Plagiarism Today - Latest Comments in Epic Fail…

Re: Epic Fail…

girasquid (Luke) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:30:51 -0000

@slicehost just out of curiosity, what does Slicehost have in place to prevent horror stories like this one? http://tinyurl.com/6lcfwd

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:03:44 -0000

@Christina Warren -
This is a great idea! Thank you very much for sharing this. I don't think I'm going to stay with MT because my databases seem to be constantly in "burst" mode due to the volume of this site (even with Super Cache on in many cases) so a VPS will also be less expensive. However, I definitely could see how this script could be modified for any host, as you mentioned. I'm going to give it a closer look this weekend. Great work on this.

Re: Epic Fail…

Christina Warren — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:17:42 -0000

Jonathan,

Enjoy your trip! I was partially inspired by your post to put together a guide for making nightly backups of files on the Grid to Amazon S3. The post (which includes a generic backup script) is here http://www.christinawarren.com/2008/06/24/s3-ba... -- if you decide to stay with Media Temple (though it would work with any host).

I don't know what kind of solution you are using now, but I know that the $1.50 a month I spend for S3 (and I don't just use it for my website, my photos are what take up most of that space) is worth the peace of mind, knowing I have a backup every day.

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:10:38 -0000

@Christina Warren -
Somehow, I feel much better knowing that others have experienced this kind of epic fail before. Thank you very much for posting about your experience as well.

I'm on MT right now, using the GS, the same as you. I'm relatively happy with the performance but I know that, if I combine all of the sites I have responsibility for, including at least one shopping cart site, I may start to go over the GPU limits. VPS will actually be a cost saver for me.

I took a quick look at Slicehost and really liked what I saw. I'm going to do more looking up on them when I get back to the States (In England now, the reason your comments took so long to go up) and see if everyone fees as you do. However, the price is very fair and the TOS looks quite good.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Re: Epic Fail…

Christina Warren — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:48:10 -0000

Jonathan,
Wow, that sounds pretty sucktastic -- glad you were able to come out of it relatively unscathed and with some new skills. I experienced my own bout of epic faildom (though it was completely, totally my fault -- http://www.christinawarren.com/2008/04/05/when-...) back in April and understand the frustration and importance of backups all too well.

As for hosts -- I'm with Media Temple and I'm quite happy (I'm on the (gs) and I manage my dad's business site on a (dv)) with the performance (after some issues right after I joined with the Grid, they appear to have almost everything worked out and are transitioning to a new system and the support (supremely helpful and nice). Having said that, I have heard nothing but wonderful, fantastic, like mind-blowing things about Slicehost (http://www.slicehost.com) if you want to manage a VPS by yourself. They are just going to spit you at a command line (you choose the linux distro, you get the vanilla minimal install and then install whatever server or stack you want to use), but if you are comfortable with that, everyone I know who uses them is supremely happy.

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:32:58 -0000

@Dr. Mike Wendell -
I'll have to remember that. I just have a good old-fashioned external HD for that right now. Probably should look at upgrading.

Regarding the plugin, it's WP-Comment Remix. You can find it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-comment-...

I might move the comments over to Disqus though. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Re: Epic Fail…

Dr. Mike Wendell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:43:42 -0000

@Jonathan Bailey - It's lots of fun from the other end as well. Best money I ever spent was for three Apple XServe Raid backup boxes. Saved my butt many times over.

As an aside, what's the plugin here that does the "reply - quote" links? It's very handy.

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:33:51 -0000

@Dr. Mike Wendell -
These things happen sadly. It was my first and only major blow up in over 12 years of hosting Web sites, but it was bound to happen. Hopefully I'll get another 12 before it happens again.

Re: Epic Fail…

Dr. Mike Wendell — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:00:47 -0000

Jonathan, sorry to hear that you had such issues. I am glad you were able to restore the site. Just shows the importance of keeping up to date on backups.

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:06:01 -0000

@Girl -
It was a nightmare but I learned a great deal from it and I am back up now. All in all, it has made me much stronger and a better Webmaster, in my opinion. However, I hope that I never have to showcase what I've learned...

Re: Epic Fail…

Girl — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:35:54 -0000

Ugh, what a nightmare! So sorry to hear this Jonathan, I can't imagine how stressful this must have been. Good to see the site back up and running.

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:15:07 -0000

@Sue -
Ouch. I can't imagine if I had had to recreate a whole month of posts. I'll just be glad that things went as smoothly as they did, count my blessings and move on. Things clearly could have been a LOT worse.

Thank you for the hosting suggestion. I am considering a great deal of hosts right now. Known Host is definitely on the list. Right now I'm still weighing options. One of the big problems is that I want a host that can host all of the sites in my family, including my wife's and mine as well as some of my client's sites.

So, right now I'm weighing my decision on a lot of variables but I should have an idea of where I am going in a week or two.

Thank you very much for the suggestion!

Re: Epic Fail…

Sue — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:33:36 -0000

Hello Jonathan. So sorry to hear of your recent troubles. Been there, done that, but without a recent backup. Over a month of posts had to be recreated. :(

If you want to check out a company that gives such great, fast, polite and efficient service, I would highly recommend Known Host. There is not one single bad review at Webhostingtalk.com for these guys, and based on that, and the fact all the reviews were excellent in regards to their service, I went with them after problems with my previous shared hosting.

Right now, they are running a great special (http://knownhost.com/specials.html) similar to the one I took, and I can tell you right now these guys are great. If you order cPanel or Plesk or Direct Admin ($5 more per month for the license), you get a fully managed VPS. When I say fully managed, I mean it. They go out of their way to help you. There is no reason for them to help with WordPress, but when they transferred my site over, there were issues with permissions and ownerships. They fixed it all.

If I open a ticket, I swear these guys have it fixed before I send it. You cannot go wrong with the knowledgeable service these guys (and gals) provide. I asked about installing something, and the reply that it was done came in the same mail as the autoreply to the ticket, in a five minute check.

If I sound like I'm a salesperson for them, it's because I'm so happy with them. Uptime since I moved there is 100%, and their forum has a place for updates and issues on each datacenter (they use three...you choose which you'd like). And it's kept very much up to date if an issue arises.

Hope things work out for you, and do definitely check out knownhost.

Re: Epic Fail…

Jonathan Bailey — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:30:50 -0000

@Ramana Rajgopaul -
Ramana: Probably a good move. I don't think I'm going to have this kind of issue again but one never knows. On that note, if my SQL databases ever completely screw up, I know where to turn...

Re: Epic Fail…

Ramana Rajgopaul — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:36:53 -0000

Hi Jonathan,

Sorry that you had to go through all that. I am glad that I am not in the same league. I have now put up my blog finally and have started to post some articles too. They are not too important, and though I hope that nothing will go wrong, I hope to be able to handle it, if it happens in systematic manner. I have copy pasted your post on to a word document and saved it for posterity!