In my last post I discussed some of the hosting services that I’ve been examining. A few of the links (TextDrive, Joyent, Strongspace) contain referral id’s. Any click on these URL’s that lead to a sale generate a small commission for me.
I don’t expect big things from these referrals, but you never know. If I’m happy with a service and someone who reads this blog ends up choosing that service for their own use, I see a referral fee as a win-win. The obvious exception to this rule is the temptation to blindly refer services/products that you can’t/don’t vouch for just for the commission. I don’t think I would ever do this, given the poor trade-off between sacrificing what small bit of credibility that I have and the meager amount of income that I would generate. The poker links on the right follow the same mold: these are sites and/or services that I actually use.
Now, to the point of this post. Any links that I include in-text (there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about this the other day) will be marked with a double-underline. This will differentiate sponsored links from normal links. I think the double-underline is somewhat of an industry standard, so I’m happy to go with it. Once again, this is all moot given my traffic, but the same principles will probably be used on DCKickball’s blog.
So, a couple days ago I wrote about flirting with new hosting providers. For reasons that are hazy, I thought DreamHost would be a good provider to check-out and compare to the service I’m currently receiving from TextDrive. At first blush, I was very happy with what I saw from DH, including a very complete web admin console. I was able to set-up domains/users/email easily. There were tabs for managing your billing, DNS, 1-click installs and other goodies. I was impressed.
These feelings rapidly vanished over the course of the next 2-3 days. My main impetus for obtaining a new hosting provider was to set-up a hosting environment for briancartenuto.com, the website of a buddy of mine who is an executive chef. He’s currently slumming on a cheapo GoDaddy host, and I wanted to set-up a Mephisto CMS for him to better manage his on-line presence.
I then spent the better part of 2 days trying to get Mephisto (and later Typo 4) trying to run on DH using FastCGI. First of all, Apache+FastCGI isn’t even the best option for Rails deployment (see Lighttpd, Mongrel, etc), but it’s all they “offered” so I’ll take it. Despite following every possible set of instructions for getting things set-up properly, I failed to get either application up-and-running. I submitted a support ticket, waited 24 hours plus, and nothing. I am by no means a newbie when it comes to *nix/Apache/Ruby/etc and I simply couldn’t get things to work. So long Dreamhost, it was nice knowing you.
All of which has made me appreciate TextDrive a great deal more. TextDrive is in the process of re-defining a new set of hosting plans in conjunction with bundling services from their sister companies Joyent and Strongspace. It’s possible that some of these improvements might alleviate some of the limitations/problems I’ve had, so we’ll have to wait-and-see. Thanks to Adam Lindsay for cluing me in to some excellent forum scuttlebut referring to the future of TextDrive and their plans.
Still, I am very much in the market for alternative hosts, even if all my TxD issues were to be resolved. I don’t like the idea of putting all my eggs in any one basket. An email to the RubyDC elicited the following suggestions that I will be checking out:
Timmy just posted this message to our message board:
That’s right folks the #1 ranking is up for grabs this week, it’s Timmy Smash!! vs. Cubanstinks. We all know who the “People’s Champ” is and don’t worry I’m here to represent you all. My victory will be your victory for Truth, Justice, and the American Way!
Now, I won’t pretend that I know what that means. I have the #1 ranking all locked-up. The closest team is 3 games behind me. I can only presume that he’s referring to my power rankings. We play each other next week, and I suppose he’s thinking that if he wins, he’ll jump up to the #1 spot. Dream on, Timmmay!
The Shaun Alexander gamble seems to be paying off for me. SA rumbled to 22 points for me last night. Along with help from LJ and Romo, I scored a league-high 125 points this week. I just hope I’m not peaking at the wrong time. I won’t play another meaningful game until Week 15.
Carter’s Playoff Hopeful Rankings
Cubanlinks (11-1): just wreaking teams these days
Timmy Smash (8-4): rolling the dice with Jason Campbell
Fear the Turtle (8-4): scores points, but makes you wonder how
NY or Bust (6-6): Tough 4-point loss to Timmy this week, might keep him out.
Tinkle Fairies (7-5): Only scored 50 points this week, what gives?
Abramoff’s Revenge (4-8): Scored 118 points, still mathematically alive!
Today I coughed-up $240 or so for 1-year of DreamHost hosting. I have been using Textdrive for the past 9 months or so, and have become increasingly frustrated (MySQL crashes, sporadically sluggish performance, and high prices).
The straw that broke my back was my inability to add a new domain without coughing up more money. I already pay $60/month for business-class hosting (ha) and am limited to 5 domains. Simply ridiculous. So, here’s what I get for roughly $20/month with DH:
Storage: 400 GB
Bandwidth/month: 4TB
Databases: unlimited
Domains: unlimited
Custom DNS: included
I won’t bother to list everything else, those are the key points to me. I’ll also be completely honest: none of this mean anything if the performance sucks. I will be evaluating DH quite a bit over the next couple of weeks. At the moment I’ve spent an entire day failing to get RubyOnRails/FastCGI working properly. So, I’m not getting too excited yet. But I am hoping for better things.
Well, I’ve done it. After last night’s MNF game between the Giants and Jaguars, the Commish (my opponent this past week) failed to get enough out of MoJo (11.1 points) to beat me. I have now clinched my division and will be getting a 1st round bye during the playoffs.
Timmy has already chimed in, but I’ll go ahead and admit it: my victory was WEAK. I had the lowest point total of all winning teams, with the next lowest team scoring 15 points more than me. This kind of luck has been the story of my season, I’ve been catching teams either asleep at the wheel or just on very bad weeks. The Commish started McNabb against me this week, and he ended up tearing his ACL and is out for the season.
Still, let me defend myself. My team is 3rd in the league is overall offense. I’ve been proactive about making moves/trades to keep winning and prepare myself for the playoffs. I’ll say it right now: my playoffs depend entirely on Shaun Alexander getting back to form and being a force in the final weeks of the season. If he plays like he did on Sunday, I’m doomed. I have big question marks at QB (Romo), TE (Desmond Clark) and Defense (Atl).
From now on, let’s rank the probable playoff teams, leaving the bottom feeders to talk amongst themselves:
Cubanlinks (10-1): ‘Nuff said.
Timmy Smash (7-4): He has LT, which cancels out Eli’s suckiness lately.
NY or Bust (6-5): Scored 93 points with a goose egg from Hassleback.
Fear the Turtle (7-4): 5 double-digits performances, T.Green will only improve.
Tinkle Fairies (7-4): Has Rivers, so the McNabb injury isn’t fatal.
The Great A’Tuin (5-6): Could have scored 122 points, could be a sleeper.
Remember those Amazon Wish Lists that people used to set-up in the hopes that their friends or family would notice their pressing desire for the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers CD and (in the event of a birthday or Christmas) decide to hook them up? The problem was the wants were hard to publicize. Amazon provided the ability to email your Wish List to people, but how crass is that?
A year ago I wrote some code to take your Wish List and display it on your website. I’ve made a couple quick tweaks to make it even easier for you to add a Wish List badge to your site:
