12 replies to this topic

[mushtaq]

I have been with ASO for about 3 years now, I have had a vbulletin forum running which has been growing steadily over this time, up until late last year things were running fine, and I was very happy with the service and support.

But the service seem to get getting worse, as I have regular outages and mysql connection failures, the usual support response is your site is getting busy so you should upgrade the package, this I have been doing and now on to the Super shared account and even changed server from Rose to Christian because it was suggested that this was more reliable server.

Well today my site went down again and on top of that my account got suspended, when I enquired as to the cause I was told that it's because my site is using too many resources and maybe I should upgrade now to VPS.

This does not make sense to me because over the last two months my site usage has actually gone down because of the intermittent availability and regular downtimes, I have asked for some information to determine the cause of the spikes but support are not able to provide that to me, my site has now been off for over 6 hours and my support tickets are getting passed to billing instead of technical support trying to help in pinpointing the cause of the problems.

I am now wondering if there is a real problem with my site or is this a way to move people to larger accounts? is it worth me moving to VPS, especially as I don't know what the real cause of the problem is, do I move to another hosting company?

I'm really disappointed with the service recently because I thought I had found a good hosting company and wont need to be looking around again.

[djbaxter]

It's not just a matter of traffic to your forum. It's also a matter of what features you have enabled in vBulletin and what add-ons you have installed.

I moved my vBulletin forum to VPS almost 2 years ago now and yes, it is definitely worth it.

[mushtaq]

It's not just a matter of traffic to your forum. It's also a matter of what features you have enabled in vBulletin and what add-ons you have installed.

I moved my vBulletin forum to VPS almost 2 years ago now and yes, it is definitely worth it.

I have not done any work on the site for couple of years, so no scripts have been modified or added, so I would expect nothing to break unless there are changes does at OS level that are out of my control.

[Janou]

mushtaq, i happy to read and see i'm not the only site with same problem !

I have been with ASO for about 1 years, i have an IPB forum and lot problems, it's just horrible. First 5-6 mouth, i'm very very happy with ASO, but now i have often corrupt database, problems to access with my site, and i also see sometime, when you try to access to my site, you can download the index.php with password and all informations like a txt file   Normaly this last problem is close.

The traffic don't change a lot for me last 6 mouth, but every days i have white page with no acces to site or forum. Not just one time but several time a day. Maybe two mouth i change the server and go to Christian ( same server you are ) and it's very strange, because today, my site went doing like your site, and account suspended during maybe 8-9 hours. Very strange, we don't use same software... but have exaclty same final problem : account suspended.

Christian make a really good job at the begining, but after maybe 2 or 3 weeks, i have same results than the older server.

This morning my site come back, but this evening i have still white page problem. For informations, i have no mod's with IPB, it's just the last stable version without any mods...

I still happy with the support, because they answer very well and quickly, but all big problems are stay here ( availability, very regular downtimes, corrupt database probably during the beginning of a downtimes, i really don't know ) They correct problem quickly but if everybody understaind why sometimes there's a problem like corrupt database, i will be happy to send less emails to support !

I really don't know why i have so many problems with my site, i build it is very with simple html and forum build by IPB team without any mod...

I'm really disappointed with ASO, i chose ASO for the quality of service ( still here ) and the opinion of friends, who are very happy with, but i think i'm not lucky and don't really know why...

[djbaxter]

It's not just a matter of traffic to your forum. It's also a matter of what features you have enabled in vBulletin and what add-ons you have installed.

I moved my vBulletin forum to VPS almost 2 years ago now and yes, it is definitely worth it.

I have not done any work on the site for couple of years, so no scripts have been modified or added, so I would expect nothing to break unless there are changes does at OS level that are out of my control.

What about vBulletin upgrades? They've been adding features and fixing code vulnerabilities and that alone may have pushed up your resource usage.

If you run a forum, sooner or later you're going to outgrow shared hosting. That's just a fact of life.

Edited by djbaxter, 23 September 2008 - 04:17 PM.

[mushtaq]

It's not just a matter of traffic to your forum. It's also a matter of what features you have enabled in vBulletin and what add-ons you have installed.

I moved my vBulletin forum to VPS almost 2 years ago now and yes, it is definitely worth it.

I have not done any work on the site for couple of years, so no scripts have been modified or added, so I would expect nothing to break unless there are changes does at OS level that are out of my control.

What about vBulletin upgrades? They've been adding features and fixing code vulnerabilities and that alone may have pushed up your resource usage.

If you run a forum, sooner or later you're going to outgrow shared hosting. That's just a fact of life.

Like I said, there has not been any updates to my forum for a long time, and no major increase in usage (mainly due to the site not being available)

Anyway I have had enough and now have moved my forum to another hosting company which offer a better package and the forum is running like it should be. I had originally moved to ASO because I had read that they were good at hosting VB forums, but after all the problems started I started to look at alternatives and even looked at how many sites were running on the same server, it was 350 last time I checked.

Thank for the service in the past ASO, but I'm out of here because I'm not getting the service for the money.

[intelliot]

Which server were you on?

[IronMac]

I'm only posting in this thread because a friend of mine who ordered a plan for her cousin has yet to get a reply from support for three days!  She had made a mistake in ordering a six month signup but now wants to extend it to a year.  

[AndrewB]

I'm only posting in this thread because a friend of mine who ordered a plan for her cousin has yet to get a reply from support for three days!  She had made a mistake in ordering a six month signup but now wants to extend it to a year.  

It sounds like she's not getting the email replies from support.

Ask her to check her spam filters for the automatic email reply with the Ticket number and Ticket/Support password (http://asmallorange.com/help). From there, she can login to the ticket system to verify that replies are being posted, even if the emails aren't getting through.

[IronMac]

I'm only posting in this thread because a friend of mine who ordered a plan for her cousin has yet to get a reply from support for three days!  She had made a mistake in ordering a six month signup but now wants to extend it to a year.  

It sounds like she's not getting the email replies from support.

Ask her to check her spam filters for the automatic email reply with the Ticket number and Ticket/Support password (http://asmallorange.com/help). From there, she can login to the ticket system to verify that replies are being posted, even if the emails aren't getting through.

Thanks, she's going to try email again. I don't know about checking spam filters.

Ok, she sent another email and got an automated reply.  

[gloryforixseal]

There were no support questions from November through beginning of April, seems strange, I am new just wondering why? forum is not used like a lot of others I am in, many more questions and communication from members, any ideas why?

[Cyberdog]

I think that generally support is declining at ASO but there are still excellent people around like Andrew and Frank who genuinely want to do a good job.

So I agree, its not what it used to be, but then again nothing is really is it? They cant do a perfect job all the time and theres always going to be some members of staff who perhaps should consider retraining or a career move.

Im currently waiting 3 hours for closure on an urgent ticket. I wont hold my breath