Stop punishing your customers for success.

[whatrevolution]

That would only be useful if there were a solid "magic number", which there is not. As it is now, the only way you could use simulated traffic to test this would be to register and account and intentionally brute force it into suspension. Even in that case, suspension is an arbitrary decision. What gets one site suspended may not get another site suspended... it is actually dependent upon humans noticing the problem, reporting the problem, investigating the problem, THEN taking action (suspension).

[Serra]

cPanel has announced that a CPU utilization addon will be included in cPanel 12.

[whatrevolution]

Ah, that's good news, Serra. I haven't found the announcement, yet, but I have found discussion of it, and the first steps of useful implementation of it can be found in WHM.

[Serra]

This is the thread I was referencing:

http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread....t=bluehost+cpu

[whatrevolution]

I'd like to thank HostGator for their timely upgrades in cPanel since these conversations occured. The new additions to the "Statistics" table in their cPanel correctly addresses the concerns and complaints in this thread, and I consider the issue closed.

[dwrunyon]

I too am very much impressed with those new functions of the panel... it really helps to make the whole thang not feel like a big ol abstract mystery.

[naderhd]

Been with HG for almost 3 years and everything is perfect

and i upgraded 2 times and the third is coming up ....

[echievements]

Although I agree with a request to notify a webmaster prior to site suspension, HostGator support does reply quickly.

Echievments moved to Hostgator within the past month. Yesterday, I did a mass email through a site admin function. Doing this must have exceeded the server CPU requirements, and Hostgator suspended Echievements.

Since Echievements is new to Hostgator, I accept responsibility for not asking before sending.

Further, as a webmaster, I am responsible for understanding what the hosting package includes and the package limits.

Ray

[Lucidboomer]

I've been an internet entrepreneur since 1990. Some of you were still in diapers at that time. I've been with a lot of service providers in that time but I can tell you that NONE compare in service to what Hostgator offers.

I moved all 14 of my sites to HG and have rare ever had a problem. When I did, I was on with the Chat techs... and the problem was solved in less than 10 minutes.

From reading the original post on this topic I get the impression that you think it all about YOU. I'm sorry to tell you that IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU. HG's business model is a superbly tuned instrument. It serves professional internet marketers well.

If you had your own IT department, I'm pretty sure you'd be giving them a heads up anytime you make moves that are going to significantly impact bandwidth! Duh? I wouldn't think that needs to me mentioned! If I do a major product promotion where I anticipate substantial response, ie... 80,000 downloads all happening at once, then I'd have to be an idiot not to give HG a heads up on that.

So for those of you who want to blame HG for your myopia, fill your boots! HG will NOT be losing business anytime soon. I continue to drive clients to HG day after day... month after month. As long as I consider HG as my IT partner and keep them apprised of any sharp curves in the road ahead, there aren't any problems. Try pulling that stunt on a payment processor and see what happens. You'll lose a $million and be cut off form months! Want to run it like an anarchist? Build your own.

[Jc84144]

I'm just wondering, how busy would your site have to be for it to start using too much of the servers resources, causing your hosting to be suspended?

[alemcherry]

Originally Posted by Jc84144

I'm just wondering, how busy would your site have to be for it to start using too much of the servers resources, causing your hosting to be suspended?

That is really the problem. The CPU usage can not be directly linked to the traffic alone, it depends on your script, database etc.

[rliskey]

I'm just fine with a host that bans abusive users, just as I'm fine with the highway patrol nabbing abusive drivers. I don't like it when I get a ticket, and I didn't like it when a different host shut my account down. (By the way, I'm still using that host and value them very highly. Great company.)

But, to be honest, I more or less deserved every ticket I ever got, and there's no doubt that my script had gone out of control on that other host.

I prefer Drupal, which among many advantages, has built-in throttling.

I use hosts that are quick to block CPU abusers. In fact I expect that from my hosts.

If you don't have at least a general idea of your CPU usage, then you don't understand the code you're running.

