Last Friday I signed up at Gig4Free since I needed a kind of sandbox to develop a new internet idea with somebody else before going public on a 'real' domain. What they offer sounds good: support of all kind of scripting languages, mysql database, ftp,... whatever you want (or at least I want java script:emoticon(';)', 'smid_14')
).

So I signed up on Friday and the account was established within a couple of minutes and I could start to use it. By Friday evening I startet setting up my trial database and hacking in the first php-sites and all worked as expected. It was even not that slow.

On Saturday I though: that is my day. Outside it was raining anyway, so the perfect day to set up some scripts for a new homepage. But when I tried to open my page from the day before, I was'nt able! I was able to log in to the administrating site - using cpanel and all the stuff. But the page itself did not opened up. I think I tried one hour to find out, what is going on - checking server activity, checking out the announcement pages and so on. But it did not helped much. I guess they had some trouble with their nameserver.

So I gave up with gig4free and the next one to two hours I spent to set up a new account at another provider, setting up the mysql again, transfering all the scripts, adapting the pathes to the databank server, debugging the scripts again, whatsoever.

Finally it was 12pm before I wrote my first additional feature in the code. I was able to proceed on my project at least for the afternoon. When I looked later in the evening for my site at gig4free, it was up again.

Well, I guess next time I will think about another construction for my playground - perhaps starting right off with a paid server -- half a day of my time is possibly more worth than $10.

 

 

 

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Ouch. That's a waste of time.

Personally, I have no need for anything additional like that. No extra accounts anywhere, or anything so I can't empathize.

I can, however, sympathize. Many times I have wasted time on a website because they have problems with their server.

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That's sooooo..... BAD!
I have try that before but... I didn't use it any more....
BECAUSE it's bad...

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Even i've been through these typical conditions.. Did all uploading stuff and in beginning ten to fifteen minutes the site was available but later.. Gosh its gone.. Can't trust the providers these days..what i am doing these days is just check their uptime if its more than two years then only i take a RISK to sign up..

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Its called karma. They make it seem like they offer a lot... and hey look... its server is down

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Thats what happens,It would be better to stay here.It's worhtless to strart here but then soon enough leave here?If I get accepted i'm going to stay here.I googled and googled and found nothing but worthless stuff,but then I seen this site,So I tried it,well look i'm here now ar'nt I?Thanks.

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I haven't heard of that particular provider but yeah you are right it's not really that easy to find a good solid one. I can't even remember how I found this one lol.

I had been with a few previous ones but they didn't last long, some had uptime problems and others just want kaput as fast as they had came up.

The Asta Host forums them selves seem to have issues on occasion for me but it's never affected my site and only affected my cpanel access once so it's all good .

And I'm sorry to hear about wasting all that time. I recommend WAMP5 or EasyPHP (mostly WAMP5) for building and testing things locally on your machine before uploading them for a real web test. They are just applications that run and handle all the Apache/PHP/mySQL/phpMyAdmin stuff for you instead of having to download, install, configure and run them all seperately.

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You're hardly going to find a server that is up for more than two years, let alone one. Why? Software updates require restarts of the actual software (if it's Linux) or the entire server (if it's Windows). Software updates are a MUST for hosting providers to keep the servers safe for everyone. Also, hardware fails as well because NOTHING lasts "forever".

What you need to do is ASK around. Some providers that are really terrible may have excellent uptime. You never know.

Just my two cents!

[N]F

 

 

 

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I personally think that is unfair and is out of order.

Can't anything ever be what it actually says it is, it is so annoying when these kindof things happen and its so difficult to make your voice heard.

It really does annoy me, although I know this host is genuine as a good friend recommended me the site.

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Holy cow, man! That's really horrible - wasting like 12 hours just because of some stupid server downtime??? I mean... wow....just WOW. But personally, I don't think that's a HUGE loss because I've spent working a couple of days just getting myself familiar with the web development world/dimensions. No, make that a week.

I think that time could've been reduced by more than half if there was someone to help me out or at least a book on web development!! I was looking at forum software and checking out how to deal with the HTML and PHP and skin coding. I mean, it was horrible. I didn't know PHP and I had very limited knowledge on HTML as well. Also, I was new to this forum software thing and man....

Oh well, at least I had lots of fun tinkering around with things I had no idea how they worked. I had to reset to the default settings tons of times because they didn't work often. For example, trying to add Google's AdSense and working around with Photoshop to change the theme picture, as well as Dreamweaver but MY GOSH!! I don't know how to use any Macromedia product... and Flash is a foreign language to me

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