GoDaddy's server limitations Retracted

Last year I had a lot of trouble with my genealogy program, TNG, that was being hosted on GoDaddy; and I laid out these problems in a blog Lumoto's Woes: GoDaddy's server limitations - be warned. GoDaddy subsequently sent me an email stating that they had found the problem; and it was a specific script that was causing this look of queries. It was all over my head. I asked TNG programmer if that script was familiar to him, and he stated no, it was coming maybe from a report. Since I was moved and all was going well, I abandoned the idea of trying to fix anything. I just left my site up at GoDaddy but the database was deleted.
I was having pretty good luck with the new home, though it would crash periodically; one time for over a week and another time for about a month, which was last May (2012; over a year after the move). I went back to the email GoDaddy had sent me and looked at the offending script again and figured out what report it had to be in; verified the script was there, and deleted the report. Why it didn't cause a problem on the new server site I can't say. But since I was crashed there for their own reasons, I decided I should rebuild my database on the GoDaddy site and see what happened. I found that a little complicated, but thought it through. I had a couple of questions and called GoDaddy and the young man was very helpful and though he didn't know the program I use, he did know enough that he guided me and together we figured it out. I was so happy!
I've been using it now since May and so far, so good. Looks like that script had been the problem all along, and all that other discussion about how TNG was too data intensive and how GoDaddy wasn't capable of handling large databases and various other guesses of why I kept crashing were all wrong. It had to have been the script all along.
The 2nd site finally got back on line; but by then I seemed to be stable with GoDaddy. I've opted to keep both hosting sites and though I'm posting to my GoDaddy site, giving out that URL, I am still keeping the other site as a clone copy. That seems to be the safest thing to do since these servers do leave you vulnerable. Besides, at the moment, Google searches seem to find the 2nd site a lot better than the GoDaddy site. I guess I have to register it again. I need to refresh myself on how to do that.
In defense of my 2nd host, the people who run the server - or part of the server I am on - have been amazing. They do everything they can and work very hard to keep things running smoothly and efficiently. The crashes were further up the food chain, the actual owners of the server - and as I understand it, they sort of contract out some of it and they manage that. I'm not sure exactly how that works. They were probably more frustrated than I was. I couldn't directly communicate with the top tier on my own, which was a big drawback.
Anyway, I wanted to reprieve GoDaddy of my complaints against them. My site seems to be stable; and whenever I have any question at all, their support staff are always so nice and helpful and readily accessible and would highly recommend them for anyone who needs a hosting site.
I guess for completeness' sake, I also have a little program Gallery that I use for my photographs. For some reason the new site could never keep that working. Since genealogy was my biggest concern and Gallery always has worked on the GoDaddy site, I haven't worried with it; but it has been a negative to the newer site. They haven't really wanted to help me with that and I haven't pushed it. But it is another reason I'm happier at GoDaddy.

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

Debut of my Genealogy via PHP and my new Web Page

Genealogy has been a big hobby of mine for about a decade or more, and I have collected a lot of information, both from my own research and info others have shared with me. I've used Family Tree Maker from the beginning, and still do, though I haven't liked the newest versions since Version 11.
Well, anyway, I've wanted to put my collection on the web, but didn't like Ancestry.com's layout, and debating on the LDS Family Search site. With a bit of Googling, I came across a program called The Next Generation. It's a PHP program, which until I found it had no idea what PHP was, but I looked at the other users' pages, and samples, and liked it very much and decided that's how I wanted to do it. All this was last Friday, the 13th. So, I paid my $30 and haven't hardly looked up since. Last year I had tried doing my genealogy with HTML, but it was crap. We had Hurricane Ike and I never got back to it, mainly because I wasn't happy with it anyway. So, I'm more than excited about this program.
It was a bit complicated to get installed because I had to convert my webspace with GoDaddy from Windows to Linux, then later I had to call them back to get MySQL, which I still don't know what that is. And finally before it was all over with, I opted to pay GoDaddy for my space, $5 a month as I had been using their free space with the ad. The ad, as it turned out, interferred with the program.

An individual, Darrin Lythgoes, http://lythgoes.net/ wrote this amazing program. There's also a pretty extensive mailing list and TNG Forum. It's quite a "club" I guess you could call it. Though I have communicated with questions to Darrin, I haven't taken part in these other vehicles of support yet. So far it seems most of the users are way advanced of my non-existent PHP abilities.
But I'm up and running. I've installed the program, carefully according to the ReadMe instructions, and created my gedcom, and uploaded that. My Cute FTP client crashed, and GoDaddy told me about FileZilla Client, which is free and is working great. Anyway, I started uploading cemetery pictures and documents I had already scanned, like marriage records, obit, and assigned them to the corresponding individuals.
By now it's Wednesday, yesterday; and I realized before I went any further I needed to create a web page that would incorporate my other web pages as well as the genealogy pages. So, after some thought, and browsing through my own photos, I came with a plan and created as I went, taking my old web page and totally redesigning it - all with basic html. That took me all day yesterday. Now, short of a bit of tweaking, I think I'm ready now to get back to uploading documents. I have sooo many, and will probably never finish that task in this lifetime.
Well, I guess this is the official unveiling. I have told a few select friends and relatives about it, but I have not listed it with Ancestry or posted it on any of their boards yet. That will come when I get more of my documents added and linked up to more individuals. But for now, here's my new site: http://sherrysharp.com/ Of course the Genealogy Link takes you to the wonderful, fabulous TNG program!