[geekt]

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but honestly, this thread made me register on the forum after years of using Host Gator.
It's interesting to see how things have changed in that time. For example, the person talking about cloud computing...
To me, resource usage is obvious in it's meaning. It can be a bit confusing though, if you are trying to calculate it. You can only hope that they calculate it correctly, and you calculate it correctly as well.
I'm actually working on putting a type of throttling in my programs right now to ensure that if for whatever reason traffic on my site gets outta control, or a program does, it will begin to refuse to process requests. I'd rather have a few visitors be unable see a page on the first try than to have my account shut down.
If you try to calculate memory usage for example, it's not as simple as just looking at what comes outta the PS command, cause that includes shared memory usage.
However, I believe in regards to the limits, they are rather relaxed on it. After all, you are allowed to use more than 25% of a multi processor server, for over a minute and a half, for your single site, out of hundreds, before they give you trouble.
But the question is, what should they do after that?
It would be nice if they had a script that e-mails your contact e-mail, telling you that your account has been flagged for using too much cpu/mem. Then after it is reviewed, they decide whether to deactivate the script, or the account, or neither perhaps if it was a momentary spike. Then they would send an e-mail off to you telling you about the occurrence, preferably with information on exactly what was causing the problem, what they have done about it, and suggest you upgrade.
This would have two benefits; one being that you would be alerted at the same time as they are that your account is using too many resources, and the other being that if you put your contact e-mail as one of the e-mails on your account, you still have a CHANCE of getting it before they de-activate your account.
As to moving your account to another server with other offenders...that makes no sense. If a script is outta control, they should simply de-activate it, as they do. However, if you are getting extremely high traffic suddenly, and normally your usage is fine, they should actually do the exact opposite. They should move your account to the server with the lowest usage average. Then they should send you an e-mail telling you that they have moved it, and that if it continues to use too many resources they may choose to deactivate it, but suggest you upgrade.
This would raise customer satisfaction with the whole process and probably make them say "Wow! They're awesome! They could have just de-activated my account!"

[cfab]

Originally Posted by geekt

But the question is, what should they do after that?
It would be nice if they had a script that e-mails your contact e-mail, telling you that your account has been flagged for using too much cpu/mem. Then after it is reviewed, they decide whether to deactivate the script, or the account, or neither perhaps if it was a momentary spike. Then they would send an e-mail off to you telling you about the occurrence, preferably with information on exactly what was causing the problem, what they have done about it, and suggest you upgrade.
This would have two benefits; one being that you would be alerted at the same time as they are that your account is using too many resources, and the other being that if you put your contact e-mail as one of the e-mails on your account, you still have a CHANCE of getting it before they de-activate your account.

Exactly, I've experienced it this evening... How could I have known that my site was consuming to much CPU??? Would I have known, it was only a parameter in the config to change. But since I've not receive any warning, that was at least 2h down (for the present time).

So please, warn when, for instance, 80% of the limit is reached, memory or CPU.

[The Smoking Gun!]

Hello Folks,

I realize I am "Brand New" on these forums, although long time HG Re-Seller, probably from about their second year in business, or maybe even near the end of their first, I haven't checked to see when that exactly was....but my point is, I have NEVER in all this time encountered such a circumstance.

Despite reading most of the posts in this thread, i cannot tell for sure how many of those complaining about this are also re-sellers, or just shared hosting customers, buit if you are a re-seller, in the WHM there are options to view the server's status, and server information, which displays enough information for anyone to determine how much of total resources on the server there is, how much is being consumed, and it goes on to define what is being used for what.

Does this not answer your questions as to finding some sort of "criteria" to go by, to know a specific starting point from which, using simple math, will allow you to calculate HOW MUCH is 25%?

And once this has been calculated, and you are aware of your own usage, you will know what conditions would possibly drive your consumption to the danger zone, if you set your own limits based on the calculated 25% result, and NEVER have to worry about this again, as well as not drive costs up for all by insisting HG devise a means in which to either be warned before being locked down, which as many have stated, can happen in some cases in mere seconds, as well as the R&D they will need to put in to developing an application to do this for you, despite the fact doing so to appease those complaining here, with understandable concerns, I agree, when if they even managed to do create such an application, let me ask you, when the world wakes up, and you find your site got a front page Digg exposure, wouldn't you be better able to anticipate this possibility and engage those predefined limits you calculated to be 25% (of course it is sensible to include a margin or safety zone, rather than basing directly on that number) to AVOID reaching that mark, than whatever means of notification or warning they might have devised, for which you will all be here complaining about this newly developed application, not responding quickly enough to avert a shutdown, because it cannot anticipate the things you know of your site's patterns of use, and usual peaks and dips, for which anyone running a website with out utilizing such statistical data is already flying blind, on their own accord, despite being primed to come down on HG for your failure to do ALL the work involved in running a site or servicing client sites, in either case, you need to have an idea of these things in order to be able to run any kind of business well enough to know and even plan on outgrowing your current resource levels, permanently, as opposed to stepping up to a Dedicated server for a one month peak, and then trying to skate by again at your regular usage levels.

