Wow, it took 64 seconds to post this. Very sad. I *really* don't want to write my own template tag parser from scratch, but I just might have to.

The good news is that the comment posted so quickly I didn't have time to check the stopwatch. Less than a second!

Boogars! Snot! George Bush! John Kerry! Boobs! Tits! White People! Black People! Everthing costs $10 and everyone has $10!

Wow.. that was fast!

the comments just disappeared on this post

now they reappeared

THere does seem to be an issue with the most recent post's comments disappearing temporarily when a new post is created. I know what's causing that, and suspected it would happen, but I'm not sure how to fix it yet. :-)

Okay, that shouldn't happen anymore, but brand new posts will have an error until a comment is posted -- at least until I fix that.

=(

hehe :)

Okay, the comment sidebar is back. Woohoo!

Good job manno :) Saw that you called earlier. I'm in the office now.

I just moved my site to bloghosts. What the heck happened with them? Should I consider -- sob -- another move?

Natalie, as much as I would like to say that everybody should run as far away from Bloghosts and Jaca Herring as possible, you're probably pretty safe.

What happened from my perspective is this: (I'm sure others involved would disagree, so take this as my opinion only)
Eight months ago Eric was approached by Jace Herring who was working on getting Bloghosts off the ground. He proposed a deal whereby we would get a reduced rate on hosting in exchange for prime advertising space. Good deal for us, good deal for Jace, since Blogcritics is a very prominent blogging site, one of the bigger blog sites around. In fact, I think that the advertising rates here increased quite a bit during the last eight months, so the deal was better at the end than the beginning, because the value we were providing was greater.

Anyway, Blogcritics is a pretty intensive site, so he ended up having to put us on a very fast box -- as I mentioned above -- but he happily did all this months and months ago. Since then there have been one or two major outages (Eric would remember better than I do), but they've been resolved reasonably.

THen, a few weeks ago, Jace sent an extremely terse email to Eric telling him to go somewhere else or start ponying up a *lot* more money. Too much, by far. Of course, this came in right before Eric's vacation, and mine, and our deadline was the day after Memorial Day. Silly us, we didn't move aggresively enough, preferring to figure out why the relationship had suddenly gone so sour.

We got no response from Jace for a long time, or rude responses, or whatever. We made incredibly hasty hosting arrangements on Tuesday, with the help of TDavid, and managed to get everything moved over, but Jace refused to give us so much as one day in order for DNS changes to propogate. Nothing, just name-calling and rudeness.

I have no idea what caused Jace to become so unhinged, and for all I know Eric just stepped on his toes. Eric can get anxious, but I'm a low-key guy and I don't let it get to me. Perhaps the bizarre expectation that our site would actually not go down for hours at a time was too much for him? Beats me.

Anyway, the bottom line is, he screwed us. But I've got another site on bloghosts, and it's fine. I don't anticipate any problems there unless Jace takes offense at this comment and retaliates. I would hope not, since that one is similiarly a group site and my only involvement with the hosting was to suggest that Jace was a swell guy.

So here we are, and there you are, and things are probably cool. It looks like we're both fine. And it also looks like Eric took off the modified adstrip I put up for bloghosts. Too bad, I thought it was funny!

aha, that explains it...
btw, eric or phillip or any other BC admins, how much of the "behind the scenes" workings info of BC do you have? e.g. what language is used to parse the tags?
I have some knowledge of XMLXSLTHTML and have been using Java for three years at uni. Whilst i'm trying to get a job, i'm looknig for stuff to do that would sound good on my CV. A whole system for parsing BC posts would sound pretty good i reckon (no charge, natch, you guys give us this site for free)

Aight, the comments should not be erased any more, and new posts won't have errors, and the comment sidebar is back (though I need to edit it just slightly).

Thanks for talking me into this, TDavid! And thanks again for the hours of hard-core coding you put in late last night.

Oh yeah, the sections on the front page are updating properly again, though of course that is one reason why posting entries is so darned slow.

What am I missing? Leaderboard errors are resolved.

jadester, how much of the "behind the scenes" workings info of BC do you have?

The stories I could tell you! MT itself is written in Perl, and BC makes heavy use of PHP to handle things best done outside of MT. Which is a lot of things, including comments now.

