We must apologise to all our readers for the trouble we have been experiencing with the SA Times website, which has been down for the past few days. Our host 1and1, decided to block our database without warning for no apparent reason, citing “increased activity” (we secretly hope it’s all you readers out that there, but in all honesty, we haven’t been able to find any proof of the massive increase of demand they are referring to!). 1and1 refuses to deal with the problem over the phone - not that speaking to some clueless person reading off a script in the Phillippines is much use anyway - and can provide no constructive solution on their tardy emails. Nonetheless, we are doing everything in our power to resolve the issue as speedily as we can. (Perhaps some of you out there have your own frustrations with 1and1 you would like to vent here.)
The good news is that we are moving to a new web server and will soon be launching a new look website! So please stick with us and accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.
November 13th, 2007 - 6:19 pm
I also used 1&1 for a very short time. The stuffed up so many times in the space of a month that I gave them an ear fulll and ditched them.
I used to work for another company who used 1&1. Our email was sooooooo slow and the options are very limited.
Am glad SAT is changing and am also happy not to have to deal with 1&1 anymore!
November 13th, 2007 - 6:20 pm
PS. The thing with 1&1 is that they are very cheap. You pay peanuts, you gonna get monkeys
November 19th, 2007 - 12:34 pm
I have used 1and1 for a number of years and my experience with them is this.
If you go for a shared hosting package, keep your site small, if you are going to experience more than 1000 hits per day (especially if you got big SQL/MySQL Databases) upgrade quickly. Shared hosting is cheap and is meant for smaller sites.
Upgrade to a dedicated or shared server preverably with root access and unlimited bandwidth. It is much faster, loads of options and you can host as many sites as you want.
Tip number 3, never, ever have your domain name and hosting as the same package, if the hosting package go down, you can’t change to another hoster as your existing hoster got control over your DNS records. So pointing your NS records to somebody else becomes impossible.
Tip number 4, never, ever,ever,ever use Fasthosts as they run their SQL/MySQL servers separate from the hosting Server and they trend to overload with Databases so getting “to many connections” errors 4 to 5 times a day is the norm.
+ their SQL/MySQL servers gets hacked and they change all passwords without giving clients notice of the change, so your site will be down for days if not weeks.