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.
Labels: godaddy, shared server, the Gallery2, The Next Generation Genealogy program