Why web hosting is fun.

July 11, 2006 on 2:31 pm | In Insider View, Musings by Dallas Kashuba |

Bozo the Clown

Josh has previously told you why web hosting is hard and why web hosting is easy, and now you’ll find out why it’s fun, too.

First, a little history. When we started doing web hosting way back when, the web was not like it is now. Most websites were all static html with pictures. Most of the ‘dynamic’ stuff you would see was the occasional animated gif. More advanced websites used standard cgi and from what I remember perl mostly ruled the roost. It did for us, at least! For the most part things like php, mysql, ruby (on rails), python, subversion, and WebDAV didn’t exist at all or were not in widespread use. Hotmail.com wasn’t even owned by Microsoft yet! Web hosting was a lot simpler back then and a pentium 100 running pre-1.0 Debian Linux could serve a lot of websites comfortably.

Things sure have changed!

Nowadays, it seems like you can’t throw a rock without hitting a new web technology with a zealout user community forming around it. There’s so many solutions people have trouble thinking of new problems to go with them! We pride ourselves on being faily well-versed in the arena of web technology but there’s just too many to keep track of. We mostly just wait and watch and see which ones start to catch on and develop real momentum.

Fun Coils!

And here’s the fun part!

As the true geeks we are it’s fun for us to learn about a new technology, and web hosting provides a huge amount of opportunities to do that. And since the technologies themselves are usually geared towards making cool websites, it’s even more fun! It seems like just about every year brings along another ‘must have’ ‘coolest ever‘ ‘best thing since sliced tomatoes’ web tool and along with it comes all the requests for us to support it. And every other month is some new upgrade or development on something we already support. So much fun to be had!

It’s not all fun and games, of course. Once we’ve learned about and integrated a new technology into our web control panel and hosting system, we start learning all of its dark secrets… all of the things about it that don’t quite work as advertised. That’s why web hosting is hard, too. Providing support for a new technology is generally much much harder and more time consuming than all of the original research and setup time.

The need to balance the fun with the work that comes with it is why we originally came up with our user-driven suggestion system (how Web 2.0 of us, way back in Web 1.0 time!) where all of our customers can vote on their favorite suggestions. We then can focus our energies on the things that everybody wants most.

If you haven’t voted on your favorite suggestions, do it now!

52 Responses to “Why web hosting is fun.”

  1. Nathan Friedly Says:
    July 11th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

    theres one in there that you guys did but its still on the list:
    2006-03-20 Goodies - One-Click Installs Include a bunch of themes with WordPress. [ For it ] [ Against it ] 2 credits

  2. lbft Says:
    July 11th, 2006 at 10:24 pm

    Still waiting on shared SSL, though ;)

  3. santos Says:
    July 12th, 2006 at 5:09 am

    I thought it was possible (SSL that is) on shared. You just have to create a self certificate, which ALL browsers will give a warning. It is up to you to tell them to accept it and even then you will most likely get people who won’t accept it.

    It is not possible for you to create a SSL certificate for multiple sites. If you could then SSL would be pointless as a security feature.

  4. lbft Says:
    July 12th, 2006 at 6:58 am

    santos: HTTPS is irritating in that, because the encryption occurs before the actual HTTP request, it’s one SSL certificate per IP address.

    There are a couple of workarounds: having a default certificate (which will present a warning) or having a subdomain rather than a real domain.

    For example, any domain hosted with Netfirms is also accessible via HTTPS at domainname.sslpowered.com. They’ve got an SSL certificate for *.sslpowered.com that will match any such subdomain. It’s kludgey but it works (and anyone worried about branding with their own domain with SSL should really pony up the extra cash for an IP and certificate of their own.)

  5. Ian Clifton Says:
    July 12th, 2006 at 9:00 am

    I’m glad the servers are better than those cheap, plastic slinkies that would break all the time. Give us real, metal, tetanus-spreading slinkies any day! The user suggestion section is such a simple concept, but it is great. It’s nice for us to actually have an input and it’s nice for you to avoid wasting time on things we don’t really want or to find out about new technologies. Too bad they all use acronyms…

  6. Robert Day Says:
    July 12th, 2006 at 10:09 am

    Has something happened? It’s just all my sites are down. Just blank pages.

