Downtime: the long-term effects?

[scdlewis]

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Hi all,

Can anyone offer any advice please on the long-term effects that downtime will have on my site's rankings?

My hosting company has been having "a few minor" problems, including intermittent service over the last few months and very little uptime over the last three days, resulting in 404s when Google tries to get my sitemap.

My new site is on page 1 for a few keywords but I don't know how long it will last if Google consistently finds my site offline. Is it worth, say, starting a monthly contract with another provider to try to minimise any damage that will be done? No sales yet on my new site after a week or so but I don't know how much the downtime is responsible.

Many thanks,

Simon

[suedeapple]

I'd shift to a more reliable host ASAP, or one with a SLA that will refund monies due to downtime.

Why not look at eukhost Business hosting? - They have a 100% uptme Guarantee.

Business Web Hosting - 100% Up time Guarantee Hosting plan

[scdlewis]

Good advice and thanks for the link, suedeapple - but as a Windows programmer I'm looking for a platform with root admin access and the ability to control the whole machine.

I'm considering migrating to an entry-level Windows 2008 dedicated server. Any thoughts on fasthosts.co.uk? At £80 per month their basic Windows server with 2 gigs of RAM and 500 of disk is probably the best offer I've seen, and it comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee...

I'd appreciate any comments on peoples' experiences with fasthosts or possible alternatives.

Thanks all,

Simon

[suedeapple]

I've had a couple FH servers and not had any problems with them at all (if you know what you are doing). Some people may have had problems, but for me, they have performed and excellent value for the price.

The 99.9% uptime is only for "network connectivity", which is fairly easy for them to offer. It dosent cover the situations when you screw up your server with a dodgey software install and cant RDP in, ooops!

As long as you keep everything backed up externally, its a cinch to flatten the server, and have it back up within an hour. I happened to do this on xmas day. So was chuffed with the service.

Heart Internet offer a very similar dedicated server package on windows 2008 too. They only offer 10mbps connection which is a bit of a chore if youre wanting to relay lots of video or big files. However the customer support is good, and always responsive within the hour.

[scdlewis]

Thanks for that, I'll consider Heart Internet's dedi servers - though the 10mbs connection doesn't compare that well to rivals and the disk space is less than FastHosts'. But the free setup would be good.

I know what you mean about people knowing what they're doing, too... yesterday I spent a while looking at FastHosts user reviews. I found about a million negative comments, but many people were complaining about 500 internal server errors, presumably their own fault. I'll be OK if I can RDC to my server. In the worst case scenario, though, do FastHosts provide a way for you to remotely re-image your server with the initial OS without being charged? And do you still host with them?

[suedeapple]

Thanks for that, I'll consider Heart Internet's dedi servers - though the 10mbs connection doesn't compare that well to rivals and the disk space is less than FastHosts'. But the free setup would be good.

I know what you mean about people knowing what they're doing, too... yesterday I spent a while looking at FastHosts user reviews. I found about a million negative comments, but many people were complaining about 500 internal server errors, presumably their own fault. I'll be OK if I can RDC to my server. In the worst case scenario, though, do FastHosts provide a way for you to remotely re-image your server with the initial OS without being charged? And do you still host with them?

Yeah, I sill have a FH server - Its one of the older ones on the Matrix CP (which loads of people hated/complained about - but you dont need to use if youre okay at setting up IIS youruself). Also the new servers use plesk/parrallels (which I hate), but is more friendly to the less tech savvy web people. I prefer to get my hands dirty with the actual iis console.

Not sure about re-imaging the server. You get RDP access, and you also get a video streaming access of your actual terminal. You can virtually attach hardware to your server, but its not something ive looked into to be honest.

The heart internet servers are cool. Dosent come with any junk sofware preloaded. Just IIS7, Mailenable, and SQL Express 2008. The 10mbps isnt ground breaking, but is enough for most websites. You'd only need a 100mbps if you were streaming lots of video/mp3s. Then again, you can use the new iis7 bandwidth throttling to control the limits of each website.

If you do decide to go for the FH server I've got a nice link for you to click on, same goes for Heart Internet ;-) haha!

Just give me a pm

[scdlewis]

My server's back online today, but when my current contract expires but I'll remember about that nice link... thanks again!