ANyway, all of the tag parsing is done by the Perl code. I think I can strip a bunch of stuff out and speed MT up to a reasonable speed without having to rewrite a parser, but if that breaks down, I'll email you and see how quickly you want to learn PHP. ;-)

I think TDavid took away the ability to includes images. COuld we do that before?

img src="/images/zevon.jpg">

Can we now?

COmments may not include images. I think that there are good reasons for this, and we've been lucky to avoid serious problems so far, but I'm sure some people will be unhappy. Sorry.

I think comments are working perfectly now, though I will someday soon make time to be more careful about which tags are allowed or disallowed.

That leaves the speed of posting as the only active problem, no?

So, we can't include images in main posts anymore?

THey can be in posts, no problem. Just not in comments, for now.

That's weird. I tested the slash-removal earlier, but the slashes are back. Wha...?

Good question.

Something I'm encountering is being told an entry or comment did not post only to have it turn up later. For example, according to MT, the entry about Cosby I began trying to post during meltdown never went through. But, it did.

So, we can't predict when the slashes will reappear in the sidebar?

This should be it, I'm stripping those darn things at every possible step!

Aha! It's "double-quotes" that are causing me fits! Of course!

I WOULD SAY NO AMAZON IS A MASSIVE PROBLEM, but that's just me.

So fix it! ;-)

Just seeing if I'm delighted or not.

Amazon is back!

in10sity -- were you?

How "buggy" can MTAmazon be? Not very overall, but the character set thing is just ugly.

"Test" comment, m'kay?

"Test" comment, m'kay?

Yup, very delighted.

I believe I've fixed, well, almost everything. Amazon is back, and I just tweaked things so that it doesn't munge up the entire page with funky control codes. That particular fix hasn't yet been propogated across the entire site, because I want to make some more changes and blow them all through at once, but a few test pages have been manually tweaked, and I'm pretty confident of the tweak.

The problem, for anyone who cares, is with Amazon's Web Services, which insist on sending back utf-8-encoded information. So now we're a utf-8 shop. Why not?

What else? Hmmm, occasionally (always, eventually), double-quotes in the comment sidebar get converted to single-quotes. Pardon me if I don't care. All comments are now showing up there, with no errors, so I'm happy. And did I mention that comments are now fast, fast, fast? Did I mention that you can all thank TDavid for that? All together now:

Thank you, TDavid!

He has earned a permanent link on the sidebar for that work.

Posting new articles still take something like 60-65 seconds, so that's my next task, I think. I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity to drastically rework the architecture of the page, but I do it correctly, nobody should notice.

"Nobody should notice." Famous last words!

Hmmm, comment preview isn't showing previous comments any more. Do I care? Do you? I'll get to that after reworking the page design.

Alllllrighty ... just how fast IS fast?

Whoa!

Thanks TDavid!

I used to look like this...

But now I look like this!

Thanks TDavid!

Down to 35 seconds for new posts right now, and still a number of minor and major tweaks to go. I may get out of this without a massive rewrite after all!

Down to 25 seconds, though there is now a delay of up to four minutes from the time a post is published and its appearance on the front page. There is a way to speed that up; should I tell you?

What the heck, it's late. When you publish a new post, you'll note that it is listed as 'Filed under:' all of the categories you've chosen. Simply click on the link for the primary category, and as it display the latest 30 entries for you, it will quickly update the front page in the background.

Of course, if you just leave it alone, the system automatically rebuilds each of the four sections every four minutes -- they rotate, one per minute.

There is more that I have in mind, just a little more, but I have to go to work in a few hours, and it's late, and I'm tired, so I'm going to try to grab some shut-eye.

I'm losing whatever lingering affection I might have once had for Perl, by the way, and falling more deeply in love with PHP every day.

That's probably just the fatigue talking, don't mind me!

Weird, the server clock was slightly off. I corrected it now, will look into NTP updates.

Argh, timezones! Should be fixed this time!

wow, lots of great changes, very relieved the Amazon "A"s seem to be gone, very real progress - thanks!

