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In the past month I have had two full weekends that the blog has been inaccessible due to problems at my webhost – Flexihostings.   I was left no alternative, after another full day today where they could not resolve the problem, but to change webhosts.

This evening I moved the entire blog, all images, databases, etc… so if in your reading you happen across something that doesn’t look quite right please let me know as soon as possible and I will be sure to get it corrected.   (You can just leave a comment on this post.)

To my readers,  I apologize for the inconvenience that you may have experienced.  If you tried to submit posts for the carnival please try again.  You will have until the end of the month for your submissions.  I hope that this move to the new host will produce an environment that will be a bit more stable but will also give me access to a tech support team that I am confident will be able to resolve issues in a timely manner.

Now about the retraction…  On January 8th I posted an article about choosing a webhost and I refer to my webhost of about 5+ years.  The interesting thing about this article is that it doesn’t mention the reason that I had to change hosts… Reliability.   It is incredibly important that when you consider a webhost that you absolutely choose a host that has a proven track record of reliability.  You might also want to take a look at what their definition of UPTIME is and what kind of a guarantee they offer. 

The other area that I have had to reconsider in that original article is the section on Customer Support.   Originally, I thought that email support was good enough.   This is definitely something to reconsider.  In my exchange with tech support starting this past Friday I’m still not sure that they understand what the problem is, or why their attempted resolutions are not working.  (My gut feel is there is a symbolic link somewhere that has pieces of my account pointing to one server and other pieces pointing to a different server in which Apache was compiled without MOD_REWRITE.)   Being able to get in touch with a support person 24/7 is important and still not having a resolution after 3 days is just not acceptable in my opinion.

So the retraction is that I would no longer recommend Flexihostings as a webhost based on recent experiences with Reliability and Customer Support.  Perhaps after I’ve been with my new webhost for awhile I will offer a review and opinion on them.  In the meantime choose carefully and make sure you know what is important to you and your operating environment.