I spend way too much time on computers and if I can find ways to spend less time, I try and utilize them. I use a program named ImageFolio to handle my image files in the Stock Photography section of my website. Whenever I add new photos, I have to reindex the photo database. I also need to reindex on a regular basis to update the “most visited” photos. This reindexing is done through a cgi script. As I add more photos, the cgi script takes longer and longer to run. I asked my web host to increase the cgi script timeout. Their maximum time is 90 seconds. My script could not finish within that time and it would wreak havoc on my index. I went to great lengths to find a solution to my problem. My web host could not increase the timeout so I was stuck. This wasn’t the only problem that I had with the short timeout. When I publish a new category to my Stock Photography program, the program can create automatic thumbnails for the new category. The timeout would not allow the program to complete and there would not be a thumbnail. To solve this, I manually uploaded a thumbnail each time I created a new category. Not a big deal but it took some of the precious extra time that I do have. Just a quick note before I move on. If you are interested in a program like ImageFolio, they have a lite version that is free. You can find it at ImageFolio Lite. I use it for my family website and my friend uses it on her website. It is a nice photo program.
I purchased a program called Macro Express. It is a great program but it took some time for me to write a macro that would reindex my stock photo site one category at a time. I would log into the admin area of the stock photography program and let the macro run. As long as each macro didn’t take longer than 60 seconds, everything was okay but it took a half hour or longer to run through each category. I also had to remember to add new categories into the macro as I created them. Needless to say, this was a real pain in the butt. I knew that there was only one solution and that was to move to a new hosting company. This isn’t the easiest thing to do because I had to find a company that had a longer timeout and then I thought about moving my site from my old host to my new one. My old hosting company didn’t make site backups easy to create and there are a lot of things on my site that are not on my PC. My photos are uploaded independently using a program named iBulc so they are on my hard drive but not in the folder with my website files. I keep copies of the photos that I upload in folders but I am sure that they are all there. I have the high resolution originals but I don’t want to recreate all the images again.
Okay, so I went out looking for a new hosing company and finding one is a task all to itself. I read reviews of many different hosts and really tried to narrow the list. I thought about the criteria that drew me to my present hosting company – good support, reliable uptime and a user forum where I could get help from fellow users. In the time that I was with my old host, the user forum disappeared. I wondered why this happened. Was it a pain for the hosting company or were users having problems and airing them on the forum? I don’t know that answer. I read about a lot of companies and I wasn’t sure what to believe. I finally used a method that I use when I purchase things on the web. I try to find sites where buyers post their comments about a product. A great example of this is my favorite site for buying computer products – NewEgg.com. When you look for a product, you can read real user reviews of their experience with the item. I find that kind of information invaluable.
As I narrowed my list of hosting companies, I looked for user forums and read a lot of the comments – both good and bad. I found one that rose above the rest on my list and I decided to send them an email about their cgi timeout. I received a reply that their cgi timeout was 300 seconds or 333% more than my current host. I wasn’t sure that 300 seconds would be enough but I was willing to give it a try. The company offered a 45 day refund policy if I wasn’t satisfied. They also offer to transfer your site from your current host to their servers. I thought that this sounded pretty good. Additionally, they offer unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and with their $7.95 per month plan, unlimited domains. If you have three domains, you could keep them all under the same plan for $7.95 a month. This sounded great so I signed up.
Not long after I signed up, I received an email from one of their transfer people for me to supply them with login information to my site. I did and they sent me an email back that they would let me know when everything was transferred. I even received an email that evening that due to the large size of my site and the transfer rate, they were going to let the transfer run overnight and contact me in the morning. Sure enough, the next morning there was an email that the transfer was complete. It also said that I should try out the site before changing my servers to point to the new hosting company. I couldn’t figure out how I could try this with all my links pointing to my old web host’s servers. The new companies tech people were quick with an answer. They told me how to edit the Hosts file on my computer so that whenever I went to any page on my site, I would be actually viewing the pages on the new hosts servers. This would only work on the computer on which I changed the Hosts file. This was terrific. I tried all my pages and they all worked great. My blog was intact as were all my photo pages. The first thing that I did was try and reindex my photo gallery. It completed well within the five minute time frame.
One of the things that impressed me about the new hosting company was their quick response to any questions or concerns that I had. I want to set up my reindexing in a cron job. When I asked my old hosting company about doing this, they pretty much told me that I was on my own. The new company is really trying to help me get this done. Every question that I have asked them has been answered within a matter of hours – not days. All right, who is the new hosting company? They are HostGator.
I believe that I am going to be very happy where I am. I am not trying to talk anyone into moving their site to HostGator. I am only writing this to tell you what a pleasant experience it was making the change. If you do have an interest in moving to another host, visit the HostGator forums and read what others have to say.
© 2008, Herb Segars. All rights reserved.
