Contemplating signup but should I wait?

[KathiSharpe]

Wow.

I have a very high-traffic site and forum (running mambo and SMF). I have gotten two rousing endorsements of powweb so stopped in here to check y'all out, only to discover the transition. Poked around in the FAQ about that, and there is something about "if you have a frequently-updating database, you'll want to do it manually"...

I'd say we have a FUD :)

What's involved in "manual transfer" ??? Should I wait until y'all are done? (I really dont' want to wait - I'd wanted to sign up this week - our current host is giving me fits.)

Also wanted to make sure that powweb can "handle" us - we have highly fluctuating bandwidth requirements. Some months we're "medium" and other months we blow the doors off (had a tv spot once and nearly took down the server on our original host <blick>) We cannot, cannot, cannot have downtime for the site or email. We're a missions-oriented site (evangelism) and people depend on us being there 24/7.

Thanks for any input!

Kathi Sharpe
ExWitch Ministries

[stevel]

If you absolutely cannot tolerate downtime, then you should not be looking at shared hosting. You need a dedicated server, perhaps with a hot backup. Very expensive. WIth shared hosting there is a risk of downtime. It DOES happen. Here at PowWeb, outages are rare and typically of short duration, but I'd be lying if I said you would never have downtime here.

That said, given what you have listed, my advice would be to wait (couple of weeks?) until new signups are put on the new platform from the start. Then you will have no concerns about migration.

[KathiSharpe]

If you absolutely cannot tolerate downtime, then you should not be looking at shared hosting. You need a dedicated server, perhaps with a hot backup. Very expensive. WIth shared hosting there is a risk of downtime. It DOES happen. Here at PowWeb, outages are rare and typically of short duration, but I'd be lying if I said you would never have downtime here.

Steve... can't afford that. Understand that there's a "risk". There's always risks.

My current situation has the server bogging down EVERY NIGHT for an hour to back up (and it's during "prime time" too), and then doing same every morning for three hours (and no one can explain why. It's a "phantom") ... So for four hours a day my site's halfway unusable.

Our original host was better, tho they didn't do several things we needed (multiple sql databases (y'all do that right? eeep)) which is why we switched. I think they went down three times in the four years we were with them, and one of those times was due to a hurricane. Pretty understandable. The other two times we were back up within 15min or so. THAT kind of "outage" - sporadic, unpredictable, due to the weather or a fool crashing into the building where the servers are or a DOS attack or heck a mouse eating an ethernet cord... as long as it's not a weekly event it's always a "risk". Can handle risks as long as y'all have a plan for them; they come with the territory and they're ultimately in God's hands.

[stevel]

Ok, then you should be ok here. To be honest, the past is not a predictor of the future as we'll be on a completely new platform. I would say that PowWeb in the reasonably recent past (year or so) would meet your needs, so I hope that the PowWeb of the future would too.

You can have multiple databases. Today, it's five free and extras are $10 (one time). That's the sort of thing that may change in the future (for the better, typically.)

You talked about "blow the doors off" usage - be aware that since this IS a shared hosting service, if your site's usage is causing performance problems for other sites, you may get restricted. Without any data, I can't even guess whether or not you'll have a problem here.

[KathiSharpe]

You can have multiple databases. Today, it's five free and extras are $10 (one time). That's the sort of thing that may change in the future (for the better, typically.)

You talked about "blow the doors off" usage - be aware that since this IS a shared hosting service, if your site's usage is causing performance problems for other sites, you may get restricted. Without any data, I can't even guess whether or not you'll have a problem here.

I think we can handle five :)

The "blow the doors off" lasted for about a week, then tapered off. Fortunately. What happened was I was interviewed on a christian tv show that aired internationally, and the world descended on our website for a few days! We weren't with a very big hosting company @ the time though Steve -- so what they called "blow the doors off" might not faze you guys. :p

[stevel]

Well, the current limit is 400GB/month. You'll have to do the math to see if that comes close to your peak usage. If your web site isn't loaded with videos or lots of huge images, you shouldn't have a problem.