I'd just like to add my thanks TDavid!
Also, it just so happens that this past semester, one of my modules involved using PHP. I had to code an ecommerce site (not properly - up to the bit where an order is confirmed, but the payment details arent checked bcos the lecturer was hardly gonna start a merchant account just for a piece of coursework). I used PHP and SQL and in the end, all the code was my own (i had a look at a book's example but it was too overblown and had a whole admin functions thing that the coursework did not require)
I enjoy using PHP cos it's actually easier than Java, what with the pattern matching capabilities and loose typing

Well, jadester, you'd feel right at home here, then, since there's a little less Perl and little more PHP every day! <grin>

great job! looks like the remaining comments issues are email notification, no name requirement to post, and the weird delay before it appears on the front page

The "weird delay" is not going away, but I predict it will go unnoticed soon enough. MovableType is simply mind-bogglingy inefficient, so I am not allowing it to do what it normally does, which saves time.

The others are coming soon enough, probably today. :-)

Hey, Phillip, what is up with the unsigned comments? I've noticed a number of these now (check the Creed-breaks-up story under Music to see one.) Do we really want to encourage anonymous posting - it's bad enough that people fake emails, but without the need for at least some creativity, we might get flooded with a lot more idiotic, trolling comments.

he's aware of that one Tom, it's a function of redoing the comment code entirely, the name requirement has to be built back in.

Hey Phillip, we're getting an error on the front page instead of the DIY section (Warning: Failed opening '/home/eolsen/public_html/archives/categories/diy.inc' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /web/sites/ecolsen2003/blogcritics.org/index.php on line 107)

, and, very oddly, the sponsor ad, and a fourth adstrip ad that isn't showing up on the front page or on the regular post pages ARE showing up in, of all places, the DIY section, (which also still proudly features Blogcritics Radio)

Just wanted to test the zippy new commenting system.

test test2

- I fixed the issue with the comments not requiring a valid email or name.

If you don't enter in a name or valid email address you'll be prompted in the preview mode to fix and resubmit.

I'm not entering a URL now

- I made it so that if the person doesn't enter a URL then it defaults to the blogcritics homepage

eggggcellent, thanks!!! Any thoughts on the email notification of comments issue? (he asked pressign his luck)

Do authors like that email notification function?

Ok, the new comment email notification is re-enabled.

If they complain about it, then well ... something more detailed will have to be done because there is no flag for emailing by user, it's either "on or off" for everybody. I didn't see an option by author, which is kind of unfortunate :(

Some authors may not want to receive the emails ... but then again I don't know many writers who don't like to receive feedback so it's probably a moot point.

I like the e-mail notification. It keeps you from having to check in at the site just to see if anyone has commented on what you wrote.

Thanks, TDavid.

Just to let you know ... Bloghosts is no more ... shutting their doors!

When did you hear this???

Bloghosts is my web host and it sent no notification of this announcement, so thanks for passing on this news. Guess my site is moving.

Hi Natalie - you can get a special Blogcritics discount through Cyberwurx hosting (which currently hosts Blogcritics). Eric and I put this article on how to take advantage of this special offer for Blogcritics: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/10/25/132850.php

They have plans starting as low as $5 ($3.50/month with the Blogcritics discount). You don't have to be a writer, this is available to readers as well!

Thanks, checking it out. They do Wordpress installations and I have thousands of postings under Movable Type. Don't know if this will be compatible, but I hope it works out. I'm checking out a service called BlogMoxie too.

absolutely, we recommend Cyberwurx to those who are moving from Bloghosts, and everyone else for that matter, just click on the link at the top of any page, and don't forget the additional 25% Blogcritics discount - see TD's comment above

I think Natalie identified a potentially big problem: moving from MT to WordPress. Not for nothing, but WordPress is incredibly easy to install -- it literally takes less than five minutes. The average user won't have too much trouble with that.

It's the conversion from MT that will keep people from using WordPress, and potentially from coming to Cyberwrx.

Any chance they'll offer to install MT for free, instead? Or as well?

Well, we use MT (still) so you don't have to switch Phillip and TDavid will have to resond to the technical aspects of this

No, you don't have to switch, but you have to install it yourself, which is not always a walk in the park, to say the least. So some less techie bloggers might opt for a service that installs MT for free, instead of WordPress, which is extremely simple to install.

The hosting deal you guys worked out is *great*, honestly. But the free installation of WordPress isn't much of a value add to MT users.

Hello bhw :)

I'm somewhat curious who told you that you had to install Movable Type yourself upon moving over to Cyberwurx?

You can *optionally* install any script or create your own for that matter, but I don't see where they say they won't help you or the next blogger with moving over their existing blog regardless of the software used. In fact, here's exactly what they say:

"We can install other blog software (setup fees may apply)."

