Liberal Values has grown tremendously since it was first started about a year and a half ago, and we are now stressing the resources of our web host. I’m looking into moving the blog, but there might be some disruption during the process.
If Liberal Values is unavailable I will set up a temporary replacement. At present I suggest regular readers bookmark this site:
http://liberalvaluesblog.blogspot.com/
I will either place new posts there if this site is not available or post any updated announcements there. In the future I might also post there should we have any extended down time for other reasons.
(The site was actually set up last year for commenting on blogspot blogs which only allowed links back to other blogspot blogs.)
I’m thinking about moving to a dedicated host too.
If you find one you like and is affordable, let me know. I think WordPress pushes a couple hosts but I don’t know anything about this step.
So far I’m looking at options but not sure what I’m going to do.
My current plan costs around $7 per month. I’m finding other plans which don’t cost terribly more which allow for significantly more bandwidth than I have now. Not knowing much about the technical aspects I’m not sure if just getting more bandwidth will solve the problems or not.
My current host company wants to change me to a plan that costs about $70/month for a VPS. I’m not sure if this is overkill or if I really need this.
The factors to consider are your current bandwidth, cpu usage, and projected growth for, say, the next year (average length of a contract). What kind of usages are you looking at for Liberal Values that makes your host want you on dedicated setup?
$70 a month? Phew. I have no advertising, so I don’t think I want to swing this. I’ll see if I can find the two I saw WP push on their forum and give you the link.
DM,
One of my stat counters (only available by password as it is connected to the site’s control panel) shows bandwidth to be just under 30 GB a month. I don’t know what the cpu usage is. Sitemeter is accessible at the bottom of the page to see how traffic is. Traffic has jumped up quite a bit since the Iowa caucus. I suspect it will fall after the Democratic nominee is known, and then rise again towards the general election.
I have turned off a bunch of plugins and have read about other measures to decrease resource use. I’m wondering if this might solve the problem or if I’m going to be stuck going to a VPS plan.
What really bugs me now is that the hosting company has both a $50/month and $70/month plan. They are saying I need their more expensive plan. I don’t know enough about the technical aspects to be certain, but it seems strange to me that a blog like this needs such a plan.
You should email tech support at WP and ask them. I bet they have knowledge about this very issue.
I found some general information from WP. I’ve also posted some messages on their forum regarding recommendation s for web posting but have not received hardly any response.
30GB a month? Hmmm… that’s barely anything. If I were you I’d consider a hosting provider like Bluehost.com. I’ve used them before and they’ve got 15,000 GB of transfer per month. For a year contract I think they’re about $97-$98 dollars and you get a free domain registry (if you want it). Good customer service for wordpress users and an auto-install and update feature too.
You said you’re paying $7/month for your plan? Well, bluehost.com isn’t much more ($8.17/month) and it should solve your problem.
Damien,
Since yesterday I found out a lot more. The problem isn’t bandwidth. These way these inexpensive hosts work is by having a bunch of web sites share a server. If resource use gets too high by any one of them, companies which monitor this will suspend the account of those using the most resources.
There are many factors which play into this. Traffic is obviously one part, but it also depends upon the resources used when pulling up the blog. WordPress uses resources heavily and it is possible that factors such as the plugins used will affect this.
Another factor is that there are cache programs out there which reduce the amount of resources used when a site is pulled up. So far I’ve installed one but there is also a more powerful one out there. (I primarily went with the weaker of the two for now to get something up as there was a line in the installation instructions of the more powerful I didn’t understand. When I get more time I’ll try to get an explanation on that and switch over.)
Checking around with experiences with different companies, it appears some are much more aggressive in monitoring resource use by customers. I might get away with moving to another host which uses shared servers like this which doesn’t monitor individual site use, but that is a gamble. I’ll never know if they will start monitoring, and there is the possibility that smaller companies which don’t monitor are also not able to provide decent tech support should the blog go down (which has happened from time to time).