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This though the whole moving process for a 27Gb website will take maybe a week or two. Obviously, I have found a new host and am moving MadridTeacher.com there but it's an incredibly slow process. However, I have no choice but to try delay pointing the DNS/URL to the new host till I get everything uploaded there. I didn't get a chance to ask for more time, In their response to my request for more information they said "I'm sorry, but unfortunately I can not extend the time allowed; your files will be deleted if you haven't removed them Friday May 15, 2009." And I hadn't even asked the question "can I have more time?" yet. They beat me to the punch. But, I will try by all means possible to upload all of the MadridTeacher.com’s advertisers’ pages, texts, photos, logos, etc. first to minimize any sort of disruption to you. Videos and photos of Madrid, especially, will have to wait till later. I think that most of this first phase is already done, but, in any case, you may unfortunately experience some disruption in services at some point in time while I am troubleshooting this problem, and I can't be sure exactly when.
As a deeper explanation of the situation, I will simply state that my website’s host for the past 5 or 6 years till May 14, 2009 seems to me to have melted down. (Understandably, this is the beginning of the end of this relationship.) According to entries on their forum: http://forums.powweb.com/showthread.php?p=469795 (they may no longer be there), they gave some or all of the sites hosted there with over 15Gb of harddisk usage 2-3 days till sometime Friday to get rid of all of their videos, photos and sound files (from Wednesday morning) or else they would delete them. At the very least, this is what happened to me. I contacted them via a message from my control panel, but they did not give me a more specific explanation or a clearer response as to why. In fact, they further confused me with a self-contradictory “This is not due to any particular file type or amount of files” in their response.
I confirmed this exasperating situation over the phone with technical support, which absurdly recommended two other websites which I could contract where I could store my files and simply link to them from MadridTeacher. Even my tiny little sound files with vocabulary words such as “yellow,” “red,” etc. for students were to be removed.
My apologies to MadridTeacher.com’s clients for any problems that this host’s breakdown in service quality may cause us, but I was just given no warning and
very little time to react. This host used to be truly great and unbelievably they even got to the point where they were offering unlimited bandwidth and harddisk space though in my control panel I actually had a limit on harddisk space - I was using less than 10% of these 300 Gb - and a limit on bandwidth - I was using less than 5% of these 3,000 Gb.
The only thing I can imagine has happened is that they've been caught with their pants down by the deepening recession.
I want to be perfectly clear about this for my clients and visitors' sake so they will know that I did absolutely nothing to deserve this treatment nor was there ever even an inkling that something like this might happen. These folks, in my opinion, are at the very best clearly behaving in an unprofessional, improper and informal way. At worst, emotionally speaking, other vocabulary words such as "false advertisers" and "shameless scoundrels" also come to mind, but I can't be sure if they can legally be applied to them due to this situation. However, morally speaking they can't now after my being a customer for 4 or 6 years claim that I not compliant with their terms of service when my photos and videos have in fact been on their servers for years. Even if you did agree with them about the number of files being excessive, you'd have to admit that they should have to give a client who's paid through till next November the benefit of the doubt and give them more time to react and possibly move the site elsewhere. Legally speaking, though I think I would be in my rights to sue them if the did happen to follow through with what might just end up amounting to an ugly bluff, I will do nothing and simply take advantage of the horrible situation to improve the site.
So, I'm moving the site to one of their main competitors at “mediatemple.net” with clients such as Adobe, Quantas, ABC, Warner Brothers, TIME, Techcrunch, etc. Techcrunch has the reputation of being the brightest technology guys on the internet. I hope we have better luck this time. But, if Techcrunch got it wrong, not to mention ABC and TIME, . . . well . . ., I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
By the way, I've only paid for a month at mediatemple.net and we'll see how things go. I did explain up front that I have a 27Gb site and explained that my bandwidth used till the 13th so far this month was 77Gb. They said "no problem." Unlike Powweb, they have a scalability plan where I can upgrade to better services and as those rates are manageable for me even now, so we'll do so as soon as possible. In any case, there's no telling what sorts of problems I'll be coming across in the transfer and which I’ll have to troubleshoot first. The main priority is to minimize disruption to the site's advertisers first and then worry about further upgrades.
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This is the last message I received from them on Wednesday
Section 13 of our TOS (Bandwidth and Disk Usage): Services are intended for "normal use only". Any activity that results in "excessive usage" is prohibited. We may "suspend, discontinue or delete accounts" that results in or risks "degradation of Service"... regardless of the amount of disk space or bandwidth included in User's plan.