So they say setup fees "may" apply. Maybe. It depends. Case by case basis. Did you specifically confirm with Cyberwurx before posting that indeed in your specific case they were going to charge you for your specific Movable Type installation?

You can't speak for me, or even the next blogger, because every Movable Type installation can be modified, customized, etc and some installations can be more time consuming to deal with than others.

In my opinion, that's all they are saying there and while they might install yours for free, because sites like Blogcritics are more involved, they reserve the right to charge for installation like that.

I think that's totally reasonable, don't you?

As for your comment/guess about them requiring more "techie bloggers" sorry, that's inaccurate. One, I know several new webmasters -- brand new webmasters -- who use them and love them. These new webmasters cannot be classified as 'techie' ;)

Also, please check the Yahoo groups and you'll see comments from at least one new blogging Cyberwurx customer switching over who said he felt Cyberwrux was very easy and 'non-techie' to work with. Also, it was mentioned that they installed a non-Wordpress blog -- for him for free. They didn't charge.

Again, case by case basis.

With that, I implore you -- trust me, you'll really like these guys if you are looking for a good, solid host -- please check with Cyberwurx directly and report back your findings about your specific case.

Phillip, could you provide some details on your falling out with bloghosts? E-mail me if you don't feel comfortable posting it. Right now they have control of 2 of my domains (dumb, I know, but too late to do anything about it), and will owe me for about 6 months of hosting when they close down. I'm already experiencing downtime, and have gotten no response to my e-mails. The whole shutdown thing smells rotten, and I intend to make some noise if they don't start responding soon.

Jesus Christ, TDavid, why are you so strident all the time?

P.S., TDavid, why don't you actually read both of my posts on the hosting issue -- that means ALL the words -- and see if you want to amend your stupid attack mode comment.

And not for nothing, TDavid, but your arrogant jackass attitude toward me makes me NOT want to move over to Cyberwurx, when that is exactly was I was planning to do in Jan. when I know I'll have some time off from work so I can attend to the transfer properly.

Customer service much?

hello bhw :)

Normally, when someone starts a post with a smile (see above) it sets the tone of the post. In my case it means I'm SMILING -- I'm HAPPY -- I'm trying to be pleasant. It isn't a fake smile, or an arrogant smile or a sarcastic smiel. I still smiling in this entry:

:)

I apologize if you misunderstood any of what I wrote above as having a "arrogant, jackass, attitude" I was trying to be *helpful* NOT "strident"

With this all said, switch or don't switch in January, that's up to you :)

I'm not trying to sell you on anything because I have zero at stake here. You never indicate anywhere above that your plan was to switch to them in January. In fact, your comments seem almost -- though it may not be intentional on your part -- to be discouraging others from using them when you haven't tried using them yourself. See:

"No, you don't have to switch, but you have to install it yourself, which is not always a walk in the park, to say the least. So some less techie bloggers might opt for a service that installs MT for free, instead of WordPress, which is extremely simple to install. "

I interpreted that to mean that "hey, this is a good deal for new bloggers or people willing to switch to Wordpress, but not if you are an experienced Movable Type blogger."

And thus, I set to correct that. I do see in another post your question marks, so it's obvious you have questions. And I think they are GOOD questions, thank you for asking.

I'm not sure the timeline here because I didn't inspect the timestamps so forgive me if you've left messages elsewhere explaining yourself. Are your comments here after reading my Yahoo groups response or before?

If it's after ... then I'm even more puzzled by your reaction. I spent a good 20 minutes or so typing up a very careful, detailed response in the Yahoo groups -- and then I called Eric and spent 20 minutes with him explaining my concern to help it be as simple and non-confusing to people as possible -- on this same subject and essentially echoed those same sentiments here.

I was just trying to make sure all the facts were clear. That was the intention of the post -- to let Natalie or anybody else that's curious and seriously contemplating changing hosting companies (something that I take to be a big step for a webmaster/blogger) know that they are happy to help out at Cyberwurx and that rather than you, me, her speculate, we should contact Cyberwurx directly for the facts and report back our actual experiences and findings to share with others.

I'm trying to document all this stuff so there is no confusion and I do appreciate the questions and concerns, which I realize some of your response was exactly that -- question and concern.

If the way I answer those questions and concerns in details is a problem for you then I will not answer them directly to you heretofore.