Now I am not saying some sort of warning, before a site is shut down wouldn't be a bad idea at all, even the automatic warnings when a site is approaching it's bandwidth limit, are often missed, and/or sent to junk or spam boxes, with the site owner oblivious of their consumption, and then automatically being suspended for exceeding their bandwidth. Despite how annoying those emails are once reaching 80% they come on average four to five times a day, provided the site is not too busy, or many more in a day for each step up in percentage used above 80%, until either their quota is increased, or they are suspended.

My point is this three (plus?) pages of posts all revolve around a very small "response" issue that, from what I can see, is easily considered and therefore with a little use of available tools, and information currently available to you, is easily avoided with out any disruption to the traffic peaking on your site.

I am not sure if it is allowed to post such stats here so I will refrain for now, however if "big brother" ok's it, I will post what I found for my own, but remember, there are numerous physical servers here, varying in age and technology levels, and you should go by your own, and not what I post, should it be approved to do so as an example, to satisfy those who are maybe too limited on time to calculate this, or just too lazy to actually DO what their business requires of them, and is simply looking to have a place to point a finger when they fail themselves, if their ego is too large to admit making mistakes, or miscalculating their break point, or otherwise BLAME, for their own shortcomings.

There are allot more productive things to talk about here, why not try to RESOLVE such issues, through working together, as one poster stated, "this is a community" not a means to bash the source of your possible income, for which, at the prices most of these plans go for, anyone, even the most clueless, have enough resources with each plan step, to sell enough client accounts, earning more than enough income, to be ABLE to step up in plan long before reaching these severe limits that could result in having their account suspended for consuming more resources than agreed to when signing up for their initial plan level. with each level of NEW client sites hosted to more than cover their consumption.

Please be aware I am just a regular guy that started out with a reseller account knowing i would have multiple sites myself, and at the time MOST of what is included with the current plans, were much lower in overall resources, had small but significant in some cases, monthly charges for MOST of what is included today.

So what I am primarily trying to say is, there is no way for them to know when who's script will run amok, and are doing what needs to be done to prevent YOUR site from impacting hundreds of others, because you didn't take the time to research what those parameters could possibly be, but i found little difficulty in finding a representation of both the total and current memory and CPU use is, and if you think they get any warning at all, let alone hoping you are in when they send one to you if they could, then DO something proactive instead of wating for such an impact to happen, I can easily calculate what 25% of my server use is, and all i did was go checking through option in my WHM panel until one showed what I was looking for, unless I am reading this wrong, it states how much there is and how much is being used, (I think these numbers reflect ALL use of the server and not just my accounts) but still, having a starting point such as total memory, and how much is committed hard, and what flex memory is left, at least allows me to get pretty darn close to know what I need to keep things under to prevent hitting that overload trigger!

People....they have GIVEN these things to us, they have PRACTICALLY "DOUBLED" the resources without an increased in fees, and are including so much more than even two years ago let alone five, that i have YET to find with any other re-seller offers out there, even the devil himself, cannot touch this level of resources, IF you also consider what comes with it, such as WHM's won't find that at the devil's site, I tried, didn't even stay there a week.

He gives you a cpanel and reseller accounts are nothing more than add-on domains, and disallows offering client hosted sites any cPanels for theier own use, but instead need to access the "extras" through their regular browser pages, and there is little or no control on how these are packaged or controlled. (Some of these may have changed since the time I had tried thier Re-seller offer, but I have not seen much difference there considering I am an account executive for 8 or 9 of my client's sites, that were bought before I leanred of being able to include domain search and sales, private name servers, and the REALLY BIG bonus of the inclusion of the WHMCS and it's constituents.

