OK, maybe a hard topic to consider!

[BX Bandit]

It's easy to forget what efforts and time people put in behind the scenes! Be consoled xac/Jim that I(and I'm sure all others) do appreciate what you do, it's just we're (or I am) clueless about such things and are happy for the pro's to do it! Many thanks

[xac]

I'm trying to jinx it, but it does appear that O2 have finally sorted the problems out, the server's been accessable all morning.

[Defender110]

Many thanks as usual.

[Tim Leech]

Well done Xac!

[xac]

Well, it looks to me like normal service has returned.

[bx petrol auto saloon]

Dear xac,
Thank-you so very much indeed xac,
Vince,

[electrokid]

Well, it looks to me like normal service has returned.

As someone who tinkers with webby stuff from time to time I'm well aware of the monitor-head-butting frustrations that occur occasionally so I'm happy to add my heartfelt thanks to all who keep this great place going - thanks guys

I agree that probably every webhost can be a pain but overall I'm happy with the ones I've chosen so here are the pros and cons of the 2 I use / have used if that's useful info.

1&1

Although it's called 1&1 UK and is based in Slough it's primarily a German host and that's where you're likely to find your website. IIRC I pay around £9 pcm for a 'business' package - up to 10 websites 300Mb, 10Gb/month, 200 pop, 500fwd. I've seen over 8K hits in one week but never had to pay for extra traffic (but then I do keep the page sizes really really tiny by writing in raw html .

Good points - servers are battery backed / generator backed / bombproof / floodproof and well maintained and well connected to fibre backbone. The packages I've used have all been Linux but they may have Microsoft ones available now though for the life of me I can't think why Email and messaging is VERY quick even on shared server packages - (long story short- I was able to monitor the progress of one of my emails - from Woking to Up North on a dialup connection, then by fibre backbone from Up North to my server in Germany, to the recipeint's server in Amsterdam then to the recipient's ISP in the UK then by broadband to the recipient - 2 seconds The route is the one the email pretty much had to take - and I was on the phone to the person I was sending the email to - I clicked on 'send' (normal priority) and 2 seconds later he said 'got it' )

Bad point - for 'ownership' records etc there are only enough address fields for a typically tiny continental address - if your address is Oxford Cottage, Leeds Road, Off Crawley Avenue, Columpton Village, Near Petersfield, Anyshire, UK then forget it - it aint going to fit. I had to get THEM to fill in the fields for me in such a way that post might actually arrive. (One of my sites went off the air and I phoned them to find out why - they had written to me but because of insufficient address storage space the letter didn't get to me - it was sorted within 24 hours though.)

Netcetera

Hosting in Docklands and the Isle of Man. I pay around £230 every 2 years - committing to the 2 year package makes it cheaper of course - shared server.

Good points - variety of packages available - I have the cheapest which has 1000 email addresses (but only 50Mb each) and unlimited websites / webspace / traffic. I asked them how they could do the 'unlimited' deal on their cheapest package and they told me that if websites get bigger because of increased business they're going to need faster access so they will want to move from a shared server to something better - that's sensible. Help is by phone or by 'ticket' - NON-urgent ticket queries are usually answered within 10 minutes or so which is brilliant and it's genuinely 24/7. Good fibre backbone connections on both sites.

Bad points - uses Microsoft Server 2008 - ok but if you don't know a particular part of the application it can be as clunky as hell - changing settings it sometimes simply won't do the job but they are very helpful and a conversation via a ticket will sort it out even if they have to make the changes for you. Email messaging porting seems to be a bit strange - I've seen email go off the air for 10 minutes at a time but it's quite rare - I don't know but the feeling in my water says the server can't send and receive at the same time so if your server (or anyone else on that server) is receiving email then it would seem it can't download stored messages to you - that's what it looks / fells like anyway.

One year it was voted the top UK host for Microsoft Server hosts - seveth overall.

[xac]

O2 haven't given us a static IP address, so I'm going to contact them in a bit.
Expect another outage when it gets activated.