Oh - I did not know we were being refunded. OK then the week is reasonable.

But in terms of Steves offer - we are being asked to guarantee a year of payments, and we aren't being guaranteed results. Maybe I misunderstood, but it looks like our level of control is a lot less than in the virtual hosting environment. I understand why Steve needs the guarantee, I just don't think we would be right in offering it. We don't know what the problem is. We need an environment where we can both diagnose it, and still be able to move to a new host if we find out that the problem requires it. That combination is something Steve can't offer - and I understand why. We are already a money loser for them; if we diagnose and find out we need a dedicated server within three months, that is not a good deal for him. But being committed to a year at that point is not a good deal for us.

This is not in anyway fangeeks fault. And I don't even think it is the ISPs fault. I really think we need more flexibility than can be offered. We cannot afford to guarantee staying a year at this point. If we leave now, we were given a high level of service which proved not enough for our needs. We can leave friends - no hard feelings on either side. If we stay and things don't work out it seems like somebody gets screwed. WE either pay for a year of service that is not adequeate (maybe through our own fault.) Or the contract is written so we can leave, and Steve and Kristen lose more money. Basically we are betting everything on this new level fixing it. The 'virtual hosting' which may just be the same service Kristen offers in disguise does come with the ability to terminate if we need to upgrade to a real rather than virtual dedicated serverss. In that circumstance we tweak what we can (which may be no more than we can tweak in Kristens offer) but if does not work we can leave and do something else .

The fact is any deal has to benefit both sides. The situation right now doesn't really suit either side. And, btw, I agree with Liese that whether the deadline is reasonable or not is immaterial. It simply is.

Like it or not, we are a high maintenance group, and I'm not talking about bandwidth. We are smart, opinionated, and inclined to Alpha behaviour, separately and together. We like to have as much control over our situation and to pay as little as necessary for it. And we're not shy about grumbling when we feel the need.

Fair enough.

Hosting services, as a point of business, prefer smooth operations and easy maintenance that leaves them as much profit as possible. Certainly that doesn't cost more to maintain than the gross income thereof.

Also fair.

So the spine of the decision is simply what will get both sides as much of what they want as possible. (Gawd, I sound like Dr. Phil. Shoot me later.)

That's where the Geekies make the call, AFAIC.

If we leave, let's leave on good terms. If we stay, let's see what we can do to keep things low maintenance.

Which all may seem painfully self evident, I know, but we seem to have strayed from the main point, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

My assumption was that rebooting was not possible -- not a cold reboot, anyway.

The $99/month offering from iStrata is a dedicated machine. Here are the stats. We can reboot it anytime we want. There's a button in the web based control panel to do it, although I assume "shutdown -r now" will do the trick as well.

Here is a description of the control panel we'd get for the server and a link to a demo. Give the control panel a try, it's pretty slick.

If we do go with the offer, perhaps it's time to rethink maybe putting an understated "donate" button on the home page and Message Center page.

If we let people know the situation in Press, and everyone's kept updated I don't think we'd need to. All the regular users who can afford it would donate, and anyone who isn't around enough to hear probably wouldn't anyway.

And the deadline unfortunately is not irrelevent. Generally if given a deadline that does not allow time to make a good decision, the best decision to make is "no". This has nothing to do with blame. There may be a good reason for the deadline. But our current host is certainly not the only alternative - to choose to stay with them without adequate time to think is not a good idea.

Again - no blame, and I hope no hard feelings. Everyone was doing the best they can. But I don't see how we can stay and have a solution that is fair to everyone. I think we need to go to another place that offers similar service to the current deal Kristen is offering, or maybe an actual dedicated server like the istrata one - but where we don't have to guarantee a years contract.

The $99/month offering from iStrata is a dedicated machine.

Is this what you were calling a virtual server, Typo Boy?

we are being asked to guarantee a year of payments, and we aren't being guaranteed results

If we can't make the board work on the system Kristen describes, no one can guarantee us squat. It's our responsibility.

Would we be paying for a) more than we needed b) more than we got? Those are the questions. Along with -- can we afford it.

I talked to another friend who runs a BB- with much higher storage needs and traffic than we have. She's of the opinion that Steve's offer is a lot higher than we should be able to find elsewhere.

She suggest checking out:

dinix.com

There's no restrictions on the use of MySQL, iirc. Even though these are 'virtual' server accounts, you get almost all the functionality of a dedicated server at a fraction of the cost. And from whatever account level they start off at, there's a variety of options to upgrade to later as needed (including a number of dedicated options, if they think they need that).

...with Dinix's highest level virtual plan, they could get 4GB storage (even that is still *way* more than enough) with 100GB of monthly bandwidth... for $90,

FWIW, I really think we can do better than $200 a month, and still get good responsive service. The only choices are not HostageRockect and IH.

Back to lurking now.

This is diverging from the point, but I wanted to make a technical troubleshooting point:

Tom, Rob -- I tried on our test server to do the show processlist -- not only could I get into the commandline mysql twice, show processlist showed both command line logins and my browser firing off queries.

And the deadline unfortunately is not irrelevent. Generally if given a deadline that does not allow time to make a good decision, the best decision to make is "no". This has nothing to do with blame.

Sorry, I should have said arguing about the deadline is immaterial.

> The $99/month offering from iStrata is a dedicated machine.

Is this what you were calling a virtual server, Typo Boy?

No, there was another offer that was a virtual server.

And my problem with the new offer is:

The server would be entirely FanGeek's and we are willing to play around with the configuration and settings to see if that helps your situation. Whether or not it does, the site would stay up and there won't be any further error message issues. Also, being that it would be our server, I can reboot it any time we need that to happen.

It does not specify how much they would play with the configuration - certainly not unlimited amounts. The thing about a real dedicated server is we could play with the settings as much as we wanted. Even with a dedicated server - it seems like we could play with most of the settings - ability to tweak stuff we just could not tweak with the current offer. My problem with the current offer is we still have to rely on the host to tweak some things. This could end up with us being that pita customer again.