This allows integration of all these and many more, features, functions, tools, and statistics, and estimate the required resources needed to choose the most appropriate plan, and once passing more than 75% of the base resources, will ensure you are bringing in enough client invoices, to stay ahead and step up to the next plan, prior to your next traditionally busy period, which may not always be anticipated well, and why I chose 75%. which for me, didn't require much to be able to step up tp the next plan, which ironically, the VERY WEEK, I was going to move up one notch, in anticipation of a couple potential new accounts, HostGator went and practically doubled my existing resources with out so much as shred of indicating any price increase, but instead, after double checking that I wasn't slipped a mickey or something, and researched to verify this was indeed accurate, it was THEN, I had found that so many optional services with nominal monthly fees, had been reset to being INCLUDED with each reseller account.

So they are no longer being charged extra fees for all these bell whistles and HORNS, yes big honking horns, if you were to consider just how many REALLY USEFUL additions we're now available to utilize at no extra charge, and then THEY WENT ON TO "ADDING" "MORE" additional options, tools, features, and benefits to pass along to our clients, even further increasing the value that has been worked in to our packages, or services offered, and STILL has not increased the prices, and even went another step further to enlist a number of partner offers, ALSO INCLUDED, at no additional charge, allowing even a tiny Aluminum reseller account holder to start up and open A FULL FEATURED, MULTI-FUNCTIONAL ALL AROUND HOSTING COMPANY AND REGISTRAR WITH DOMAIN SEARCH AND SALES, for most tld's, county, and other domains, and a whole bundle of other optional "for fee" add-ons such as SSL certificates, and utilization of anti-fraud services, and optional second type of reseller site if you so choose, all of this is included with the smallest of re-seller plans.

So if you ask me....I know... no one did LOL!....these concerns albeit possibly resulting in a significant negative outcome, should also be weighed against the tremedous value that has been worked in to these plans, and that with just a LITTLE effort, in calculating where that 215% mark is, and easily avoiding ever exceeding it, so it can just as well be avoided, with out needing to spend very much, in comparison to the income potential the initial resources your plan affords you, which is significantly more than your moving up one plan level would increase your costs by, to ensure it NEVER happens.

If you keep in mind how much things like website templates, and site-builder's interfaces, as well as the always growing "one click" installers of some of the hottest and most popular OS software and scripts on the net, Note* to new website owners these are gold to them*, and when they see how much you offer, and find it costs them probably half of what they expected such a feature rich, single or multi-site hosting service costs from your site, they will have little reason to look elsewhere.

Although the newest implementation of the removal of disk and bandwidth limitations, on regular shared hosting seems to make competing difficult, there are a hundred other reasons for many users to prefer your service over such "no-limits" accounts, because we all know, and this is true of EVERY no limits hosting plan, regardless of which company, there are always addendum's or disclaimers on every site that, although it is stated as being unlimited, it is also understood it is shared, and anyone expecting TRULY unlimited resources for so little a month, is only being ignorant of the reality of what SHARED hosting REALLY is, and that there will only be so much to go around.

So there has to be boundaries of some kind, or they have unrealistic expectations, and I have found most often that people who are usually the FIRST to be complaining or making an issue of it, are the same ones that never took the time to READ the policies, and terms of service agreements, for any and all the fine print, that often times many of the sites offering such hosting plans, make discerning those limitations very difficult to determine, at least here it is up front and openly disclosed as to what is meant by "unlimited BW&DS".

Don't forget all those other features I mentioned, TRY to find HALF of them with a "comparable" hosting service elsewhere, and when I say comparable, that means, ALL things considered, interfaces, features, add on free services and resources, and more than anything else COMPLEX, GRAPHIC INTENSIVE, HIGH PAGE LOAD SPEEDS, or LOW PAGE LOAD TIMES, and if they do not at least meet THAT one criteria, then nothing else about it can be considered "comparable".

I am stepping off my soap box now, and will try to limit all future post sizes, it's just that this thread has been recycling posts for three pages with no apparent end in sight, short of having the thread shut down, so I decided to sign up (Trust me the last thing I ever wanted to do is sign up on yet another forum! LOL!) But I sincerely thought my feedback was of intrinsic value to bring to mind the MANY other reasons we are here.