Just let me know and I'll give the info to Eric or Phillip or somebody you like better and let them answer :)

I should add above to anybody else reading that I'm really excited about all this stuff. Not excited in an angry, asshole way, but excited in a cheerful, happy, jubilant way. So I might be using a few extra words when talking about this stuff. I might be overexplaining stuff. It's all that happiness running from my heart to the keyboard!

- I'm happy that Blogcritics is doing better financially lately. Those who have been around awhile (like you, bhw) know that this was a concern for awhile.
- I'm happy that I discovered this site over a year ago and that I can spend MY PERSONAL TIME here, what little of it that I have, reading so many good reviews and writers
- I'm happy that I'm able to choose from literally hundreds of review materials for FREE for being a blogcritics writer (those reading this can be one too!)
- I'm happy that Cyberwurx is doing blog hosting because I like blogs, bloggers and being a Cyberwurx customer
- I'm happy that Cyberwurx has started their own blog and they want me to post there to provide the true customer experience and perspective. I think that's fresh and useful info from any commercial website
- I'm happy that Blogcritics readers and writers get a 25% Cyberwurx Blog hosting discount if they sign up for blog hosting and make sure to reference 'blogcritics' in the referrer field.
- I'm happy that I've been able to volunteer my professional assistance with some of the code and some of the backend technical details of this site: Blogcritics
- I'm happy to write this list of happy thoughts :)

So if all my happiness and joy is being misinterpreted by anybody as anything other than positive karma, then please reread this post over and over before reading anything else I say about these issues and commenting.

Happy coding to you!

Is it possible to create a table of data within a comment?

In fact, your comments seem almost -- though it may not be intentional on your part -- to be discouraging others from using them when you haven't tried using them yourself.

No, TDavid. You're wrong. Witness what I said in my first comment, which you continue to ignore. In this comment, I'm pointing out a potential problem in recruiting BCs to Cyberwurx, in response to Natalie's comment, and then I ask if a specific solution can be implemented.

I think Natalie identified a potentially big problem: moving from MT to WordPress. Not for nothing, but WordPress is incredibly easy to install -- it literally takes less than five minutes. The average user won't have too much trouble with that.

It's the conversion from MT that will keep people from using WordPress, and potentially from coming to Cyberwrx.

Any chance they'll offer to install MT for free, instead? Or as well?

See, I was pointing out a potential deterrent to less technical bloggers who already use MT, and I asked if we could remove that potential deterrent. That means I was trying to help ENCOURAGE people to use Cyberwurx by asking if they would install the blog software with the largest installed base [and that can be notoriously difficult to install] for free, instead of software with a much smaller installed base and that is very simple to install.

I think that's pretty plain to see. Don't you agree?

Then I closed my next comment with, "The hosting deal you guys worked out is *great*, honestly. But the free installation of WordPress isn't much of a value add to MT users."

Where did I discourage people to use the service? I pointed out a legitimate limitation in the hosting deal, and asked if there was any way to alter it FOR EVERYONE. That is, alter the basic agreement, not the case-by-case agreements.

That's a legitimate question, don't you agree?

That was the intention of the post -- to let Natalie or anybody else that's curious and seriously contemplating changing hosting companies (something that I take to be a big step for a webmaster/blogger) know that they are happy to help out at Cyberwurx and that rather than you, me, her speculate, we should contact Cyberwurx directly for the facts and report back our actual experiences and findings to share with others.

Then why didn't you just say that, instead of doing the one-voiced, condescending interrogation of me? My question was: Can Cyberwurx also install MT for free? Why didn't you just say, "They might. Just ask them."? Re-read your post. You were a jackass.

Here's another recent example:

Are your comments here after reading my Yahoo groups response or before?

If it's after ... then I'm even more puzzled by your reaction. I spent a good 20 minutes or so typing up a very careful, detailed response in the Yahoo groups....

More condescension. In other words, I'm too stupid to understand what you wrote in the Yahoo group post, which I have indeed NOT yet read. I check the Yahoo group intermittently, sometimes skipping a day or two per week. I don't get the e-mails redirected to my main account. I don't live-breathe-eat-drink-shoot-shit the Blogcritics Yahoo group, sorry.

So, TDavid, if you take some time off from lecturing, maybe you will actually have time to answer my question:

Will Cyberwurx agree to install MT for free -- instead of or in addition to WordPress -- as a part of the basic Blogcritics hosting plan?

