So it seems I'll be needing that new hosting offer after all...
Added 2018-11-30 00:24:04 +0000 UTCI just got a call from MTA, the people that host both TWB and Doc's Machine, and they laid a nice Christmas present on me: as of December 31st, they will be discontinuing any and all of their public web hosting. They've always been a data farm for local heavy industry- that is, the oil field- and apparently will continue to be, but they're getting rid of their how level public-facing sites like mine.
So, I have a month to migrate TWB and Doc's over to an all-new host. I know I got a couple of offers back during the Great TWB Outage Of 2018, but I was, at the time, still fairly happy with the service I'd gotten for the last 20 years from MTA.
I am now open to suggestions. I want a good, reliable host, based in the US, with a help desk that features live people I can talk to, preferably also in the US. I need a pretty high data limit- both sites are image-intensive and get a reasonable amount of traffic. I currently pay something like $35 a month for effectively no data limit- I've been "Slashdotted", or whatever the current term is for seeing a huge spike in traffic, several times, and has caused me no problems with my current host.
And the current setup is that the TWB domain name is hosted by one company, the Doc's domain name is hosted by a second, and then the actual sites are hosted by a third (in this case MTA.) If possible, I'd like to have everything hosted by the same company, AND for that company to be able to provide me with SSL certificates for both sites. (I just jumped through all the hoops to 'secure' Doc's, and was about to start on TWB.)
You'll also have to bear with me while we work on this, as I have two dozen other things of various importance I either need or want to get done before the end of the year. We may wind up with an outage or two, depending on how smoothly this all goes- remember, software idiot here.
All my data is solidly backed up in offline storage, and I'm about to make another copy as well. If TWB goes down, strip updates will be posted here and/or on the Guild.
Thanks.
Doc.
Comments
been with these guys for 10 years very happy <a href="https://www.hostgator.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.hostgator.com</a>
orion hax
2018-12-02 02:09:00 +0000 UTCCheck out dreamhost.com out of Los Angeles, CA.
A. J. Alfieri-Crispin
2018-11-30 19:35:40 +0000 UTCIf I may make another suggestion, as you're doing a big move here, you might want to talk to the guy who did the "Speed Reader" for Freefall. Would cut down on your bandwidth usage and is much more user-friendly than your current archive setup. I've looked at his code, very impressive work.
Tony D.
2018-11-30 17:31:20 +0000 UTCVery happy with Omnis. <a href="https://www.omnis.com/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.omnis.com/</a> Been using them since 2004 to host and domain www.navweaps.com. Good luck with whoever you go with.
Tony D.
2018-11-30 17:16:00 +0000 UTCI have no recommendation but I DO wish you nothing but success. I suspect that the recent dust up is the cause for the policy shift. I'd help more but I think you want more help than from a random person on the net. :) in the meantime let me know if y'all run out of dew!
GilligansGhost
2018-11-30 10:01:49 +0000 UTCI'm using Linode and I'm really happy with them. They don't have domains though. SSL can be done via Let's Encrypt, totally free
2018-11-30 08:00:49 +0000 UTCI'm happy to recommend routes to build your own site + CDN stuff. (Basically cloudflare plus a robust backend) But... I suspect you're preferring to use other peoples expertise first.
Brian Ballsun-Stanton
2018-11-30 04:46:50 +0000 UTCOutside of my company, try HareLink which hosts Kevin & Kell. Bill Holbrook’s web comic suffered so much that he founded a real ISP to host it.
STrRedWolf
2018-11-30 03:42:31 +0000 UTCI’m tempted to say “Try my company, Databank!” You’ll probably want the managed hosting side, which has 24/7 support from Baltimore. I work with the support team as I oversee their monitoring system, and a developer for the entire company. I would guess the sites could be put on a Linux virtual server (what we call “public cloud”) which just works exactly like a stand-alone box. We don’t do domain registration but we can put the domains on our DNS servers (easy to do with our Databank Portal). We also sell SSL certificates and install them for you. Migration is easy as we will migrate it for you - our Implementation team can move it without issue. Support is free. We can integrate with Cloudflare for DDoS protection, and most setups will come with a Cisco ASAv virtual firewall. We’ll monitor the system and if it ever goes down, we’re the front line for getting it back up. I will warn you, going this level is a bit more expensive. What you can do is check out www.databank.com and ask for a quote. The sales team will talk to you about what you need and what you’ll looking for. It may be worth while for comparison.
STrRedWolf
2018-11-30 03:39:19 +0000 UTC<a href="https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thetinkersguild/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thetinkersguild/</a>
Mark Trombley
2018-11-30 03:18:34 +0000 UTCWhat is this Guild that you mentioned here and during the great outage?
Wild Card
2018-11-30 02:46:11 +0000 UTCI can heartily recommend lunarpages.com They meet all your stated criteria...and have been my host for 15 years. I've also used godaddy.com to register domains. Good luck!
Daniel Meyer
2018-11-30 02:24:48 +0000 UTCI'm not associated with them or anything, but have you tried Katbox? They already have several webcomics hosted.
Golnor
2018-11-30 01:20:49 +0000 UTC