  7. Brian Culler Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 6:07 am

    Hey guys, I’m sure you know, but it seems panel.dreamhost.com is down, as well as the SVN server (at least ours is). My sites are up though.

  8. lttcoder Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 12:41 pm

    why is my site down? http://www.opensc.ws

  9. Fengshurui Says:
    July 15th, 2006 at 6:42 am

    Why my site is down! >_

  10. danny Says:
    July 15th, 2006 at 7:51 pm

    Can you guys do a Snakes on a Plane themed newsletter? Thanks!

  11. James Says:
    July 15th, 2006 at 8:02 pm

    why is my site down?

  12. Chuck Says:
    July 16th, 2006 at 4:46 am

    Maybe a little less on fun and a little more on why e-mail’s been inaccessible for 12 hours now. And yes, I’ve checked the status page.

  13. Angela Says:
    July 16th, 2006 at 6:19 pm

    I realize you are having filer issues, but you haven’t updated your status page in 12 hours. It’s almost Monday and this happened Saturday night. My site’s databases have been up and down for two days now. You tell us to backup our files because both of your discs have already been destroyed, but I can’t even login to MySQL to back them up because of the problems. Sometimes it logs me in and then times out right after, and sometimes it doesn’t and says the username and password is incorrect (when it is correct). When will this be resolved?

  14. eliott Says:
    July 16th, 2006 at 10:59 pm

    Say no to clowns!

  15. Unofficial DreamHost Blog Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 4:10 am

    Fileserver Outage…

    DreamHost are having some serious problems with one of its fileservers this weekend. The problems started early Saturday morning and are still not completely solved now 48 hours later.
    DreamHost has been pretty good at updating their DreamHost Status b…

  16. Thomas Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 9:36 am

    Dallas,

    Please forgive the post to the blog, but I wanted to get my note to as many in the Dreamhost upper management team as possible and was not sure of your direct contact information.

    I’d like to preface this by saying that I have been a very satisfied Dreamhost customer for several years now. I have recommended your service to many of my friends & colleagues, who have in turn signed up for your service.

    I have recently been in contact with David, from your billing department with regards to a “booster pack” that has remained on my account for some time in error. As this error may effect other Dreamhost customers, I wanted you to be aware of it.

    His response to my initial inquiry did not resolve my issues. Could you please look into this? I am happy to forward along the appropriate correspondence.

    Best regards,

    thomas

  17. Zach Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 2:09 pm

    It’s nice to see that YOUR website/blog has been up for the past three days.

    How about giving mine some uptime?

    /rant

  18. James Homuth Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but… it sounds like that’s what they’re trying to do.

  19. drnibbles Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 3:08 pm

    It seems that you guys are having a really bad run the last couple of days. File server craches and now no access to pnale or webmail. Not happy here

  20. Mandy Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 6:25 pm

    Does anyone know what the deal is? My sites have been down for hours and I cant even get to the dreamhost panel to file a complaint. Hope all is well out there!

  21. nottajerk Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 6:32 pm

    web hosting would be a lot more fun if you (dreamhost) would actually have decent uptime and quit overselling the shared hosting. jerks.

  22. Baba Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 6:51 pm

    Today was certainly a fun day! ;0 I still

  23. can't sleep Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 6:52 pm

    clowns will eat me! Please — lose the clown! AGHHHHHHHH!!!

  24. Baba Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 7:01 pm

    Interesting… your comment section on this blog cut off my comment after the less than character in my last comment.

    <3

  25. Anonymous Says:
    July 17th, 2006 at 7:28 pm

    when the hell are my websites going to be up!!!!!???

  26. David Strauss Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 12:03 am

    It’s good to see things coming back online. You guys do look a bit like douchebags when the top post on the blog is “Why web hosting is fun” through major downtime. Oh well. I’d rather have that than a boring blog I don’t want to read at all.

  27. Paulasaurus Rex » Fucking Downtime Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 5:54 am

    [...] When it comes to uptime, Dreamhost are a bunch of douchebags. It makes it even worse when the top post on their blog is entitled Why web hosting is fun and their entire network (except their blog for some reason) was down for at least 5 hours last night, during the busiest traffic time for at-home surfers. [...]