I am not sure how this thread go so far off track, but the point is simply that I personally have had a very positive relationship with Cyberwurx -- which could not contrast more with being literally booted off Bloghosts on short notice, little or no communication regarding the situation, and zero support regarding the actual move itself, all of which sounds like it is recurring on a grand scale with them now -- and we are happy to make the recommendation to others to work with Cyberwurx, in particular their new blog special

I'm sure they're just dandy Eric, and their deal with BC gives a lot of bang for the buck, for sure.

But will they install MT for free as part of their basic BC plan?

the simpler and less time-consuming the install, the less they will charge for installation, including down to free - it is truly a case-by-case basis

Thanks Eric. I think I only said that a couple times above, but maybe bhw will hear your version better LOL I got your email, mon, thanks!

bhw - I'm not being nice with you about this subject any more, so if you really want to see me be condescending and lecturing and intentionally RUDE like you are being then keep up the whole bad hair day drama and maybe I'll show you some real flames.

I asked if the basic plan for BCs could be altered to offer MT installation for free.

The answer appears to be: No.

And yet nobody is willing to actually say it. A one-word answer was all I was looking for, and instead I got a fucking lecture.

the answer is maybe

Who will be asking them if the basic plan can be changed?

I asked Cyberwurx and they said they would do MY installations for free if you have the MT license. However, if you, like me, got your MT via Bloghosts, you are probably out of luck. I just wrote Jace at Bloghosts asking if a license went along with my MT installation. No response yet.

Dang, that should read "MT installations," not "MY installations."

Thanks Natalie - I'm glad you brought up the MT licensing issues. This is another vital issue with Movable Type, which is beyond the technical issues that I described above :(

Maybe Movable Type would provide you with this license directly? Any chance of emailing somebody over there?

Please let me know if MT provides licenses to customers in this situation. I don't personally use MT or I'd check into it myself.

See bhw - it's not a yes or no, black or white issue!

It's "maybe"
It's what I said, Eric said, and now Natalie has confirmed.

Please add that to your lecture notes.

(flame setting on low at the moment)

Good news! I did some checking and it looks like if you are a personal user (no more than three authors) of Movable Type you can get a free, unsupported version:

If you're an individual whose blogs don't support a commercial endeavor, you can use the Personal Use license. (Incidental revenue such as Google AdSense, Amazon Associates fees, PayPal tip jars, or other similar programs which aren't the main purpose of the site are allowed under the personal license.)

BHW, it appears that the only people capable of giving you the yes/no answer you desire about free MT installation are CyberWurx themselves. The good news is that so far people who have asked have been told "Yes," like Natalie.

The bad news is, they won't answer until you ask them. ;-)

P.S. It occurs to me that I should actually look into moving my own blog over, even though I wasn't on Bloghosts (wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole).

Thanks, Phillip. I need a new host, too. I'm just hoping to keep my current one until January, when I should have time to do the switch.

I'm curious. Are people who have paid for a year in advance, or bought in for, say, six months, a month or two before the blog host fails, really getting their money back when these ventures go belly up?

Also, my understanding is that people hacking hosting sites and causing irreparable damage is the main reason owners of the companies give up. If there is no solution, won't the same thing happen to newer hosts, too?

Professional hosting companies get malicious hackers attacking them and scanning ports, etc quite frequently. It's a part of the job just like dealing with static electricity for people who work with computers. Part of the hosting business is effectively dealing with the underbelly of the web.

Hosting companies also have to deal with spam at even more ridiculous levels than we all do -- and in addition to that, also some clients who they host who decide to ignore the rules and start spamming others themselves.

Not to mention people putting up illegal content or using the servers for illegal activity ... frankly, I don't envy the job of any hosting company out there.

Now, as for buying hosting for some yearly deal ... I personally wouldn't recommend someone to do that for a variety of reasons.

Let's just take Blogcritics as an example. This website's bandwith has flucuated considerably the last couple months with the excellent election coverage and it did even more so when the Janet Jackson boof fiasco happened back in Jan/February. All of you folks who generously participate have helped traffic grow and the bandwith that was originally projected to be used has exceeded expectations.

Most of those pay for a year in advance special deals I've seen don't cover spikes in bandwith situations like this :( It's all extra expenses and extra costs and usually at a significant penalty. I know of one such site who charges in excess of $100 per gig!

