George's talkSPORT show from Saturday 20 January

[Meta4]

Hey there people,

As you'll know, our [string of libellous comments deleted] internet host, Servage, somehow managed to claim that we used 50gb of transfer bandwidth within about 5 minutes this morning, and as a result, www.georgegalloway.com has been taken offline since 11am today and won't be back til tomorrow.

Leaving aside all the really bad things I wanna say about this method of, um, "client management" by our hosting company, it means we can't give any of our normal audio.

I understand that faceless had some trouble with last night's show, so I've uploaded a copy to sendspace.

Here's the link http://www.sendspace.com/file/7ru6yy

It's the first time I've done it like that, so apologies if it all goes wrong. In addition, cos of the way I have to record the shows, it's nowhere near as good quality as faceless normally does, and cos of time constraints I've left the adverts in.

All in all, no improvement over what the George Galloway website normally offers from our audio archive (something we'll be able to address if we find a new and less anger-inducing host with a dedicated server).

Cheers!

[nekokate]

Thanks for this, Meta4.

I assume from your post that you are the webmaster of George's site - if so, please do a google search for reviews of Servage and you will find out how utterly disgusting a web host they are. The cheap prices they (and so many other idiot hosts) claim to offer are absolutely impossible - for George's sake change to a more realistic host; you get what you pay for, and Servage are disgraceful.

[Meta4]

Hey nekokate

I've read some of the stuff you wrote on here about it; was planning to talk to you about it too. Yeah, I'm webmaster (well, a volunteer who just learned how to design websites and redesigned the old site a few months ago).

It's actually thanks to faceless pointing me in the direction of things you've said about Servage that I started to pay attention. I googled "servage review" as you advised in a previous post, and was alarmed.

We still had no proof - it could've been some weird attack, something else could've been happening.

But when I looked today and saw the bandwidth usage jump 50gb in a few minutes, that's all the proof I need.

I've spoken with George and others, and we're gonna move asap. All we need now is the time to look and seriously consider other deals.

So if you've got any advice - if any of you guys have any advice - I'll be really pleased to hear it

[IRiSHMaFIA]

Meta4

I've dealt with a lot of server companies over the years, and the best I've used so far is http://www.theplanet.com/

If you take a look you might find a good deal through them.

If there are ever any problems you simply submit a ticket and they get back to you right away, and it's not some form letter that most send out but actual real help.

It wouldn't hurt to look into them, but just beware if a deal looks too good to be true then it usually is. I've unfortunately found that out the hard way.

Another one to check out is http://www.managed.com/

I used them for a while but I needed full root access and at the time they didn't offer that with their packages. They've a pretty solid service and no downtime at all when I was with them.

Best of luck!

[nekokate]

Hi Meta4,

I've been involved with the running of several very highly visited websites in the past, and currently run a medium sized site, and the only real advice I can give you is to take very seriously what I said above - "You get what you pay for".

Servage offer (from memory) something like 1,200GB data transfer for around £5 per month, and I can tell you as an absolute fact that even Yahoo.com or MSN.com with their lucrative associations with top-level domains don't get bandwidth that cheap. It is impossible to offer that gigantic amount of data transfer at that price - it's costing Servage more than that!

A very, very reliable web host, who can certainly offer you a dedicated server and good tech support, is a company called Hurricane Electric (google will find you their site easily), but there are many more who are equally good.

I think that if you want to carry on offering the sort of content you are offering, then you (or George, assuming he's paying for the site) need to bite the bullet and either pay what reputable hosts charge, or - just as Faceless has recently done here - host the downloads on free servers like Sendspace.

[IRiSHMaFIA]

erm....okay as we BOTH said .....weigh all options and don't take anything that looks too good to be true. Have a look at the places I mentioned and you never know...you might find yourself a good deal.

Also read forums of what people have to say that have actually used the server company you're looking at. That's why I mentioned theplanet as I've used them for business for a couple years now and never had a problem.

Another final tip is if it says ranked #1 by this mag or that one...it means nothing! We made that mistake on this site once and paid dearly for it with non consistent service. We had no help with downtime or any other issues and had to deal with human robots that were unplugged during peak hours.

Buyer beware like anything else!

[Meta4]

Hey IM and Nekokate. Cheers for the links. I'll have a look today when I've finished work.

They cheeky gits: Servage has just put its price down to £4.50 a month. Unless they made it specially for us, to taunt us

You guys are, of course, right. I guess we should've known in advance that a company offering about 1000 times the bandwidth that everyone else offers (now 2100gb a month) was hardly an honest setup. I've learned that lesson before with "unlimited broadband" deals; I guess I just assumed business hosting was different.

Saying that, when the site didn't have lots of media content, Servage was a fine host - nearly-immediate replies to problems, very helpful with scripting etc. And it does have to be said that they let us have 400 (now 500) gb in January before they started with the deception. I just wish they had talked to us - we liked them enough that we'd have been willing to do a deal for more bandwidth. Clearly, nekokate's right - they can't offer it, so they piss us off instead.

We'll call this "growing pains" for now, I guess. There are lots of options for file hosting, shared bandwidth etc., sendspace seems interesting, but I think, given that we've got ambition to do stuff in different formats, that the sooner we're in control of our own server the better.

Although saying that, even a server hosted in a datacentre will come with all sorts of limitations and risks. Oh well. Lucky I like learning about this stuff!

[Meta4]

Well, the problem appears to be solved - came home from work yesterday and found out that a new deal had been signed with some company or other anyway before I'd even had a chance to look at other options. 1and1 is the company, "business hosting" is the package.

Any views?

We've not transferred anything over yet; it'll take a few days.

[behroze]

Hi Meta4,

I have my site hosted by 1&1 using the same "business hosting" package. I had a pretty active blog that got some decent traffic. Although the site as whole doesn't get nearly the traffic that you're site gets, I haven't had any issues. Recently they had some problems with their e-mail service.

According to Netcarft, they are one of the more reliable hosting services so hopefully they will not shaft you.

Good luck!

[faceless]

[Meta4]

Well, everything's transferred over now. Again, thanks to everyone for recommendations, and apologies that I didn't get the chance to check them out.

So far, so good. Small technical issues about doing online forms (we're still using Servage's back-end form processing script for that), but overall, a joy to know that we're far less likely to be lied to now.

[faceless]

Good luck with it - it's always a hassle when switching over the names though.

[popinjay]

How about an official GG forum on his site?

[faceless]

[Meta4]

That ain't gonna happen. Just look at any blog that mentions his name, and you immediately get his online stalkers coming along with their just-inside-the-law libels, and even outright libels (knowing that were George to sue everyone who defamed him, he'd spend his life in court).

It's a shame, cos it means the trolls win, but I urge you to look around and you'll see what I mean. There are people who run Google searches several times a day, and immediately go to pollute comments boxes as soon as they can.

Even the Respect blog fell victim to it - almost as soon as they mention Galloway, along comes the "he spent £500,000 of oil money blah blah" stuff.

You end up having to be like a primary school teacher. On the Lenin's Tomb blog, to which I contribute and am a moderator of, we now have moderation turned on almost 24/7 - the "pro-war left", which sees Galloway as the biggest obstacle to democracy in Iraq (what power they invest in him!), spent so much time crapping all over everything we did, and it's become so much more civilised since we clamped down upon it.

All in all, a forum wouldn't work on the GG site.