Good news! If you’re reading this post, it means that the site is finally back up again after three days of intermittent disasters.

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Dreamhost, my hosting company, has always worked well for me in the past, but three days ago I tried to upgrade to a service plan with a static IP. That seems to have been a big mistake. Fifteen minutes ago I downgraded again, and suddenly everything seems to be working. Hmmmmm.

I’m hopeful that everything will keep on working, but this episode has finally convinced me that it’s time to switch to another hosting service. I’ve been looking for hints on which hosting plan to buy in the forums at WebHostingTalk. I’d like a virtual server, like the ones from Linode, or Openhosting, or PowerVPS, or Xelhosting. I’ll pay more money, but I’ll get a true-blue (only slightly simulated) Linux machine of my very own, with a high-speed Internet connection. Having to admin my own Linux machine will be a bit of a pain. However, having to sit around without any of my Web resources while someone else fails to admin my Linux machine is a much bigger pain.

The bad news about virtual hosting is that you’ve got to be your own sysadmin, plus you get something like 50GB of bandwidth and 5GB of storage for $15 or $20 a month. By comparison, I have something like 1000GB of bandwidth and 24GB of storage on Dreamhost for $8 a month. Whoa. But, of course, I don’t actually use anything like that amount. The mighty Castle Black empire is consuming 1GB of storage and a microscopic 50MB of bandwidth. My storage, much of which is email, is currently growing by perhaps a couple of megabytes per day, at which rate it will take 3 to 5 years to reach 5GB. By then my hosting service will have become cheaper. Or, if it hasn’t… I can just pack up and move. The beauty of virtual hosting is that all the providers are alike. Most of the pros seem to be able to relocate their whole website in a day or less.

And the real beauty of my own virtual Linux host? I get to run a real database! Hello, Postgres! Goodbye forever, MySQL!

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