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