i dont know jay, i really dont...

I thought you were using Media Temple, jay. Or is this for another personal website?

While the site is hosted on Media Temple, the media files I host are on Dreamhost due to their cheap and generous bandwidth plans. But I guess you get what you pay for. =/

Ah Dreamhost... let me count the ways I love thee... One of the sites I am admin of is hosted by these people. Right now, it is down. Again.

http://icdsoft.com
: never had a problem with them. and their support is super fast [with answering questions, never had to email them with a problems].

Cheers, heavyness. I appreciate the recommendation, though I simply haven't seen any plan that even comes close to what Dreamhost offers in terms of bandwidth for the price.

Taking a quick look at ICDSoft's plans, they offer less than 0.18% of what I'm currently receiving from Dreamhost.

So, while Dreamhost's servers go up and down like rollercoasters, it's their bandwidth that keeps me holding onto the ride.

I like Dreamhost... ^_^

I've never tried to go to your site when it was down. I went to cute overload today and they were down. But now they're back up. Yes I read cute overload.

TJ - that's because the pages of this site are not hosted on Dreamhost, they are on a server with Media Temple. I use Dreamhost for serving up the games and other media files we host. For example, the competition entries are being served from Dreamhost.

Host it yourself with Apache on a Unix box.

...and then he pays for the bandwidth directly? :)

I co-own/admin a Debian box with some guys, but I don't have to serve up goodness knows how many Flash files a month!

> "Host it yourself with Apache on a Unix box."

That opens up a whole 'nother can of worms that I just don't have the time to manage myself.

Perhaps someday soon I'll be able to afford hiring someone to take care of that aspect of the business for me. For now, as long as I'm the go-to man for basically everything around here, I'll farm it out.

Update: I've just received an email from Dreamhost informing me that my 'account' has been moved to a different server...

"If you did not request this move, do not fret. It is just part of our efforts to spread load and make your hosting experience more pleasant."

So, maybe they were fed up with all the downtime, too? Let's hope the new server is better than the old one was. =p

Important life lesson: You cannot get conistently reliable web hosting for less than $20/mo.

Try Lunarpages ( http://www.lunarpages.com ) They're excellent, efficient, and affordable. ABSOLUTELY highly recommended!!

Heh... and I *JUST* recently switched over from another webhost to Dreamhost. Well, I guess to answer your question of WHY? http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

Daniel - I have heard good things about LunarPages and they are on my radar if things get so unbearable with Dreamhost that I cannot stay. I believe I did look into their plans once, and as I mentioned above, there is nothing out there that compares with the bandwidth Dreamhost offers (and yes, I need TBs of bandwidth per month).

Happy Steve - that is good news, well, sort of. I hope they get to the root of the issue, and soon. That could mean a tremendous improvement in reliability for sites hosted with them, which is very much needed if they plan to stay in business. Too bad they don't email their customers with these "scheduled maintenance windows" as it was the first I had heard anything about it. Cheers!

There's also a good in-depth post at the dreamhost blog which may clear up why they've been having trouble: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/08/01/anatomy-of-an-ongoing-disaster/

Update