So I thought this was worth the effort and additional emails n my inbox,( and passwords to remember) to make my appeal to encourage you all to come together, "work together" pool your apparently high degree of mixed talents, as indicated by many of these posts, and find some means in which to work around this possible service interruption, fully understanding what the potential impact it may have on our client sites, but lest we not forget why we came here, and what tipped the scales in HG's favor to be the company of choice, when ALL things are considered, and I believe that no other company out there boasting unlimited hosting resources, only makes determining just where they draw the line, and whether or not your clients are valuable enough to you, to not risk the alternatives, when other unlimited hosting services respond when you indeed consume more resources than they truly allow, and notice in their TOS, that they reserve the right to STOP, TERMINATE, CANCEL, DISCIPLINE, BAN, OR REFUSE you continued service at will, without explanation, or at the end of ANY billing period, or in the middle of it is a violation of terms of service.

Then they go on to allow flagrant violations of some of their superficial policy rules, so as to always have a cause to cut you out legitimately, being able to reflect back to their disclaimer just like this forum, that it is impossible to moderate every post, or control what any account holder's behavior is, and "only just was brought to our attention that...", if you manage to get enough high traffic client sites, that will cause you to exceed their hidden limitations, and you can never call them on this, because of the unethical practice of checks and balances they use to determine profitable customers, or pig customers, and weed out the pigs and run 1000's more minor resource sites in proportion to big wheels that get more than their market share of traffic.

That will be shut down, and needing to find a new home for their clients, if they will even stay with you after such a migration is required, I know I never want to go through that, and would never put my clients through that either, and THIS is why I have been with HostGator for so long.

Just like every company out there doing whatever it is they do, there is always room to grow, and become better at what they are doing, so all of you who have implicitly stated that if they are throttled down to nothing for a short period, \due to a burst in traffic, or server intensive scripts being run, then you may as well go now, oh wait, this is where they come after the OTHER guys weed you out... or try to be a part of the solution, rather than the problem.

What I mean by that... if some scraper or auto sign-up bot, gets in to your forum or blog, finds a security hole in your script driven interface, and consumes a ton of resouces, (this I KNOW happens reasonably often but not TOO often if precautions are taken) possibly triggering a temporary turn off, do you feel you should be held accountable for this? No? Why not? Because it wasn't you ar your client, and it was an illegal script entry hijacking your scripts to get server access.
I would be inclined to ask if i were the HG customer rep you were pleading with to dismiss the occurrence,...do you know what IP deny is? how many I_P addresses, or domain 2ld's are entered to date? None? Which is likely the response wouldn't it? So you see you have the tools to prevent these things and if they are not used to their highest degree of capability, YOU are failing YOURSELF, Not HostGator having failed you, and this is but ONE such example from a list of twenty that easily come to mind, so just face the fact that if you REALLY want to make money online, IT REQUIRES ALLOT OF HOURSW, perspiration, and ingenuity to utilize every advantage afforded you, a well as spending a portion of that time, working with your statistics, marking and tracking trends, and KNOWING your business, rather than spending so much time on the forum, or in the ticket system crying over having been throttles when only you are to blame...I'll give you..."most of the time" but maybe not all the time.

I have to hand one thing above all else to HostGator, THEY LISTEN TO YOU! Although sometimes support leaves something to be desired, they are working on improving this, "because they admit it and are responding to the issues" Maybe all the servers are not yet all up to the highest level of current technology, "They admit this, and do anything they can to help", if an account requiring more speed or processing power to avoid repetitive errors, "They respond to this and voluntarily OFFER, migration to a newer or in some cases it may just be a more suitable server, hosting various similar accounts that will work well together for being based on opposite sides of the world, more or less dividing the server peak loads across the two twelve hour periods between night and day, summer and winter, all these factors potentially increase or decrease the likeliness of exceeding those hardware limitations. Allot of these things "I know for a fact" they consider when managing server loads and attempting to keep EVERYONE'S sites up and functioning fully, even if it means more work for their server admins, they are up to that challenge and work towards that same goal every day, ho much time have you put in this week to ensure you are doing your share for your client sites? Or do you sit there pushing the button on the next invoice due and then are off anf playing gaming or whatever else you fill your days with instead of taking all the proper measures to ensure that those hosting with you are being as fair to all the others on your server, or am I doing it along with five others and 900 other sites are just gliding on autopilot never giving any of this a second thought until it up and bites your A$$? (if this is considered offensive, please only edit this and not hold the entire post)


Thanks for your time and attention,
TSG!

