GoDaddy's server limitations - be warned.

Just two years ago I decided to go online with my genealogy file. I found a very cool php program called The Next Generation (TNG) and had to set up a MySQL table, which was new to me.I had been using GoDaddy's free space with the little ad banner at the top. But it was conflicting with TNG, so they assured me I would be fine with their shared server. It was $4.99 a month and they offered a bit of a discount if I paid for a year. Then they introduced me to Gallery, which I enthusiastically added to my site, which required another MySQL table, but they set me up and I was happy, happy.

Then one day relatively soon my Gallery crashed and I learned there were thousands, thousands of spam or some garbage in the comments. So, I ended comment capability. but after that the damage was done. Gallery was quite slow loading. Then soon after that, my genealogy file would not perform correctly. Never anything specific, but not right. It wouldn't export correctly. A whole xnotes table had gone bad. It would hang up on me or time out. Troubleshooting and tweaking, fixing, it'd be okay, then start performing poorly again. So, I was constantly fighting it, contacting the developer and/or GoDaddy till I got lined out again.

Since I'm no expert, I was caught between the two and staying frustrated. Let me say this, though. My genealogy file is pretty big. When I first went online I had about 16,000 people and have added to it till it's now almost double that.

Everything unstable yet again, I posted a query on a forum and an "expert" who also uses the TNG software responded and offered to upgrade me to the newest version and help me get lined out. He quickly saw how poorly GoDaddy was performing and copied all my data to his own server. Everything worked like a top! I mean, it just sings!! His own personal file is 425,000 people! So,it proves it's just a poor server that GoDaddy puts us on.

Thankfully the move of both TNG genealogy program and the Gallery were already in progress when TNG on GoDaddy totally.crashed - I mean unrecoverably crashed. (TNG cannot communicate with your data" crashed. And Gallery is like the old dial-up.

Bottom line, GoDaddy said TNG is to "too data intensive" for their shared server and I should be on a dedicated server. They said my searches were stacking and stacking and not closing off and that was a network violation. So, I suppose it's like trying to wash a full commercial load of laundry in a little apartment size stack-up washing machine. But what they said isn't completely true. The server I moved to isn't dedicated. It's shared, and has files more "data intensive" than mine on it! It's ust their server is crappy and they're trying to make it "my" fault!

So, I'm more than a little annoyed with GoDaddy that they didn't caution me of this. When I had to ask them what mySQL was, that should have told them I was novice at this. We trust them with our precious data and if they aren't going to be able hack it, or if you have limits, they should tell you that up front.

I do have other webpages that don't involve tables. And they're doing okay. Since I don't want to have to rescript them for the new server, I'll keep using GoDaddy and just pay for both places. I think I have the links and flow simple enough leading from one to the other that maybe a user won't really even notice.

The move has been quite painful, though. It started almost two weeks ago, and just yesterday, I think I'm just about lined out. Seems like everything that could go wrong did. No matter how simple something should have been - it turned out to be major. Example -- I use Filezilla as FTP client -- it just would not work, wouldn't access the new server. So, I downloaded about three other free ones, and none worked satisfactorily. So, I'll have to purchase Cute FTP Lite. But at this point, I'm glad to do it. Because Gallery was so full of garbage, we couldn't just do a restore.. So, I had to go through and redo all my album descriptions, reset thumb sizes, and do a lot of work that a good backed up data table should have done for me. But it's getting there and works so much better.

As far as this brilliant and patient young man who helped me get through this disaster -- oh, my gosh, I owe him my life!

PLEASE SEE UPDATE: Aug 6, 2012
GoDaddy's server limitations - Retracted

http://lumoto.blogspot.com/2012/08/godaddys-server-limitations-be-warned.html