A Little Help From A Small Orange

It’s no secret that Media Temple’s new Grid-Server hasn’t been anything less than a total nightmare for all using it. I posted numerous screenshots from time-to-time when my site would go down. If I had done that for every time it was offline, I probably would have run out of storage space on my Flickr account. 😛 In all seriousness, though… how long are people going to stick it out? As happy as I am with A Small Orange, I still have a couple others sites on my (mt) account and therefore still feeling the pain. I’ve simply been too busy lately to bother moving them all over, but I’m going to have to soon as it’s taking its toll on my sanity.

After posting my last screenshot just a few days ago, Mr. Tim Dorr (aka, The Big Orange at A Small Orange) dropped a comment. The wheels immediately started turning, so I tossed an email his way and we got to talking. I thought it would be great if we could someone help people out who are in this shitty situation. It’s a tough one, it really is. Media Temple has had such a glowing reputation for years, but this Grid-Server has been a total disaster. When I joined (mt) last year, I thought I would never have to move again. Unfortunately I was wrong and I really didn’t know where I was going to go when things never seemed to get better. I decided to try out A Small Orange as I had heard some great things regarding their customer support and recent track record.

It’s been a couple months now and things have been smooth as butter. Everything seems faster across the board, including email. My client would often hang looking up mail on the (mt) server, but nothing like that on ASO. When I launched Dashboard Themes on January 1, my post was Dugg almost instantly. I got in touch with ASO support to let them know they can might be in for a big hit if I were to make it to the frontpage. I heard back from Mack right away and he assured me he had a window open and would be monitoring the server I’m on for the rest of the evening to make sure nothing goes down. And sure enough, he did just that. We had a few emails bouncing back and fourth and things generally went smoothly. There was a short period (less than half an hour) where they had to “suspend” my account after other clients started complaining about performance issues. After Mack spoke with his manager and got my site back online, I asked what the policy is moving forward should this happen again. To which I was told they would do what they have to to mitigate the load to ensure they don’t have to take any sites offline. A little extra-extra love for the server in question and everyone’s happy.

That might sound sucky to some – having your site go down during such a crucial time. But honestly, things could have gone so much worse. The fact that I had someone I could reach through the entire evening who was monitoring the server and making the necessary adjustments was more than enough to let me relax and simply enjoy all the attention and watch things happen. Previously with other hosts, after putting in a support request at a critical moment, I would hear back days later with a generic “everything looks fine from here” email, which is a little more than infuriating. 😉

Anyway, back to the conversation I had with Tim. He’s well aware of the (mt) hurt and when I proposed helping those out that are going through their third consecutive month of constant down time and increasing wait periods for replies from customer support, he was all for it. If you use my referral link and sign-up with A Small Orange, they’ll throw in a free month of hosting. Not bad, right?

I hope this comes in useful for those who really need a break. And for those that are content with (mt) and willing to stick it out, good luck to you!

*Note: All of the A Small Orange/ASO links in this article are using my referral code, as well as the link in the footer. Simply click on one of those and proceed through the checkout.