I have (had?) two websites hosted on www.000webhost.com..
I started getting "website down" messages from my auto-pinger system overnight, saying that www.q292u.com was down. This morning, www.cheapcarbooks.com started reporting as down as well...
So I tried to log in to 000webhost, only to find that MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN CANCELLED!
NO WARNING! NO E-MAIL! CANCELLED!
Free web Hosting - you get what you pay for..
000webhost - Avoid at all costs!
Showing posts with label Free Web Hosting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Web Hosting. Show all posts
Friday, 14 January 2011
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Free Web Hosting Kills your traffic!
About a month ago, I moved one of my less-well-performing sites (www.q292u.com), to free hosting with 000webhost.
Despite good traffic, I simply wasn't getting any conversions)
Well, today, Google Analytics confirmed what I suspected: traffic is down around 75% on both sites. This is because the pages take so long to load, if at all.
(You've probably seen my posts on terrible ping-times..)
The one site I moved from 000webhost to paid hosting (www.supercars-for-sale.com) has increased traffic by 25%.
Free Web Hosting Kills your traffic.
Enough said.
Despite good traffic, I simply wasn't getting any conversions)
Well, today, Google Analytics confirmed what I suspected: traffic is down around 75% on both sites. This is because the pages take so long to load, if at all.
(You've probably seen my posts on terrible ping-times..)
The one site I moved from 000webhost to paid hosting (www.supercars-for-sale.com) has increased traffic by 25%.
Free Web Hosting Kills your traffic.
Enough said.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Update: 000webhost server ping times.
The record is now over 10 seconds for a ping.
Both my 000webhost sites have reported serious amounts of downtime.
I'm now working on a charting system to add to the early warning pinger system.
That'll turn numbers into pictures, so we can really see how appalling their stats are..
Both my 000webhost sites have reported serious amounts of downtime.
I'm now working on a charting system to add to the early warning pinger system.
That'll turn numbers into pictures, so we can really see how appalling their stats are..
Thursday, 25 November 2010
000webhost Ping Times > 3 Seconds!!!
I've been monitoring the ping times for my free-hosted domains for about 24 hours now.
It's truly shocking!
My sites on 000webhost have had ping times of over 3 seconds! (My others are less than 100ms)
If it takes THAT long to ping, can you imagine how long it takes for a Wordpress site to load? OUCH!
And to top it all off, my system e-mailed me a few minutes ago to say that both by 000webhost sites are not responding..
So I checked, and they ARE down.
:-(
UPDATE - New record - 9088 ms (9 Seconds!)
It's truly shocking!
My sites on 000webhost have had ping times of over 3 seconds! (My others are less than 100ms)
If it takes THAT long to ping, can you imagine how long it takes for a Wordpress site to load? OUCH!
And to top it all off, my system e-mailed me a few minutes ago to say that both by 000webhost sites are not responding..
So I checked, and they ARE down.
:-(
UPDATE - New record - 9088 ms (9 Seconds!)
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
More Problems with Free Web Hosting.. (www,supercars-for-sale.com)
This time, x10hosting have blocked access to outgoing port 80 (http) requests from php. Thus blocking feedwordpress, and killing access to ebay RSS.
The result? No posts...
So here we go again, looking for a new free hosting service...
Any suggestions?
The result? No posts...
So here we go again, looking for a new free hosting service...
Any suggestions?
Thursday, 4 November 2010
WORDPRESS: Updating FEEDWORDPRESS by a real CRON Job..
The Background:
I have a Wordpress site (Supercars-For-Sale.Com) running on a free hosting account (with x10hosting - recommended!)
The site uses FEEDWORDPRESS to pull in posts from RSS feeds. It works well.
The problem:
I need the site to automatically update it's posts from the RSS feeds, because I don't have the time to do it manually.
If I set FWP to automatically update (using Wordpress inbuilt scheduling, WP-Cron), the only options are:
- Update before page load (Catastrophic page load times!)
- Update after page load (checks for jobs after every page load..)
Setting either one of these options will get you suspended on x10hosting or 000webhost free accounts.
Rightly so, these are shared servers, and you are hogging them!
(000webhost will CANCEL your account without warning - beware :( . x10hosting will suspend you, but at least they'll tell you about it :) , and unsuspend you on request.)
The solution:
FEEDWORDPRESS has an additional feature: update via web page.
If you send a request to: http://domain-name?update_feedwordpress=1 then all your syndicated input feeds are updated.
To make this work, all you need to do is set up a cron job (Scheduled task), that executes the following statement:
/usr/bin/curl --silent http://domain-name?update_feedwordpress=1
** Don't panic! a "Cron Job" is how a web server (Unix) runs scheduled tasks. You add jobs to it, tell it what to run and how often, and that's it.
"curl" is simply a command that accesses web pages from the command line.
Most webservers will have curl installed. **
x10hosting uses the cpanel graphical interface for everything. Even Cron jobs. Simply set-up the scheduling, enter the command, and that's it. (If it says there was a problem, try it again. It'll then say that the job already exists. Hit F5 to refresh, and the job is there..)
If you are using command-line crontab, then use the following statement:
*/HOURS * * * * /usr/bin/curl --silent http://domain-name?update_feedwordpress=1
Notes:
1. Replace "HOURS" with the number of hours between updates.
2. Replace "domain-name" with YOUR domain-name.
Other things to try:
If you are on a free hosting account, you could try turning off the inbuilt WP-CRON system. It's rubbish anyway, and only checks for jobs exactly when you don't want it to. (just before, or after a pageload). All you need is a big bot visit, and it's Hello, account suspension again. Been there. Done that to death
Simply edit the WP-CONFIG.php file, and add the following entry:
define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
It needs to be at the beginning of the file, with the other "define"s.
