The Importance of Uptime
Bloggers usually earn something via their blogs. It can be ad dollars, brand recognition, spinoff services, or something else. Maybe you blog because it is fun and it feels good, I don’t know. The important thing is that you do it, and that it is important to you, one way or another.
When your blog is inaccessible to the world because your host goes down, you’re likely to feel a bit stressed out. Pissed off. Frustrated. Maybe you’ll cry. That’s OK, we understand, this is serious business.
Writing a blog that users can’t read is useless, time wasted, unless you really just write for yourself, in which case I recommend getting a good notebook instead. When people read your blog, it becomes useful and start to mean something. I think we all can agree that everything is more fun if you have readers, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the publishing business. Getting some direct value, such as ad dollars or product orders, is good too.
But what if your blog goes up and down like a yoyo?
Better yet, what if your favorite blog (written by someone else) does just that? What if half of the time you visit it, you can’t get in? Will you continue to visit it, or will you move on to other things?
I’ll do the latter. I’m an impatient person, and there’s tons of things to read online.
Which is why I get so angry, so frustrated, when my host can’t keep their bloody server up! Retire it already, kill it off, upgrade, whatever, I don’t care, just make it work!
It’s not working. It’s working. It’s not working…
My credibility takes a hit every time this is happening. That’s a bold statement, since this isn’t a problem that The Blog Herald usually fights with, but rather it’s my own blog and BloggerTalks that are suffering. Well, think about it. I’m a freelance writer, and I do design work. If a client wants to check in on me, perhaps hire me for a gig, then not being able to get to my site will count against me. Hey, I might even miss the e-mail they sent, because of evilness going on over at my host!
Uptime is important. It is not important just to calm you nerves, but for your credibility. That’s why you should pick a reliable host, and if there’s too much trouble with it, then consider moving.
I am, right now, deciding that I’ll find another online home for my own projects. This isn’t working out anymore.
Have you been in this position? Where should I move, and who should I avoid?
Recently I have been in this position when my blog hit the Digg front page and then it went down. I am with a reputed host and never expected this. But I think uptime is also dependent on the proper optimization of your blog. In my case , someplugins were an issue and I have decided to deactivate some plugins and give the same host another chance.
My blog is a low volume effort. So much so that my aspiration is to climb to the Z list but I have had good luck with my site at godaddy.com Cost is reasonable and they offer great support when I have questions.
I highly recommend wp-cache if you’re running wordpress…and solid reliable hosting is a must..
m
Of course. It would be easy if I was the cause for the server going down. But I’m not, since I have a solid setup and they’ve traced it to other things. It gets fixed, “we’re fine now”, you know the drill. Bam, server goes down again!
This is driving me nuts. This WAS a reliable host, now I have to shop for a new one. Sucks.
Interesting that you bring this up as I just recently went through a weekend of somewhat considered downtime, http://www.jeffro2pt0.com/what-a-weekend no host is going to have 100% uptime but there are a number of hosts who should at least have above 95% due to redundancy. I hate shopping for webhosts, thank goodness this is the only problem I have had with AnHosting as they have been rock solid for me besides this past weekend. Let us know which host you decide to use.
I host myself ;) Always have..
m
I moved my blogs to Doreo Hosting and I am very pleased with the result. My blogs are small but Doreo hosts blogs like DailyBlogTips.
http://www.doreo.com/