If you tried to access my site this morning, you probably found yourself gettiing a DNS type of error. Not just me, you found this same error if you tried to access Jonathon Delacour, Allan Moult, wKenShow, Big Pink Cookie, Moxie, Scripty Goddess and a host of others. The reason was a gateway router problem at the NOC (Network Operations Center) responsible for maintaining the servers for all of Hosting Matters.
Hosting Matters just came out with a detailed explanation of the problems we’ve had in the last two weeks, and their plans — see Network Statement.
One of the things I’ve really liked about Hosting Matters is their honesty about problems. And it looks like the organization is making moves to improve things for the future. I respect that.
Still, when my current term is up, I hope to lease a dedicated server, and get about 20-30 webloggers to chip in each a month to pay for it, with me contributing sweat equity (I’ll manage all the software, database support, sub-domain and domain installation). We’ll be able to increase our disk space to about 1GB each, as well as increase sub-domains, databases, bandwidth use, and decrease burden on CPU, for less than what Hosting Matters costs now.
The physical server, including backups, security, and network access will still be managed by the company hosting the server.
An advantage of having a group of us together is that a software update, such as an update for Movable Type, can be easily ported to everyone once it’s been tested. And the other webloggers wouldn’t have to worry about server-side software, unless they wanted to have access to it. We’d be a co-op, with virtual meetings to determine what to install next, plans for each month’s software updates.
I want to be able to install the recent version of Python. I want to be able to install Perl libraries. I want to have a Tomcat/JSP/Java server. I need more room for my photos.
I want ‘root’ back.