[whatrevolution]

Woa, TSG, I'm impressed you wrote so much, though let's not get too wrapped up in Your Favorite Company versus Their Ungrateful Customers. Perhaps some people took a purely complainant role in this thread; but my original intention was not that. The majority of features of the service HostGator offers today, particularly those which are in addition to the original set they began with, have been given to us for one of two reasons:

1. CPanel added the feature, in response to either their community's requests, or their market.
2. HostGator added the feature, in response to either their community, or their market.

To argue against such activities for any reason, particularly to claim that the cessation of these events is in the best interest of HostGator and/or their customers, is to misunderstand the real situation entirely. We only ever gain more by asking for, then showing our case for requirement of more.

By authoring this thread, we guaranteed that either HostGator would meet the requirement nearly as we defined it, or their competitors would. This is, in fact, what sets HostGator apart from their competitors. They have the gall to allow us to do such a thing, with the venue hosted on their own domain (thusly benefited by HostGator's own search engine rankings), and then they rise to such challenges with responses which retain and further grow their customer holdings.

We've done a good thing, here. Please do not attempt to demonize it, or misunderstand it as ungratefulness. It is a natural activity which is inherently evolutionary.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Woa, TSG, I'm impressed you wrote so much, though let's not get too wrapped up in Your Favorite Company versus Their Ungrateful Customers.

...

We've done a good thing, here. Please do not attempt to demonize it, or misunderstand it as ungratefulness. It is a natural activity which is inherently evolutionary.

Good discussion, and nice phrasing, Daniel.

Something to consider is that the merits of the discussion of an issue are somewhat apart from those of that issue itself. Or, as they say in GRE logic, HG's customers and HG's forum members are overlapping categories.

A good example is the only discussion I remember in the last four years which devolved to grateful/ungrateful (in terms of the way most people see it, which is not business-related--theoretically, there's no such thing in the market, which I believe is one of Daniel's points) was the reseller limit update thread. In that year-long saga, "ungrateful" was more or less a velcro-crumb way to say "it's not that your complaining will make anything happen more quickly."

[The Smoking Gun!]

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this.

First off, initially the title caught my eye, and then the recent posts, so when I read back I wasn't looking at the dates, had I SEEN how long ago this had started, I probably would have refrained from such a response.

Mostly for the reason gwyneth points out, (Wow wish i could have had as much impact in as few words )as well as the fact it was a VERY different HostGator at that time.

And in order to GROW in to what they are today, AND to be able to offer what they do today, to resellers and shared alike, it was a necessary evil to nickle and dime all the extra's, to support having a support team in place.

Not sure if anyone has checked the job market but SE's SA's can command a pretty respectable salary, if you expect your servers to keep running, your Apache mods to be always up to date and contain the best MIX of parameters to widen the scope of compatibility, while keeping things as secure as possible.

Of course then there is the Security team, not sure what server security specialist get, but with out them, everything else would be nothing but a prime target!

So the way it was when I signed on here, at the time, was STILL the best game in ANY town. Both for what was offered for the price, as well as contributing to a company's growth that has SHOWN it gives back to it's supporters, in the forms mentioned in my post.

So as Gwyneth points out, it wasn't all the pissing and moaning that brought these things to be, at least beyond the initial requests for them, or suggestions for improvements, but the dedicated support of people like you and I, who stuck it out through those growing pains, so that OUR growing pains will be much less. while the sky is STILL the limit.

Unless you wish to spend millions in buying up bandwidth shares, and open your own isp to host dozens of HostGators of course LOL!

You do make a valid point WR, that being, it IS impressive that a company would allow people such as those contributing to the earlier posts in this thread, to bite kick and even stab in the gut with the first hint of a shutdown that essentially is their own responsibility, but you see, this DOES speak volumes about Brent, and apparently what his philosophy is, because you all ae encouraged to spek your mind, civilly, and through that learns what people think, and how they feel. and can respond behind the scenes in actions implemented some weeks or months later, as a new feature, option, or realignment of packages.

So in this respect you are right, being able to post about it is conducive to attaining it, but as Gwyneth points out, arguing and bickering, does nothing to make it happen any faster nor ensure it even happens at all.

