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[Laird]

Yes, you're right, Max. Hostgator is one of the most affordable shared hosting options given what you get. I mean, if you ask (I did) they even give you shell access. Once they'd added free, auto-renewing SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt via AutoSSL, they had everything I could possibly have wanted in a shared hosting service. And then this problem came along...

Aside from the hassle of having to migrate, moving to a (virtual) private server seems like a good idea to me. It needn't even be a huge increase in costs: I have a friend from university who's using (and happy with) IO Zoom's VPS hosting service, and prices start from USD 8 per month, which is pretty good.

There'd be an additional question though: I'm hosting a few other sites, and would want to migrate them too. Would Psience Quest be hosted on the same VPS, or would it be better to split PQ hosting off into a separate hosting package, so that it was independent? (Right now it's being hosted on the same hosting package as my other sites, and thus isn't costing PQ founders/members anything extra because I already had support for multiple domains in my hosting package).

Yeah, that was the question... costs... and how that is managed in future.

I’d be willing to contribute, but wonder what others think? What are the implications long term... etc...

I would too Max.

[Laird]

Positive Internet's Z package seems to be hosted on a shared server. I think that if we were to go from our current shared server package with Hostgator to another shared server package, we would want some sort of guarantee that we weren't going to experience the same sort of resource contention issues that we are currently experiencing. I can't see any guarantee to that effect on the page to which you linked, Max, although the 3-hour maximum response time sounds promising - but only if the response includes a working solution to whatever problems were reported! I can get on Live Chat to Hostgator support and have a response within minutes, but that response is inevitably not very helpful and doesn't resolve the problem...

Then again, the drawback of a virtual private server (VPS) solution like that of IO Zoom is that we would be responsible for managing the entire server: if one of the tools in the production chain - say, the Apache web server - broke down, we would have to diagnose and fix the problem ourselves. This doesn't concern me personally too much because I have a fair bit of experience with web development on my local machine, so am comfortable with diagnosing whatever technical problems come up when running a development server, but as you say, Max, we have to think of long-term implications, and we can't be sure that I or somebody with similar technical experience will be here, or at least readily accessible, into the distant future.

I'm also curious to know - since the page doesn't go into much detail - whether Positive Internet's Z package comes with free SSL certificates, via a provider like Let's Encrypt, or whether they are a paid extra. Do you know the answer to this, Max?

A few other points of comparison between Positive Internet's Z package, IO Zoom's basic Linux VPS package, and our current Hostgator package:

• Price-point:
  Positive Internet: USD 13.27/month (based on current exchange rates).
  IO Zoom : USD 8.00/month.
  Hostgator : USD 10.95/month.
  IO Zoom's basic VPS package turns out to be cheapest - cheaper even than our current shared hosting package with Hostgator, which is very surprising!
  
• Storage space:
  Positive Internet: 1 GB.
  IO Zoom : 20 GB.
  Hostgator : Nominally "unlimited", but in effect, about 20 GB.
  Positive Internet's storage capacity would for the moment be sufficient for PQ's needs, but would not be sufficient for the other sites I'm currently hosting.
  
• Number of hosted domains supported:
  Positive Internet: One only? The page doesn't quite specify.
  IO Zoom : Unlimited.
  Hostgator : Unlimited.
  Positive Internet presumably would support only the hosting of PQ on a single hosting package; it would not be suitable for me to host my other sites.
  

The question of whether to separate PQ's hosting off from the hosting of my other sites would then seem to need to be resolved before deciding whether to go with Positive Internet. There are pros and cons. The obvious pro is cost: it would be cheaper to go with a single hosting package rather than two separate ones, and I would be able to contribute more personally to PQ's hosting (potentially all of it, as I am currently doing) since at the same time I would be paying for the hosting of my other sites. The obvious con is lack of independence.

I am grateful though, Max and Steve, that you guys are willing to contribute towards PQ's hosting costs. I'd welcome your input (and that of any other members) on the question of whether or not to split out PQ into a separate hosting package.

And of course all of this assumes that we end up deciding that migration is necessary in the first place, versus just trying to wait the problem out or live with it.

