Back in Action

Our hosting company shut us down for no reason anyone can figure out. They’ve now put us back up. We’re looking for a new hosting company.

Apologies for our unprecedented silence.

LivingDot, which up until now has provided the Reality-Based Community with competent and economical hosting, decided without warning on Monday that the site was generating too much activity (not, alas, a proposition that could be supported by looking at the traffic counters) and shut us down. It’s taken four days to get back up, which is not surprising since all the notes back to us from the LivingDot customer-service folks listed the priority of our problem as “low.”

Has anyone had a similar problem? And can anyone suggest an alternative hosting service?

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

6 thoughts on “Back in Action”

  3. I've hosted for years at Dreamhost, and have found them to be wonderful. Historically, they've frozen the rates on their plans so that as long as you stay in good standing and remain on the same plan, your rate doesn't increase from the original amount. Obviously, I can't say if that will ALWAYS be the case, but it has been for the years I've been with them. At the same time, the amount of bandwidth and disk storage space I have has increased manyfold – and part of their plan is that for each week you are with them as a customer, your bandwidth and disk storage limits increase, so your capabilities grow as the site does. Their prices are, in my experience, competitive, I've found their service staff to be excellent and we've rarely had any downtime. I STRONGLY recommend that anyone looking for a new host at least check them out.

  4. I wouldn't host this website on Dreamhost. The Poorman (thepoorman.net) used to be on Dreamhost, until they shut his blog down for excessive cpu activity. That may or may not, happen to your blog. If they do shut you down, I'd look into a VPS.
    A VPS is where you're sharing the server with 6 or so others, as opposed to shared hosting, where you share the server with 50-100+ others. PowerVPS.com and Servint.com are a good ones, running about $50/month. For more info, try the forums at webhostingtalk.com.

  6. I recently switched to laughing squid (laughingsquid.com). They are out of San Francisco, have excellent hosting plans and exist primarily for individuals, artists, non-profits and small businesses, yet allow considerable traffic to individual sites. I like their attitude. Good luck.

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