So let this thread stand as a testament to all newcomers, to see, and know, posting what's on your mind is always a good thing, standing at odds with each other and having discussions boil over in to seething volleys with backs against opposite walls, is simply a poor display of both maturity, and responsibility for one's actions, and I can BET going through just this one thread, i can pick out those doing well and those no longer here because they couldn't get anything off the ground, for their inability to see where the problem lies...within themselves, andnot who they were so quick to point a finger at.

For the record, just so you all do not presume me to be Mr' Gator die hard fan, I can assure you NO ONE has had as many comedies of errors, mishandles overlooked for DAYS tickets, and the most unbelievably horrendous ticket history experiences anyone here could possibly have had over the past four years.

Trust me when I tell you, it has been a long series of frustrations to tears, many many times, but yet, read what I write, and if you can figure out why, you are likely to succeed here!

Thanks Gwyneth, Whatrevolution! I appreciate your kind words!

TSG!

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by The Smoking Gun!

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this.

First off, initially the title caught my eye, and then the recent posts, so when I read back I wasn't looking at the dates, had I SEEN how long ago this had started, I probably would have refrained from such a response.
...

So as Gwyneth points out, it wasn't all the pissing and moaning that brought these things to be...

I appreciate your kind words!

My point wasn't that complaining doesn't make changes happen or not happen, or how fast, just that the reseller limits saga (I'm pretty sure there were other threads in addition to Existing Reseller Ripoff!!! and the ones merged into it) involved a situation that was somewhat different.

There it was a question only of 'when', not 'what' or 'could', and the forum was a little more free-wheeling then (not in terms of what we could say about HG, but concerning the way members addressed each other). So the range of responses was much narrower than those for an open-ended suggestion, and that was all I was referring to...not a general thought that complaining doesn't achieve anything.

That thread still managed to be somewhat educational, so something broad like this one should be even more so. Daniel is right, IMO, about a valuable discussion.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

There it was a question only of 'when', not 'what' or 'could', and the forum was a little more free-wheeling then (not in terms of what we could say about HG, but concerning the way members addressed each other).

Yes, the use of Moron was acceptable back then...

[Serra]

Originally Posted by The Smoking Gun!

Despite reading most of the posts in this thread, i cannot tell for sure how many of those complaining about this are also re-sellers, or just shared hosting customers, buit if you are a re-seller, in the WHM there are options to view the server's status, and server information, which displays enough information for anyone to determine how much of total resources on the server there is, how much is being consumed, and it goes on to define what is being used for what.

The main reason for this is that in order to determine who is using 25% of what, it would cost so much processor power that the overall effectiveness of the server would need to be sacrificed to determine those limits.

There are several tools that will monitor usage beyond what WHM offers, but it has been my experience that those tools suck processor power and that causes the whole system to bog down, just watch it do nothing.

This leads to the issues you see where users in both shared and reseller environments can't tell what their usage is nor can they prevent being suspended for 25% usage. After I left Hostgator, I started running my own servers and I can tell you with years of experience and a very good understanding of my own servers, it is often difficult for me to pin down a specific issue as the cause of processor problems in terms of users. Sometimes it is very obvious, other times, what seems like a big issue is just a smoke screen.

I simple rule to follow is that you can't tell what 25% is. As a shared customer, it doesn't really matter. Once you exceed 25% (get suspended) then you either need to move up or stop doing whatever it was you were doing, whichever is most cost effective for you. As a Reseller, it is a bit more problematic, but you need to monitor your customers, see what they are doing and it may sound mean, but get rid of customers that might get you suspended or move up to a dedicated server. In fact, move up to a dedicated server, even a crappy one as soon as you can for your business. Reseller hosting is never going to be satisfactory for very long. It is the worst of all worlds, suspension risks, slow downs and everything else make it a poor business platform. When I started my business, I started in reseller hosting, but I didn't stay their any longer than I had to. The minute I could cover a dedicated, I moved. Best thing I ever did. With HostGators dedicated severs, you don't even need to know how to run one...

[thunderstruck]

http://support.hostgator.com/article...over-the-limit

In case this is not mentioned in this post, you can have your cPanel email you before you approach warning limits from HostGator. This is a long post, I might of missed this, just ignore or remove if this is not pertinent.

In otherwords you can notify yourself if you are generating a lot of traffic before HostGator does. At that point you receive a notification from your cPanel, you can check your log files to make sure a php script is not throwing wrenches into anything as well. If no errors, you have to decide to either change content or upgrade to something better, if want to spend money on that.