  28. Jenny B Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 6:30 am

    I’m brand new to Dream Host and indeed website hosting.

    So here I am, day four and trying to publish from Nvu. I’m having problems. Can’t seem to publish. So I try those nice guys as Dream Host technical support.

    But technical support has been decommissioned and the forum is down too.

    What’s happened to the status page? What’s going on? Should you have taken my money over the weekend? May I have it back please and go else where?

    I gotta a course to finish and business to run.

    Thanks,
    Jenny B

  29. Customer Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 7:34 am

    What is the point of this blog? All this guy does is gloat about how his business is growing and he’s making great money. Should I be interested to hear that over and over and over again? Meanwhile, we all suffer from embarassing outages that last hours at a time.

    I don’t get it.

  30. Pinecone Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 10:38 am

    My site was one of those effected by the latest outage.
    I hold nothing against the good people at dreamhost they have been working their butts off day and night, give them credit.

    I’ve had many computers now and I know how fragile they are, and even when you take the best care of them, sometimes they still just do not want to function properly. This can be due to parts that malfunction as it was in this case. Dreamhost does not make their own parts and can’t predict the future.
    My site is now running just fine two days later, whats the big deal? So it was down? Get outside and do something with your time.

    Thanks people at dreamhost for being quick about these issues. and thanks for maintining such a friendly hosting service, I fly the dreamhost banner with pride.

  31. Eleven Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!

    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!
    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!
    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!
    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!
    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!
    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!
    I love dreamhost,It’s cool!

  32. simplifiedmedia Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    The status page says users may be “experiencing slow load times”, but my sites are totally unavailable. This, after being totally offline last nite.

    The ironic part is, today I was supposed to pitch Dreamhost to my project manager and to a client today. But with ability to finish tweaking a site last nite (since it was down), and on/off outtages today, the deadline has been missed and the manager is soured on Dreamhost. Is all the fun worth losing customers over?

    Maybe some better communication via the blogs would help things along, the updates this weekend have not seemed to be in sync with the outtages.

    3 Questions:

    1. Why is the status page not updated to reflect continuing outtages? It doesn’t take long to make a WP post.

    2. Are multi-day outtages something to be expected from here on out? According to uptime.besthostratings.com, Dreamhost outtages have more than quadruples in June and July — and I’ve certaintly felt it on my end. Maybe 300,000 sites is too much to handle?

    http://uptime.besthostratings.com/viewreport.php?host=dreamhost

    3. Why the hell is the top blog post about fun, during a time of crisis for a huge chunk of your customers? This is business! I would be embarrassed to show my project manager your blog right now, considering the downtime. It makes you guys look like you don’t care about your customers.

    Please address these issues soon — preferably on the main blog, not the support blog. The slow communication and extreme outtages need to be addressed.

    (Methinks a major apology (and possibly some account credit) is in order!!)

  33. drnibbles Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 6:37 pm

    Ok now we seem to be back on track. Lets see how we go now hopefully we will be stable from here on…

  34. drnibbles Says:
    July 18th, 2006 at 6:38 pm

    Ok now we seem to be back on track. Lets see how we go now hopefully we will be stable from here on…
    The forums seems to be down..

  35. jason Says:
    July 19th, 2006 at 3:15 am

    Down again

    I was getting 30 - 40 users register a day on my site now it is down to one. I been showing people how good the hosting was. Now all i get is a dead page.

  36. Divya Says:
    July 19th, 2006 at 10:36 am

    This is simply ridiculous.

    My site (http://wifihopper.com) has been down for more than 24 hours — I’m losing a lot of sales.

    Something needs to be done fast!

  37. dreamhost sucks Says:
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:48 pm

    The outages ever since June make me think you guys don’t know how to monitor your hardware, effectively diagnose problems, and/or have sufficient backup plans in place. I’ve already signed up for an alternate hosting account - I regret signing up with dreamhost for a year. We’ve lost 10 times that much in productivity due to an inaccessible Subversion server (even with our temporary work arounds) just in the past week.

    Are you guys under attack or something?

