*sigh* Why does nothing ever work smoothly?

[mitamata]

So, I've been contemplating posting this for a while now, but I know how tricky server managment can be and I read all the updates/upgrades news and such so I figured I'd give you time to sort things out. But after seeing nothing has changed after weeks have passed, I decided it's time to whine.

First off, let me say thank you for the great list of services you offer and for free at that! I've searched for a long time before I found you and this is the only free host I've found that offers everything I need. Now, if only it worked without problems.

I've an account on Stoli (account name mitamata). I'm generally a very patient person, but after all the slowness for the last few weeks (some 3 or 4 weeks now), I'm about ready to give up. I realise this is a free service and I appreciate everything the staff does, but the situation is unbearable.
My fiance and I are trying to develop a php game. For the last few weeks, the server has never been in a good enough shape for me to actually work on it. It's always so slow that I can't bare to test my code, I give up after 10 minutes - a simple php page currently takes more than 10 seconds to load. I use WinSCP to work on the files and it keeps losing the connection to the server, it never stays connected for more than 10 minutes. There's no problems with the code, everything works, but it takes forever to load.

I am fairly confident that my code is not the problem, I'm not doing anything demanding with it, it's just simple php with smarty templates. I'm also fairly confident that it's not my connection, because it's just as slow when I'm at home as it is when I'm at work. I'm also fairly confident it's not my location (I know some South Africans have been having issues), because it's just as slow for my fiance in Canada as it is for me in Slovenia. I guess it's possible it has something to do with the times I try to use the site, but that shouldn't be an issue, should it? Servers should function all day long.

So, I've two questions at the moment.

1.) Is this just our site? Surely it can't be. If there is ANYTHING I can do myself to fix things, please let me know.

2.) And if it's not just our site, I'd like to know is if I can look forward to any changes. I know this is a free service and I don't expect the quality one gets when actually paying, but I do expect a certain level of quality. Like not having to wait 10 seconds for a tiny little page to load. If this is as good as it gets, please let me know and I'll start looking for a new host. Not because I'm angry or ungreatful (seriously, awesome service lineup), but I literally can not work this way. I would hate to do that, because I think the service here (when working with normal speeds) is awesome and the staff are great. When I started out, I was going to develop the page on free hosting and then move to paid once more than two people actually used the site, but with the current situation I'm not sure if I'm confident enough to pay for hosting here.

Please put my mind at ease and tell me things will be working smoothly soon? :frown:

 

[Jarryd]

It seems they are still getting underlying issues sorted out with the server move, i joined just after the server move, but i do understand that when you transfer to newer server machines, there will be problems, and problems in which may take weeks to correct, even months, there will always be small bugs causing problems, and it seems now they are slowly starting to work out all the issues, they are trying there hardest, and i'm sure within a few more weeks things will be stable again.

For now, when you are having troubles, to help us figure out what could be going wrong (if it's server side) create a thread about your problem, include some basic account details and include any error logs, then the staff team will try there hardest to help you out. This way, if there is something wrong server side, Corey can do some debugging and figure out what's wrong, then it can be fixed, and hopefully it will all run smoothly.

 

[GamingX]

We don't deny that the Stoli server is running a bit slow. But the admins are working on it and checking what is causing the slowness. It is not that the server has always been like that. And as for the paid service, it is completely hosted on another server so there are no issues with that. Due to the high usage on the free service, we experience the slowness.

 

[malee]

My site also ,but It's should be ok in this mouth. I hope.

Ps. Thank you .x10hosting has the best phpconfig . So I don't need to headace to debug.
Compare to another one , this still offer higher space than others.

but one thing I want admins here to lower in language restriction.

 

[Russ]

Why? We don't want to read posts from people who have a limited vocabulary.

 

[mitamata]

Considering the fact that they need to check what you have on your site to see if you're complying with the TOS, I don't see how they could lower the language restrictions. They can't tell what you're hosting if they can't understand the language, can they now?


Ok, so as if to say "you've no clue what you're talking about", the server has been very responsive this evening. I got quite some work done with only a few interruptions
Wether it's just temporary or not, it's good to see things can work smoothly. The dot next to 'server load' is actually green! Hopefully things will continue this way and I can do loads of work this weekend ^_^
Thanks for the great service

 

[Archkronos]

I'm very patient. In fact, the server load went up to a whopping 666.47 (I screenshot it, post it later). I just laughed.

 

[Corey]

Here is the problem:

We have a few thousand accounts to get rid of on Stoli. A lot of these accounts are from warez abuse and are 2Gigs+. When we attempt to remove them the server load shoots up because of all the files. It is our fault for letting so many accounts build up that should have been terminated slowly here and there.

We do believe this is 100% of the problem. Once we clean the server up and if there are still issues and rule out any other possibility besides us just needing to get a new server, we will get a new server. Since we do free hosting it is very hard for us to justify getting new servers ($250+\mo). So it is a last resort for us and we must explore every other possibility before taking it.

Short Answer: We will resolve this issue even if we have to get a new server.

-Corey

 

[dpogary]

THank you Corey, since i havnt had much time to work on my site and get it back up i havnt really had to deal with the slowness issues, the little ammount i was doing was slow but not much to complain with no time...but Thanks again Corey, you do alot of work on these Services and you definetly earn my respect! good job and thank you always

 

[eminemix]

mitamata, if you just want to test your php game you could set up a small server at your home pc.
Everything works smoothly on localhost.

 

[mitamata]

I know, but I'm not the only one working on it, my fiance is as well. As he's on another continent. We're working on it at the same time so keeping two versions updated would be quite a hassle.

Thank you for your reply, Corey. Hope the server won't need replacing. And good luck with the clean up

 

[ompster]

mitamata, you should just run your own server from home if all your doing is testing your php scripts. A WAMP stack would be good and is fully automated you just need to run the install. here are what I believe is 2 of the best:

Apache2Triad:
Easy to install and config comes with alot of extras like mail server, FTP server, PHP, MySQL, ASP, Python ...and alot more lol
http://apache2triad.net/

WAMP server:
I don't think its as good or as user friendly as apache2traid but its worth looking and does the job although be default theres no password on MySQL and you have to do some config file editing for it to work. PHP, MySQL ,etc
http://www.wampserver.com/

And if you want your site on the net so you can show all your friends or something you can edit it locally then upload it once its done. Dreamweaver has a good feature for this.

Cheers