UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Programming Web Hosting Web Hosting Problem

I use Infopop as a web host for about 3 months for the web site www.panfluteforum.org (Shared Server Hosting for $ 21.--/month). The web site has an integrated forum UBBthreads 6.3 which works well.

Since I started I got user feed backs that there were access troubles. First I thought they were all related to a single ISP in Swizterland, which finally turned out not to be true.

More and more access problems were revealed from all over the world. The reports I got were either: Intermittence such as one day they could access the web page, another not.
Some were reporting no access at all.

We started trouble shooting with "tracert" and other tracing commands. Finally by talking with many web hosting experts and feed backs from ISP's we found out thet the "SOA EXPIRE TIME" was set too low (300sec).

After some efforts finally Infopop changed the value to a reasonable value of 1209600 seconds.

This really helped, since one of the main ISP I had trouble with in Switzerland suddenly made the webpage accessible.

But then I got other reports just after that, such as:

-from Canada: no access "no DNS entry"
-from Atlanta: "always when I run 'tracert" first I have access, otherwise not.
-from Switzerland intermittent access

I opened a ticket with Infopop 2 days ago. So far no response.

During all the researches I thought the problem could be with my domain registrar MELBOURNEIT, but it turned out that everything seems to be fine there.

I also did some extensive DNS testing with www.dnsreort.com
and www.dnsstuff.com

I'm mastering a total of 5 web sites. 4 of them are hosted
with Earthlink. I had never ever any problems or reports such as access trouble with them. One page is in use since 1997 and has about 9000 visitors per month.

When I run different pages throug the DNS-TIMING TEST at
www.dnsstuff.com I get the following grades:

1)All 4 sites hosted by Earthlink A+
2)www.infopop.com A
3)www.ubbdev.com B
4)www.panflteforum.org F

I'm pretty safe to say, that the bad rating has to do with the reported access trouble.

However, I need more input from experts:

a)Does anybody have an idea what could be done about this problem?

b)Can anybody recommend a reliable web server with SQL which I can count on?

Best Regards
Hanspeter Tschupp

I can't answere part A because I don't really know about these things. About part B, I would recommend Vertexhost They have extremely good prices on all of their packages, especially compared to Infopop's service. I think Infopop's cheapest option is $21/month w/ only 3GB of bandwidth. I pay $7.95/month and I have more disk space and much more bandwidth (15GB). They have MySQL 4 on their servers. Did I mention that their cheaper?

Seriously, Infopop's service is as expensive as it is because you get a free UBB.x board, but if you already have a Threads license, why pay so much more for a premium you won't use? The online documentation for Threads at Infopop is so good that anyone can set up a board themselves using any host. And if you know a little bit of Linux, it is very easy

That's my $.02

Hanspeter, is Bluewin the top provided in Switzerland? I read recently that their account include unlimited bandwidth - is that true from the practical - not "theoretical" - side?

donJulio, know of any host which offers around 100-120GB/mth at reasonable rates?

BTW, Vertexhost is apparently is moving in to the server market and should have dedicated servers available soon.

Boy, I wish we could get this type of pricing for hosted boards: http://www.ipshosting.com/?forumhosting

Anyway,

I changed the Webserver from Infopop to Inmotionhosting.com
a good setup 1000MB of storage, 50GB Bandwith, 2 SQLs, 3 webpages with separate URL on the same account and a real good customer service (voice without waiting time) for $ 19.95 a month.

But the main issue, all the access problems seem to be resolved now.

Bluewin is one of the biggest providers in Switzerland. But I don't know a lot about them since I live in the US and use only US based webhosts.

One thing I have to mention is Josh Pettit. He is a very knowlable, reliable and prompt helper when it comes to problems with the board. I recommend him highly.

That's it from my side. Thanks eveybody for the input. I hope Infopop will do something to get their week server spots corrected.