[Ninshub]

What's up with HostGator? People Love/Hate it. Why?

[Laird]

What's up with HostGator? People Love/Hate it. Why?

A pretty fair-minded review, I think, except that (as becomes clear in the complaints in the comments section) they get the evaluation of Hostgator's support wrong. As I wrote earlier in the thread: some years back, Hostgator's support agents were technically proficient and could solve problems in real-time via Live Chat. That's no longer the case. They are, as one commenter noted, uniformly polite and can't be faulted for their manner, but they are simply unable any longer to solve problems of the sort that we've discussed in this thread - certainly not in real time, and now it appears not via support tickets either.

Their Live Chat agents often seem to have been picked randomly from the street with little knowledge of web hosting or technology in general, and the best they can do is link you to a preexisting article, or quote from a manual, or escalate the issue into a support ticket, which itself often either is ignored or does not result in a satisfactory solution.

[Laird]

I’m not suggesting you use positive... just I know they are good.... so might have been worthy to put on your shortlist... lol...

OK, cool, fair enough, and thanks so much for your input, Max - in turn, I'm not suggesting that Positive aren't worthy, and I hope my comparison and questions weren't overly pedantic and critical! Was just trying to make sure we'd "get what we need", so to speak.

You’re going to have to manage it I think Laird... doing so with your other sites makes sense... but then we’ve got the problem of a forum that regularly stops working...and nobody really knows why, and therefore nobody knows how to fix it?

The question over the long term wasn’t about you, so much as what happens if others contribute financially, then later stop contributing. Having a direct, easy and loose method of donations via PayPal etc. advertised on the site, with regular requests for funding... like Wikipedia... makes sense to me. Then people can donate when and how they want, or not.

I’m just thinking aloud about how we might put the forum onto a better financial footing, so that it can get a better hosting company that is capable of solving the ongoing problems.

All cool, Max, and thanks again. FWIW, I spoke with my university friend last night on Messenger, and he confirmed that he's 100% happy with IO Zoom, and hasn't even had cause to contact them for support, which he expects (based on reviews) would be excellent if he did for whatever reason have cause to contact them.

Here's the decision I'd make if (1) it wasn't a royal PITA to manually migrate four websites, and (2) I didn't have an obligation (and the honour) to consult the PQ community, and in particular its founders, before making any such decision:

Switch providers immediately to IO Zoom, choosing their basic 2 GB RAM, 1 CPU Linux VPS hosting solution for 8 USD/month.

I'd be totally prepared to absorb these costs myself, but, given the generosity expressed by yourself and Steve, and potentially shared by others, energy/motivation permitting, I'd arrange with the other founders to set up a donations page. This page would have two purposes: (1) ongoing documentation of income and expenditure, and (2) solicitation and facilitation of donations (presumably through PayPal, but we might be able to come up with other means).

Re #1, the expenditure would be (a) hosting costs - shared, as noted, with my three other hosted sites, and (b) domain registration and privacy costs: currently, our primary domain, psiencequest.net, is paid for mostly by Ian, and the redirected domains, psiencequest.org and psiencequest.com, are paid for by me, with additional costs incurred due to our desire to keep our contact details/addresses private.

The income would be whatever Ian, myself, and the other founders put in by default, plus donations by members, some of which Ian/myself might use to defray our own default expenditure (and these offsets would be listed too).

Then folks would be able to look at it all and say something like, "Well, hmm, over the past year, Laird and Ian have put in $X, and there have been $Y donations, but Laird is using 75% of the hosting for his own sites, and he and Ian have defrayed their $X by Z% of the $Y donations, and so at this point I think [it's all in reasonable balance | it would be helpful if I donated a little $W just to keep things in balance]".

But, honestly - and I don't mind if you find this kind of pathetic - just writing all of that out has kind of taken it out of me, let alone implementing it all!

[Laird]

I spoke with my university friend last night on Messenger

P.S. If anybody wants to learn Japanese, they should check out his (IO Zoom-hosted) site, https://www.tanoshiijapanese.com/ - he has really done such a fantastic job with it and I am so proud of what he's achieved.