GoDaddy responds
Well strangely several hours after re-directing MacCast.com to my other domain so I could at least get a message to you and let you know what was happening (read the original message here) , I received a personal email from GoDaddy’s VP of technology. I am not saying these two events are related, but the timing was uncanny. In his email he stated that my shared hosting for MacCast.com had been re-activated and I was free to point the DNS back. He was also clear to point out that they will be monitoring the server “closely”. He expressed interest in talking to me about the incident and left his personal number, so I phoned him back and left a message. I am glad to see this type of service, but have to wonder if everyone gets this type of personal attention. Not long after I called him back I got a received a call from GoDaddy’s Hosting Operations Manager. I was able to discuss with him my situation and express my frustration with how things were handled. He was very apologetic and said they are now investigating their internal procedures for handling these situations and will be attempting to improve the process in the future. It may be a PR move, but I have hope that my incident my improve things for others.
So where are we?
As for MacCast.com… In the short term we are back and GoDaddy will closely monitor the server and notify me in advance of any issues to avoid another shutdown. I asked GoDaddy if they could tell me what the source of this issue was and they really can’t seem to identify a single cause other than the growing popularity of MacCast.com. I have not added or changed any services on the site in the past two months. I run WordPress, Invision PowerBoard, Gallery and some other small PHP/MySQL applications. In speaking with GoDaddy and others who run web sites the consensus seems to be that under heavy traffic each of the applications will place a load on a server. So in short, MacCast is getting too big for it’s britches, or at least it’s hosting plan. I still plan on moving to a better hosting plan (probably dedicated) and at least for now we are back in business.
For the Future
As I mentioned in my Podcast message to you, the MacCast is growing and I hope to continue that growth. This “event” has obviously proved we crossed the threshold and have grown into something more ambitious than just a podcast. I am excited by the opportunity and at the same time a little frightened by what other unknowns may lie ahead. The good news is that I have you on this journey with me and I know you won’t let me screw it up. Thank you for you continued support and encouragement.
“We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.” — Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly)
Glad to hear that you’re back up and running Adam!
Adam,
Good to hear that your site is back up. You are doing a great service for the Mac community and especially for recent Mac switchers as myself. I’ve been learning more and more about Macs since the first time I heard your show more than a year ago.
Mario
Check you http://www.dreamhost.com They are very good and there mac friendly. :)
Adam, glad to hear you are back in business. I’m also glad that your post and maybe the front page DIGG story http://digg.com/apple/Maccast_Podcast_site_shot_down_by_GoDaddy_com got them to think a bit about their practices. I for one blogged about it on my page as I am also a GoDaddy customer and would expect better communication from any hosting pprovider.
Same exact type of thing happened to Appleology. I accidentaly wrote some bad code that was requesting a file that did not exist repitedly. I didn’t find out about the problem until my hosting company pulled the plug.
It’s very frustrating due to the fact that you don’t even have access to your files so you can backup or change the code.
Now I’m with Host-Gator, and I’m very happy with their support and reliability.
Glad you are back. Figured it was a server problem. I will never count you out. A little day and a half is nothing. Thanks for the great shows and I look forward to many more.
adam,
your podcast is always great. I’m currently based in India and listen to the podcast to keep updated on Apple issues.
I’m guessing GoDaddy is just trying to cover their a#$, if i’m listening to your podcast in India, there are a lot more listening in the States.
I was looking to move to GoDaddy, but now i’m having reservations about it.
keep up the great work.
later,
mrj
honestly, godaddy sucks.
i registered my domain with them last year and when I tried to transfer it, they did a registar-lock on it so now if i want my domain back, i need to pay a high fee (~$200).
Adam,
I frequently access your website from work, though more often from home, so I was quite surprised yesterday morning to find that I had suddenly arrived at a “Forbidden Site”.
Immediately I concluded that, for some inexplicable reason, my employer had out of the blue determined that the MacCast was now off limits to his employees.
Then I thought, wait a minute…the MacCast is not pornographic, nor promotes gambling; nor is seditious in the unpatriotic sense of the word.
Then the same thing at home that night. I decided then that you were knocked off the WWW because of server issues.
Whew, well thanks for all the explaining — and so glad to have the MacCast back!
You rock Adam!
Great to have you back so soon!
Good luck with it Adam. We are web developers and use Heart Internet (http://www.heartinternet.com/) and they employ the very same tactics!
Your show is great and has helped this recent Windows to Mac switcher a great deal!
Keep up the great work. Now… I’m off to donate! :-)
I have had trouble with godady hosting also
I did find a mac mini colocation service that helped one of my clients
http://hostdrive.com/colocationmacmini/index.html
$89/mo for upto 250gb of data transfer $189/mo for 1000gb
sam
I been using 1and1.com. as my host, I was have had the same problems with Godaddy in the past as you, with them not notify me when my site was down, but 1and1.com gives a little more feature than godaddy does, for free.
i register all my domains with GoDaddy however, i have been using HostGator.com for over 4 years now and havee had absolutelu no issues. Even with my reseller account i have some pretty heavily traveled clients on the same server. Maybe not as heavy as The Maccast but server load has never been an issue. They also have dedicated machines you can rent, although more expensive than shared servers, obviously.
I do not work for them and am not affiliated with them in any way, but after trying many hosting services and after having some server load issues with almost all other hosting services i have tried in the past they are the most stable and as i said never have had a server load issue with them as i did with others, even after adding more clients to my shared server.