  38. A View From Home Says:
    July 19th, 2006 at 6:43 pm

    What does web host support mean?…

    I’ve been harping on the fact that the reason I left Dreamhost wasn’t because they had some downtime, but because of how they handle tech support issues. I’ve been having some trouble getting my C3 email today. It stopped working……

  39. harry Says:
    July 20th, 2006 at 5:43 am

    I was ready to unleash a barrage of angry comments here as well, when my eyes spotted the following on dreamhoststatus.com :

    Through this process, we’ve learned a lot of new tricks to help recognize these types of filer problems before they happen, so we shouldn’t experience problems of this magnitude in the future.

    The filer crash started a chain reaction…

    We’re .. in the process of auditing our entire network to ensure that the NFS traffic won’t be affected like this again in the case of a hardware outage.
    …
    There have been quite a few things that have caused the problems of the past few days

    As a sysadmin myself, I know how hard it is to provide 24×7 IT service. Tell you what, I’m offering you Dreamhost techie guys a deal - you write a book about this, how you solved it, and what are your attempts to avoid similar incidents; and you’ll be apologized.
    Even better, we’ll give you more money by buying that book.

    I’m drooling with anticipation.

    So, what do you say ? Yes ? Yes ? What, it’s very hard to get a book out ? Well, make it an ebook then ! OK ?
    :)

  40. rlparker Says:
    July 20th, 2006 at 6:01 am

    What Harry said! Seriously, guys…in addition to being a “good read”, a frank and honest detailing of how things ran so amok would go a long way toward helping some of your less experienced customers know what you *really* mean when you say, “Web Hosting Is Fun.” Fun is where you find it, and battling borked equipment and network problems is it’s own special kind of “fun.”

    Hey “Happy Dreamhosters”! Don’t take all the, “Why are you joking while Rome is Burning?” comments too seriously….some of us *get it” that it takes a particular breed of jocular geek-nerd-wizard to keep a sense of humor when surrounded by all this technosh*t!

    Rock On!

  41. rlparker-again! Says:
    July 20th, 2006 at 6:06 am

    Oh yeah! One more thing…

    You guys might wanna google: color blindness red male …

    That freakin red-on-black captcha image is *way* too hard for *many* of us “mature” males to figure out! I had to try two different pairs of glasses, and bump my nose on the screen before I could decipher the flippin’ thing…8-(

  42. Divya Says:
    July 20th, 2006 at 11:46 am

    Anyone know what the expected time-frame for complete recovery from the current outage is?

  43. Montoya Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    I’m glad you guys are having fun. Too bad you are not any good at this.

  44. rito Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 6:20 pm

    hmm, does not seem like a load of fun:

    Possible power outage
    July 22, 2006 at 6:30 pm PST by jeremy

    At least a portion of our datacenter seems to have lost power very briefly. We have technicians driving to the datacenter now to see exactly what the situation is. If your site is down, we should have it taken care of shortly.

  45. Tim Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 pm

    Come on folks, seriously get this hack or whatever problem fixed please.

    I’m starting to loose my customer loyalty.

    Your customer,
    Tim.

  46. Seraphic Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 7:21 pm

    My website is working, but everything linked to a MySQL database is down.

  47. clarenk Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 7:54 pm

    i have been a dreamhost customer for 6-7 years now and up untill now have been very happy with the service… being that they have kept me so happy for so long i feel a need to loyaly stand behind them on this… as developers when you do something that brings your own site down you hope that your users will understand that these things happen… things break and then we fix them and move on…

  48. Seraphic Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 8:38 pm

    The DreamHost.com main website is down too.

  49. Vince Kimball Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 8:43 pm

    For the past week, I’ve had horrible problems with email. Sometimes the only way I’ve been able to get email is to ssh into my account and use pine. Sometimes that hasn’t even worked.

    One major problem is that without webmail (which has been the least working way to access email), I can’t get to messages held by the spam filter.

    When is this going to be fixed?

  50. Vince Kimball Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 8:45 pm

    Also, while I’m on the subject of email, why do all of the Cialis messages get through the spam filter?

  51. a pissed off customer Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 9:36 pm

    Gotta love the power outtage too! all yer sites now belong to Dallas!

  52. ramdac Says:
    July 29th, 2006 at 5:22 am

    I really do miss Bozo the clown. The grand prize game was awesome. I was happy when someone won a schwinn.

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