pre-launch tests.

Now, take note. 5GB a day is a LOT, a LOT, a LOT for "virtual hosting" so I wish you luck finding significantly more under a similar type of structure. Most just go by a monthly limit and It's rare to find (in my experience at least) much over 250GB/mo and that is only 100 more GB a month (estimated) than PowWeb, and lets face it, if you're high drain, you're high drain and 100 a month might not help.

I know the day will come when I'll have to have my business site(s) on their own servers, just as you're facing now, but why you would be upset at the host that kept you functioning for 6 months to get to that point is beyond me.

From one commercial user to another, best of luck in your venture.

-Chase

EDIT: Well, your post right above mine you submitted while I was typing and it changes everything. I still with you the best of luck, but seriously... consider dedicated or owning your own server. I know I'll be headed that way soon, too. It sometimes is a really good move.

[bplinson]

I guess I am only a little concerned with the way that they just shut the site down.

I know that they have to do that but my main gripe is how they do it. I mean they could at least put up a different screen to let users know that the website still exists and that it is only experiencig problems. Shoot it is just a little html file that they would need to do. How hard is that?

I do not think I need a dedicated server yet but am sure that I will someday and am looking into it at iPowerweb.com .

What is really cool is that I posted on another forum where a lot of my users also are at that the site is down and that I was searching for a new hosting company.

One of them wrote me back privatly that he will off me a co-located site on one of his servers...and get this...FOR FREE!!!

SO my problem is solved. Ya can't beat free unlimited space and bandwidth!!!

[Chase]

You sure can't beat that! It's good to know people who spend significant money on a service such as that and aren't stingy so they can give away unused portions, you know? I think that's great.

I do agree that I wish Powweb would have a little more end-user friendly screen for usage overages and other general issues such as yours had with handling PHPNuke. As a similar minded person using Powweb for business (because, lets face it... powweb's setup is PERFECT for two things... starting a business, or playing around with a large show-off personal site) I know that I will be very very disappointed if I ever see one of those screens myself, even if it is my own darn fault. I understand you're not asking for the world with the however many bucks we pay a month, just a simple "please be patient while we beat somebody with a stick" site instead of a URL and IP address.

[Andrew]

Hi bplinson,

An email was sent to you when your http was disabled for resource abuse. Your reply is in our abuse queue and someone will get back to you shortly.

When http is disable for any site, you'll see the server default page which has the hostname and ip address. We'll see if we can customize that a little more.

[bplinson]

HOLY COW!!! They just reactivated the website!!! I did not even have to ask this time!!!

Hmmm, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth!!!