So it's best for these reasons to pay month to month and reassess one's hosting needs as traffic / promotion / opportunities / websites change: month to month to month.

Maybe one needs to upgrade plans, maybe add some additional bandwith, etc. These pay a year in advance deals are usually priced very low for a reason: the server is often overcrowded and tweaked to provide very little ability for spikes in traffic or additional growth.

Paying for a yearly deal may seem like a really good deal -- and it could be for say a presence website: a one-page corporate or small business website for giving directions to a website, but these deals are not recommended for active webmasters, bloggers, etc. Pretty much anybody who wants to have anything more than a couple pages on the web and any significant amount of traffic.

At least from my experience and those I know who have switched away from plans like these, that's what I'm drawing this commentary on.

And no, I doubt there are many refunds issued for these special yearly plans; this is really a buyer-beware situation :(

er - directions to a physical location, not directions to a website, that was.

(must use preview, must use preview)

Back to licensing -- if one downloads the barebones version of MT (up to version 3.121 now), it comes with a standard personal license. That should do the trick with Cyberwurx. I have an email in to the company now to verify this.

And btw, FYI: I have heard nothing back from Bloghosts yet (though, in fairness, it has been very helpful to me in the past) and received a response to previous correspondence almost immediately from Cyberwurx. Something to consider...

Good response, TDavid. I think you should blog it. There are always new people coming into the blogosphere. I hate to see them lose their content and/or money within months.

Apologies that this is turning into the "Bloghosts Bitch Forum," but there's precious little information out there for us bloghosts customers.

Bloghosts has my domain as well (dumb, I know - I was a newbie at the time) and as I'm not listed anywhere with the registrar, I can't transfer the domain and no one at bloghosts is answering emails. Is my only option to give up my domain until it expires? Anybody know?

Doesn't help that the server my site's on must be down - it's been 24 hours and I'm still dead. From what I can tell, about 80% of bloghosts sites are still up. The rest of us . . . not so much.
*sigh*

Well, I did it. Within 24 hours, my Cyberwurx account will be up and running and with any luck, my blog will be on the move. So far, I must say that Cyberwurx -- as is Chris, the company rep with whom I've been chatting -- is very helpful and accommodating. I am getting my MT installed free of charge *and* the BC discount *and* responsive customer service. Can't beat that. Thanks TDavid and Eric and Phillip for steering me Cyberwurx's way.

A very hard deal to beat, indeed, Natalie!

As much as I don't want to turn this into a bitch forum for bh either, you're not the only one who's noticed Jace's sudden change in personality. Over the last few months I noticed he was a bit more standoffish than usual. Cut to this week where there's a server down (with several bloggers I know on that server) and he's not responded to anyone's emails. Funny how he hides behind a fake phone number. Someone mentioned taking legal action. I'm not legal action happy, but right now, I'm so mad with the way he's treated the whole situation, I might consider it.

bitch away guys, we're happy to provide the forum - and we definitely recommend Cyberwurx without reservation

Indeed, I'm not surprised at the problems with Bloghosts. While our former relationship with that ISP seemed fine for a while, it ended abruptly and, um, acrimoniously, let's say. I know people who had nothing but happiness and roses in their relationship with that ISP, but I personally encountered what I think was butt-head behavior from Jace, even on accounts unreleated to Blogcritics. Apparently, he holds grudges or something.

Anyway, it seems that bloghosts has shut down access to their ns3 and ns4 servers, which means that a certain percentage of customers no long have DNS resolution. Fortunately, I had long ago made note of the numeric IP, so I've been able to get into the control panel and export things, but people not on the http://phoenix.bloghosts.com:2082/ server may not be so lucky. And come to think of it, I'm using the word "lucky" to describe a situation in which a site went down with no notice and is still not up, which gives you and idea of what low standards Bloghosts has inspired in me.

I know someone trying to get control of their DNS record from bloghosts, so let's hope that Jace does the right thing there. I also know someone who signed up and pre-paid a year's service about two weeks ago, we'll see what happens with that, too.

In contrast, I've been wondering if the excellent treatment we've been getting from CyberWurx was due to our high-profile status, or if they are really as responsive as TDavid keeps saying, and I must say that I'm really, really impressed so far.

I was manually installing MT for another site and noticed that a few crucial Perl libraries were missing. I sent off an email and got a response in eight minutes (!) stating that the first one was done, the second was in process, and were there any more I needed. All this for the cheapest account they sell, $3.75 with the Blogcritics discount.

