ProBlogger.net reported Idol Blogger got kicked out from shared host due to exceesive resource usage. Duncan Riley responded with his own experience with shared webhosting, which is quite an interesting read. Basically he went through several shared hosts, ranged from $6-$10/month budget hosting to $22/month Site5’s “premium account”, when his blog network grew over the last few years.

Conclusion? To quote Duncan’s words,

Shared hosting is nearly always a scam, no matter who you host with, because it’s marketed with big figures that are really irrelevant in the delivery of your content, particularly from a blog, to the marketplace.

Duncan then hammered Site5 for their incompetency in resolving his resource usage issue. And later on he suggested

At the end of the day, you do get what you pay for, and if you intend of maintaining or hosting more than a blog or two, don’t use shared hosting.

Yes indeed, “you do get what you pay for”. It is true in our everyday life, and web hosting world is no exception. However it is definitely not what most people are thinking when they sign up a shared hosting account (at least not mine when I had my first). We normally just check (1) price — lower the better (2) storage and bandwidth — more the better, and pretty much nothing else. Many people got stung by bad hosts. Fortunately I haven’t had such experience (probably due to I have never had a popular site).

However sometimes it is also unrealistic to expect a budget share hosting to do everything for your site. They probably have hundreds of $5/month accounts on that dual Xeon, where your badly designed scripts is taking 50% of all CPU time and satuated all out-bound pipes. They also have bills to pay, and from their point of view, your $5/month account with 50,000 visitors a day is no more important than the other $5/month accout with 50 visitors a day. Turning off your website is probably their best interst to protect their other hard earned customers.

Some lessons learnt:

• Always back up your website, and keep at least daily backup of the database if it is on a dynamic CMS. Keep the backup off-site, i.e. not in the same web hosting account. You’ll never know whether your current host will terminate your account and hold your website for ransom.

• Good prevention would be doing thorough checking before signing up a shared hosting account. Google for “<web host> sucks” helps, and Duncan’s post has obviously already tainted Site5’s reputation. However do read through good unbiased reports as well (where you can’t find an affiliate links). Visit WHT and read through articles at Web Hosting Reviews can be very useful.

• If your site is on a blog software or CMS, make sure it is optimised. Got a caching plugin? Give it a try. Bandwidth and storage are cheap those days, and they are flexible in an overselling environment. Server’s CPU power is not, and it is usually the first thing hosts will try to protect.

• Sometimes unexpected traffic can really be, hmm, “unexpected”. Be that special Google love, Slashdot/Digg effect, or your enemies sending down DDoS attacks. Sometimes it is not even your fault — but your hosting company probably won’t care when they mourn over their dead server caught on fire. So, if your site is important to you, always prepare the worst.

• Be ready to switch hosts quickly. That means files and database are always backed up and ready to upload (to a new host). Don’t buy domains and hosting from the same shop — it is just going to make switching web hosts more difficult. Ideally, you’ll already have a redundant site up and running, and just need to switch the DNS at your registrar to get going.

• You don’t need to spend $100+ a month on a dedicated server to host your busy blog. If you are a seasoned Linux user, a cheap VPS on a minimum-share guaranteed technology (like Xen) is probably a more suitable alternative. I am hosting this site on a Xen VPS running Gentoo Linux at unixshell# which costs me around the same as a high-end shared hosting, but much more flexible. Even if it got Slashdotted (I wish), it probably will not affect other VMs on the same host.

• If you have multiple high-traffic sites, I will rather go with multiple VPS at different hosting company/data centre than a single powerful dedicated box. Don’t put everything in one basket, and unless you co-locate, “your” dedicate server is still lended to you by the hosting companies.

Well, I think I have gone too far. At the end, having multiple backups — not just data but also data centre — helps to keep your site alive. Costly? Yes, but great investment if your business depends on your on-line presence.