** Please note that this will disable all WP_CRON activity. No scheduled jobs will run. (future-dated posts will not appear).
I have a Wordpress site (Supercars-For-Sale.Com) running on a free hosting account (with x10hosting - recommended!)
The site uses FEEDWORDPRESS to pull in posts from RSS feeds. It works well.
The problem:
I need the site to automatically update it's posts from the RSS feeds, because I don't have the time to do it manually.
If I set FWP to automatically update (using Wordpress inbuilt scheduling, WP-Cron), the only options are:
- Update before page load (Catastrophic page load times!)
- Update after page load (checks for jobs after every page load..)
Setting either one of these options will get you suspended on x10hosting or 000webhost free accounts.
Rightly so, these are shared servers, and you are hogging them!
(000webhost will CANCEL your account without warning - beware :( . x10hosting will suspend you, but at least they'll tell you about it :) , and unsuspend you on request.)
The solution:
FEEDWORDPRESS has an additional feature: update via web page.
If you send a request to: http://domain-name?update_feedwordpress=1 then all your syndicated input feeds are updated.
To make this work, all you need to do is set up a cron job (Scheduled task), that executes the following statement:
/usr/bin/curl --silent http://domain-name?update_feedwordpress=1
** Don't panic! a "Cron Job" is how a web server (Unix) runs scheduled tasks. You add jobs to it, tell it what to run and how often, and that's it.
"curl" is simply a command that accesses web pages from the command line.
Most webservers will have curl installed. **
x10hosting uses the cpanel graphical interface for everything. Even Cron jobs. Simply set-up the scheduling, enter the command, and that's it. (If it says there was a problem, try it again. It'll then say that the job already exists. Hit F5 to refresh, and the job is there..)
If you are using command-line crontab, then use the following statement:
*/HOURS * * * * /usr/bin/curl --silent http://domain-name?update_feedwordpress=1
Notes:
1. Replace "HOURS" with the number of hours between updates.
2. Replace "domain-name" with YOUR domain-name.
Other things to try:
If you are on a free hosting account, you could try turning off the inbuilt WP-CRON system. It's rubbish anyway, and only checks for jobs exactly when you don't want it to. (just before, or after a pageload). All you need is a big bot visit, and it's Hello, account suspension again. Been there. Done that to death
Simply edit the WP-CONFIG.php file, and add the following entry:
define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
It needs to be at the beginning of the file, with the other "define"s.
** Please note that this will disable all WP_CRON activity. No scheduled jobs will run. (future-dated posts will not appear).
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Supercars-For-Sale.Com - The saga so far..
Supercars-For-Sale.Com was originally set-up on 000webhost.com That lasted two weeks before they decided that their shared server couldn't cope with simple SQL requests..
The first I knew about it, my account was cancelled. Not suspended. CANCELLED.
No e-mail, nothing. (although I had received a few messages about slow mysql queries)
So, to hell with that. I transferred my site lock, stock and barrel to x10hosting.com, (and removed all the banner advertising for 000webhost). All went well, the site was up in no time at all.
But then I upgraded a couple of plugins and ran into problems. Wassup broke the site!
But worse than that, I couldn't get in to the site as Admin to sort it out!
Using x10hosting.com's file manager to remove Wassup's files worked just fine, though.
It gets worse, though.. the site was suspended for excessive use of resources..
Even though no-one could view the site..
I got it unsuspended, and all appeared OK. (Removed Wassup, remember..).
Overnight, the site was suspended again, for excessive use of resources. Sigh :(
This has to be to do with Feedwordpress being called from wp-cron every time a page is loaded. All it takes is one big bot visit, and we are suspended again.
So, as soon as I can get the site unsuspended again, wp-cron is getting suspended, and I'm manually running FWP's syndication update.
The first I knew about it, my account was cancelled. Not suspended. CANCELLED.
No e-mail, nothing. (although I had received a few messages about slow mysql queries)
So, to hell with that. I transferred my site lock, stock and barrel to x10hosting.com, (and removed all the banner advertising for 000webhost). All went well, the site was up in no time at all.
But then I upgraded a couple of plugins and ran into problems. Wassup broke the site!
But worse than that, I couldn't get in to the site as Admin to sort it out!
Using x10hosting.com's file manager to remove Wassup's files worked just fine, though.
It gets worse, though.. the site was suspended for excessive use of resources..
Even though no-one could view the site..
I got it unsuspended, and all appeared OK. (Removed Wassup, remember..).
Overnight, the site was suspended again, for excessive use of resources. Sigh :(
This has to be to do with Feedwordpress being called from wp-cron every time a page is loaded. All it takes is one big bot visit, and we are suspended again.
So, as soon as I can get the site unsuspended again, wp-cron is getting suspended, and I'm manually running FWP's syndication update.
Monday, 11 October 2010
New Website: Supercars-For-Sale.Com
The new website Supercars-For-Sale is now up-and-running.
It has a vast selection of supercars for sale, and it's about to get better..
It's hosted entirely for free on 000webhost.com. It's running Wordpress 3.0.1, and my usual selection of plugins.
It has a vast selection of supercars for sale, and it's about to get better..
It's hosted entirely for free on 000webhost.com. It's running Wordpress 3.0.1, and my usual selection of plugins.
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