Amazing.

I can see why he holds grudges. Apparently, after some digging from a friend of mine (also using bh), Jace is a 21 year old kid. So he's either really scared right now because of the rioting on his front door, so to speak, or he's just that clueless on proper business ethics.

Yeah, he's young. That's no excuse for poor behavior, of course, but it might go a long way toward explaining why he's throwing in the towel. We'll probably never know the details, and they don't really matter, but it's a shame how he's been treating most people so far.

Hopefully he'll do the right thing.

I know you guys are touting cyberwurx. Hopefully they're good for you guys. My fiance and I are going with liquid web, the host that Dooce uses. She's said that they've been really good to her. So far, they've been super professional. cpanel to cpanel transfer. So there's another option for bh customers. I agree with you though Phillip. I hope he does the right thing. Btw, thanks for the link. We were able to get on that server using the phoenix link and get several bloggers' files off there. This is just a total nightmare.

Yep, we're touting CyberWurx, but I've also been reasonably happy with phpwebhosting.com. They've had Image::Magick problems on some (but not all) of their servers, and they don't provide CPanel, but the service has been rock-solid stable, and it's only $9.95/month.

I'll probably switch to CyberWurx myself because of the lower price, but it is worth nothing that Bloghosts.com has been an unusually bad ISP in a sea of quite decent ISPs, in my opinion.

I have the impression that Bloghosts was trying to be all things to all people and when that didn't work, just gave up. There is certainly a lesson there - best of luck to all remaining victims

I, too, got into cpanel through my numeric ip and exported everything I could think of, but I'm still without my .com domain.

Of course, godaddy can't do anything for me without bh approval and I don't think that's gonna happen . . . so .org, here I come.

This really pisses me off.

Nick, Submit the request anyway. That's what my fiance is doing. It doesn't hurt to try. Maybe if there's enough people who state their case, godaddy will release the urls.

Just talked to a godaddy tech on the phone, and he said that if you fax their domain change form to them with ID and printouts of receipt emails from bloghosts showing you pay for and own the domain, they may be able to do the transfer.

On the other hand, the bloghosts website has been updated with "please be patient" information, so maybe there's hope . . .

Well, at least he's giving people a response somehow. Doesn't help that people emailed him on this issue last week with no response at all. Not to mention, the server issue. I'd like to send him a flaming bag of poo.

metaphorically you have

I have a whole plate of brownies at home with his name on them... tomorrow morning. :o)

Bloghosts girl here as well. I wouldn't have known I was losing my host probably until I'd lost it. Sporto up there pointed me towards the site where the "Eff y'all" message is. I don't understand how hard it would have been to send out an email. A simple, courtesy email. You know, to those of us who don't have to go to the site because we don't have problems. Grrr.

(Had I known he was a 21 year old kid running it, I don't think I'd have signed up with him.)

I am trying to be patient, but this is frightening. I'm with Cyberwurx now and trying to transfer things over, but while I can get into my BH CPanel and have FTP'ed all my files onto my hard drive, I can't access my old site/MT interface and have no clue as to how I can import/export the files into my MT upgrade at Cyberwurx. That means YEARS of postings are stranded... I can't access my templates... and Jace apparently is ignoring my emailed pleas for assistance. This really hurts. I am supposed to be on my way to Boston for a business trip and I'm beating my brains out trying to get my site -- the purpose for the trip -- back in business. Lots of tears being shed today and likely long into the night. This is NO way to conduct business. It's a shame Jace had to learn this by harming a lot of innocent people.

TO: All Fellow Bloghost Victims
RE: Something Is Rotten...

...in the state of South Carolina.

I had two blogs offered up by Bloghosts. Registered with them a year ago. Not out that much money. But I notice that the blogs are both functional, but I can neither access the controls nor post comments.

But, SOMEBODY is posting comments. Rude, vulgar and advertising ones.

Jace is allowing spammers to post comments and affix trackbacks.

I wonder why.

Also, if anyone who was burned by Bloghosts lives in South Carolina, I'd recommend you volunteer to be spearhead of a class action suite. I'm sure that there are some people who have lost control of business related domain names and they'd like to get them back. It would be best if someone living in SC was able to do the prep-up for such an activity.

Regards,

Chuck(le)