Just an FYI if you want to check them out. Tell them you were refered by jcaravella.com if you wish.
Joe C
Welcome back adam!
Missed the show while you’re site was down and I’m glad to hear everything is working out.
Dedicated servers can be pricey so I’m sure you’re a little stressed out about that whole ordeal so I’m going to help support and donate to this great podcast/blog.
Let me know if the server costs get to be too much I would be more then willing to provide you with some space.
Good luck,
Zak
Glad you’re back and I hope my post on Digg helped a little. When i saw your site was shot down by GoDaddy.com, i decided to post on digg because they push GoDaddy big time. Welcome back and keep up the good work.
Vally77
GoDaddy is about as bad as RegisterFly (which really stinks). I use Bluehost now. They have great service and they respond quickly.
Appleologist,
Yeah, HostGator rocks…Whatever. Nothing better than exposing their customers to vicious Trojans :)
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/09/22/hacked_hostgator_sites_distribute_ie_exploit.html
Scrant…
Good to hear that you had a favorable outcome. I’m using the Developer Level Shared Hosting at 1and1 and your podcast explaining what was going on mirrored almost exactly what just happened to me on virtually the same day.
I was using well under my bandwidth and storage limits, but they hit me with “disproportionate amount of resources.” At least they didn’t cut me off completely. They moved my site to an “auxilliary server” that had even less resources than my site. Once the did that it killed my site for about 8 hours until they let me in on what had happened so I could turn off a bunch of features. Man, was I pissed.
My site is up now, but even before this my level of service from 1and1 has been really bad in the last month. My site has been crawling, or down several times.
We’re moving toward hosting our own site in-house on a new Mac Pro (Apple doesn’t have any XServes available). No more 1and1 for us.
I noticed a lot of packet loss on my Godaddy’s sites Sep 19 about 10:00 AM EST. It seens it wasn’t just a server since I have sites on different servers.
I was so insatisfied that didn’t complain, just seeked for another web hosting. Two days later I checked again and network was normal.
As someone on Digg said the problem might be related to peak bandwidth, not how much you used since then.
VERY glad you’re back Adam! You’re one of the good guys out there, and you do a wonderful job. Keep it up, and best of luck to you!
Chris
Interestingly I emailed the GoDaddy.com president and the contact email to complain about this. They responded within one day to say they were working to get you back up and running. I was surprised they responded so quickly to a rather indignant email.
I am very happy to hear your experience with godaddy ended up (so far) this way. Your mac podcast is one of the few I rally look forward each week for a way to synergize all the mac news out there. As far as others on the web, I imagine all those that reach your level of popularity all have to go through a series of growing pains and it is great for you to reach this mark.
hello,
glad to hear that your issue has been taken care of.
i love your podcast and website! you’re one of the best mac related sources.
also i must say, that i really like the logo (?), it’s so cute :D
best,
Adam,
I am glad your podcast is back up my friend. I have not seen you in a while as i have not made any of the san diego podcast meetups. I will be at the podcast expo next week. I hope to see you there.
p.s. you need to turn your efforts towards this and make it a full time business. ;)
Rodney Rumford
Yes Adam the Maccast has grown into more of a podcast. Of course the forums the Maccast AIM chatroom and all the extra articles and review help feed this. I think what has really pushed the Maccast to a new plateau is your attentiveness to listener issues and news from around the Mac community. Heck you probably are the #1 Mac podcast on the Internet for switchers and old school Mac users alike. Keep up the great work. I won’t mind a little advertising to help keep this good thing going.
Adam,
After hearing your short announcement in the podcast this week, I’ve made a small donation to help you with your new hosting. Having worked in web hosting support several years ago (just before the big dot com bust) I can say I saw the same thing happen quite often where one site would have to be shut down (even if just temporarily) if it was using up too much of the server’s juice. My own site got shut down once when one of my (learning) Perl scripts got caught in an infinite loop. Whoops! :) Anyway, I”m glad to see you’re getting back on your feet. The MacCast is definitely one of my favorite podcsts (right up there with TWiT and Bell’s In the Batfry) — I just had to give a little something to support your excellent work.
I would go with Dreamhost or 1and1. GoDaddy has a pretty bad reputation so I would agree that they did this to stay in your good graces.
There have been several cases where GoDaddy has taken it upon themselves to police domains as well as take them hostage:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/17/1319233
http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000861.html
I would find yourself a new registrar and a new hosting provider. I have used Dreamhost for 2 years and had friends with 1and1. At least with Dreamhost they let you know if you’re getting too big for your britches (because they monitor that kinda thing) and will move you onto your own server should it be required (at no additional cost as long as you stay within your plan limits).
Adam,
Sorry to hear that you found out the hard way about GoDaddy. I had problems with sites hosted there as well. My sites were using a PHP script to pull information from Amazon.com and use it to build shopping pages. All of a sudden one day all of my sites hosted on GoDaddy were no longer able to contact Amazon, yet the same exact software was working fine on other hosting sites.
Their tech support was less than useless.
I’m sure you’ll find better results using your own dedicated server, it has solved all of my problems. Hopefully you got a Linux or UNIX OS. Be sure that you secure your new server with a firewall and a brute force detection system. For Linux I suggest APf (Advanced Protection Firewall) and BFD (Brute Force Detector). The bad guys are out there.