I must be CRAZY but I am thinking of starting up another blog. Yes, yes, I’m crazy! I already have, what, seven that I already post to, but I really have ten total. I just love writing! Anyway, I’m wanting to experiment with a different web host. One of my wise friends had told me not to have “all of my eggs in one basket.” I currently have Bluehost for my main blogs. They have good tech support, but… they have a lousy CPU quota limitation. And if ONE of my blogs goes down, they ALL go down, because they are on the same account. I cannot relay to you how much I think that stinks! I wish I had seen this article before I went with them:

If you are building on a shared server that is hosting a number of other sites, the performance of your site may eventually endure issues and thus function much slower. This is because the server uses CPU to compensate for each individual site on the server. Shared hosts with limited resources typically monitor CPU usage and restrict those use too much.

Now I find out. :-p

So, I’m looking for options and am scouring web host rating websites. Check out that site, it looks terrific! I have bee reading the articles and already I feel my brain getting smarter. They say that Globat is one of the best budget web hosting companies; I’d never heard of them before, so I’m glad I checked.

Feel free to leave a comment about your web hosting company and how you rate it. I’m weighing all my options!

Woohoo! I’m doing the happy dance today, people! My CPU usage for this blog is back within its limits (and I’m still getting 7,000 hits a day!).

Yesterday I blogged about my blog’s massive CPU usage. My web host, Whip An Orbit, had contacted me to inform me that the huge load was crashing their servers. They asked me to fix the problem. I would like to commend the guys at Whip An Orbit for their excellent customer service– and compassion! Other web hosts would just rip out my blog and suspend my account. Whip An Orbit emailed me first, and when I emailed and called them, they were as gracious and helpful as anything! They gave me some tips about what was causing the problem. When I said that one of my blog posts had been “Stumbled” at StumbleUpon, they understood and immediately decided to hold off any suspension of my blog. They realize that StumbleUpon traffic slows down after a few days. I just have to say a big THANK YOU to those Whip An Orbit guys. Wow, relief is wonderful. If you want to check out their hosting plans, my affiliate link to their website is here. I’ve had very little downtime with them, especially compared to my blogs on Bluehost (those crash with CPU Quota Exceeded errors after about 500 Stumbles).

I’d also like to thank Terry from FindSavings.com. He’s read my blog, and took the time to write a whole bunch of emails with tips and smaller theme graphics for my blog. His advice was phenomenal. I think that because I did follow his advice, my CPU usage is within limits today. Terry runs a GREAT website with loads of store coupons and promo codes. I am a strong proponent of using online coupons– I never buy anything unless I check first– and Terry’s site is my favorite. So he’s not only a great coupon provider, he’s a real pal, too. Thanks, Terry. :-)

I can now rest easy and enjoy all this heavy traffic, and I can drop Entrecards again! And guess what– my RealRank is 51 today! I made it into the Top 100! Amazing!

So all this excitement has me exhausted. I think I am getting too old for such hoo-hah. I hardly slept at all last night! I’m ready for a nap. Zzzzzzzz

GRRRRRR. If you are trying to access my other websites, New York Traveler.net, New York Renovator, and Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook… they’re down again. :(

Oh, I just checked and now they are up. But my template to New York Traveler.net is a little screwy. Wha? Any geeks out there have any suggestions? I contacted my webhost (Bluehost) and asked them why my template was messy. They said that when the server was down and restored, the company must have used a backup form to restore my blog. But… these changes in my template are not from backups. The only way these things could have been altered is for someone to tinker with my stylesheet of my blog theme. Is this possible??

I don’t know what it is with me and things like this. I always seem to have problems when everyone else is sailing smooth waters and tech help is more concerned with sexy shoes. :(

UPDATE: Bluehost informed that they did not have to restore anything with backups. So…. how did my template get changed? And why?

Oooo you know how I have been bemoaning my Bluehost hosting problems? And my Whip An Orbit web hosting problems (although Whip An Orbit is behaving better now). I had another half-hour outage for all three blogs with Bluehost today. Boy, this is getting old. I’ve only been with them about two months now, and I’ve had a lot of problems.

I’m paying a lot of attention these days to websites discussing hosting sites and hosting information. Here’s a great website on linux web hosting and more. DUH! I wish I’d seen this earlier! It’s called Web Hosting Rating.

Cheap web hosting can be tricky and it definitely takes one with the technical knowledge and experience to be able to judge whether the host is good. More often than not, it is the bad experiences from using cheap web hosting that eventually leads people to lose trust in these low cost endevours and move onto more expensive options, which may not necessarily be better.

“Tricky” is the understatement of the month for me. Bluehost has been tricky. Yeah. [insert angry-face icon here]

Anyway, the site lists three things to look for when choosing a web host. There are some good articles there, too. The information may help you if you are looking for tips. Looks like this blog will be brimming with good ideas to come!