Section 13 further provides as follows: "Hosting space is intended for normal use only, and is limited to Web files, e-mail and content of the hosted Web sites, not for storage of media or other data. Hosting space may not be used as off site storage for electronic files or for third party electronic mail or FTP hosts. You are responsible for removing any files which do not meet these requirements, and for adhering to any hosting space (disk usage) limits allocated to your account(s). Failure to do so may result in removal and deletion of such materials, and/or in discontinuation of your services or account, which actions we may take in our sole discretion."
After evaluation of our customers who are using the shared platform we have found your account to be in the "excessive usage" catagory. This is not due to any particular file type or amount of files. I'm sorry, but unfortunately I can not extend the time allowed; your files will be deleted if you haven't removed them Friday May 15, 2009. We also suggest you make a backup of all files on the site in case something is removed that you later need access to. Please let us know if you have any questions pertaining to this matter so that we can assist you further.
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The message I sent them as soon as I read their email
I received an email from Powweb (unless it's some sort of spam or trick) which I'll attach to the end of this email. What I'd like to know is 1) is this for real? and 2) if so, what on earth does it mean specifically? What files specifically is it referring to because I really have no idea.
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The first email I received from Powweb on Wednesday morning.
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ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE REVIEW THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY.
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We regret to inform you that your ". . ." account is
currently in violation of the following section of our Terms of
Service and Acceptable Use Policy:
"Hosting space ... is limited to Web files, e-mail and content
of the hosted Web sites, not for storage of media and other data.
Hosting space may not be used as offsite storage for electronic
files or for third party electronic mail or FTP hosts."
*****************************************************************
You need to remove the files in violation within three business
days to avoid having them deleted.
*****************************************************************
If you are using your Web hosting account as a repository for
storing music, movies, videos or pictures of any kind, your
account is in violation of our Terms of Service. Please
understand that we're not making any statement as to the
legality of the files; this type of file storage is simply not
what our hosting accounts are intended for.
For more information, please review the "Bandwidth and Disk
Usage" section of our Terms of Service: . . .
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. We
certainly do not want to lose you as a customer, but we must
consider the needs of all customers on our shared hosting
platform. Our Terms of Service are in place to ensure the
optimum performance of all accounts on our platform.
 Announcement (8 June).
MadridTeacher.com is now hosted on the dedicated virtual server at MediaTemple.net and seems to be working ok. I think I've gotten most of the dead links taken care of. The next step is to totally back up the site on a completely different host (an inactive site) just in case this host were to break down as well.
Announcement (27 May).
I think most of MadridTeacher.com is working ok on the new grid server at Mediatemple.net. I've also transferred MadridTeacher.mobi and TEFL-Diary.com to our new dedicated virtual server, but the latter hasn't been fully filled out yet with David Overton's articles. Hopefully, we'll be able to so by this weekend. I'm pretty sure we'll be finished with MadridTeacher.com's migration to the new DVS by then as well.
Announcement (19 May).
I've checked a little around the site for broken links and missing photos and there are a few. Advertisers are advised to let me know if any of these are any missing from their ads. I've got my hands full with other things right now and am not currently able to do a visual check of the entire site myself.
Announcement (18 May).
We had to migrate the site before it was ready to go. MadridTeacher.com is now hosted on Mediatemple, but there are still a few loose ends to tie up. The site had to be transferred before it was ready because Powweb started to carry out its "nefarious schemes" this morning by cutting off our ftp connection and removing images from the site.
If you're curious, see TEFL Diary to see how they've hacked it up.
Also, this whole experience has exposed an unforeseen "Achilles' heel" for this or any website, the web host. Which is why when the transfer is done to the new super-virtual-server outlined below, we'll proceed to contract an additional back-up server in case anything else like this happens. If it did happen, the solution would be as simple re-directing the DNSes to the back-up webhost which can be complete in a question of 30 minutes to an hour.
Announcement (17 May): An upgrade, etc.
The first migration to a new webhost is not yet complete. However, I've already deleted 10 or 15 Gb of videos from Powweb. Though I've tried to find them all, you may still find some dead links.
Upon completion of our current "emergency" migration to our new webhost, we'll be migrating to a new dedicated virtual server on the same host with 40GB of harddisk space, 512MB of RAM, and 1.5 terabytes of bandwidth. That should be noticeably faster than what we've had so far on a shared host, but if not, we'll upgrade to the next level: 60GB, 1GB, 2TB. (Notice that this is a new "migration" and not an "upgrade.")
As part of this new migration procedure, we'll be losing the videos hosted on MadridTeacher.com but maintaining the embedded Youtube videos. This means that viewers will still be able to watch the videos on Youtube, but not download them from the site. I believe that doing this will improve the speed and performance of the site in general. I'll also be studying any other ways that we can improve the speed at which the site opens up.
More:
Powweb web hosting sucks
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