Why The Switch?
If you’ve ever moved to a new hosting provider you know it’s a real pain in the ass. Files and folders must be moved, databases modified, DNS entries changed. And I’ve been with MediaTemple for over two years. So why, a sensible person might ask, did I decide to go to all the effort to switch, and why now?

In a nutshell: my needs changed. But let me add some detail.

The plan I use — the only MediaTemple plan I can really justify the money for — is called the Grid Service, or GS for short. The GS is billed as being shared hosting that can handle a sudden, huge spike of traffic, so, in theory, your site never goes down. When I first began using the GS, it seemed fine. In fact it was fine, at least for this site, for systemsboy.com (or TASB, for short).

Over the years I’ve built several other sites that I use to showcase my other non-systems creative pursuits. And I’ve frequently had a great deal of trouble with them. This was always perplexing to me; TASB ran fairly well most of the time, and other GS-hosted sites seemed perfectly speedy as well. But my other sites were always dog slow, and as I’ve spent increasing amounts of time on them, it’s become a bigger and bigger problem.

After a great deal of research I found, buried amongst the Internets, an article on Media Temple’s GS that completely described the symptoms I was having. According to the article, the GS does indeed handle sudden traffic bursts gracefully, and performs fine for sites that receive a certain level of daily traffic. But for sites that don’t get much traffic, the GS’s performance leaves much to be desired. Since my new sites were new, they weren’t really getting a lot of traffic, and, if the article is correct, this explains why they were so slow. It also explains why TASB was okay; TASB gets a decent amount of traffic.

The Plan
MediaTemple’s GS is 20 bucks a month. That’s expensive for shared hosting these days. These days, commodity hosting is ubiquitous and extremely cheap. And while Host Gator’s 5 dollar hosting doesn’t offer protection against traffic spikes, it’s essentially the same idea: You share server resources with other users on your server. If someone on your server is hogging all the CPU, for instance, you can see major performance issues on your site.

These days, however, an alternative to shared hosting, VPS hosting (short for Virtual Private Server) has dropped dramatically in price, to the point where it’s quite competitive with the GS. In a VPS scenario, the server hardware is still shared among users, but each user’s share of the resources is dedicated and walled off from the other users. This, I’m told, generally yields significantly better performance than shared hosting plans.

So I decided to give VPS a try.

The Provider
Choosing a web host is like choosing a doctor: it’s a huge pain in the ass, requires a great deal of both research and faith, and you don’t want to have to do it twice, at least not in a short space of time. It’s also similar in that one good way to go about it is to ask a friend. So when a good friend recommended 1&1 hosting, I read up about them, checked out their plans, and, in the end decided to give them a go.

Aside from the glowing recommendation, 1&1′s VPS provided the best value for the money. In fact, 1&1 offers a VPS plan for $30. That’s only ten bucks more than I was paying on Media Temple.

Purchasing 1&1
A note about the actual purchase of my 1&1 VPS. I ordered my service on a Friday night (hoping to have it for the weekend), but I had problems with the online order system. Specifically, the system expects you to purchase a domain name from 1&1, and if you, like me, already own a domain name and aren’t planning to get one from 1&1, the site gets confused, or at least confusing. I got to a point in my order where I just ended up having to close the page and start from scratch. Not cancel the order, mind you, as that option was gone, but close the browser window and pray. Having received no confirmation email, I decided to try ordering a second time, and this time I was able to complete the order successfully. I then did receive an email confirming the order and telling me that my VPS was being provisioned and would be ready within 24 hours. When it was not, I sent an email to 1&1 explaining my situation.

In under 24 hours I received a call from a human at 1&1 telling me that the order was ready and apologizing for the delay. Seems my failed initial order had likely caused a flag on the order requiring some sort of verification. So, though I didn’t have time to use it that weekend, the order did at least go through without too much pain. And though the online order was a bit wonky, at least 1&1 provides humans to help with problems, and on weekends no less. All good things to know.

The Test
Before migrating all my sites, I decided to set up a test site based on my slowest site and see if 1&1′s VPS truly did perform better than Media Temple’s GS. If you’re considering making a similar switch, and you can afford to overlap for a few months, I highly recommend you do something similar. Buy a domain or recycle an old one. Sign up for the new service. And then set up a site, preferably one you know was problematic on the old host. It’s very useful and a real confidence boost to know whether or not all this work you’re about to do will be worthwhile. As I said, migration’s a bitch, but having some assurances that it’s worth it is a real boon. It will also give you a chance to see how the provider’s systems work — they’re all a bit different — and if you can refine your migration process it will speed things considerably when the time comes to actually move your sites.

There were two main things I gleaned from my 1&1 tests: 1) Their server setup tools are a bit more complicated and harder to use than Media Temple’s; and 2) the performance of my slowest site on 1&1′s VPS was far superior to that of the GS. Pages that used to sometimes take 12 seconds to load on the GS now generally appeared in as little as 2-3 seconds on the VPS. A huge improvement, well worth the extra cost.

Getting Started
I actually had five separate sites that needed to be migrated, and four of them were WordPress sites, so migrating was no small feat. I did this over a couple weeks, and, yes, it was a huge pain, but it got done and so far it’s been worth it.

The biggest difference between 1&1 and Media Temple is the tools. And I’ll be the first to admit that Media Temple’s tools are a bit easier to use. Media Temple’s Grid Service provides a single control panel for all server administration. There’s an overview section where you can add domains, and an admin section where you can install databases and CMSes and what-not. It’s all fairly self-contained and very well done. I believe Media Temple has custom-made this tool, and they’ve really done a great job.

I happen to know that Media Temple’s VPS is a bit different. Their VPS service has a control panel for account management, but all the server administration is done via a wholly separate interface, the venerable Plesk. This seems to be par for the course where VPSes are concerned. Media Temple’s done a good job here too, though, and managing one of their VPSes is a fairly straightforward affair once you get familiar with Plesk.

1&1′s service is not so well organized. 1&1 also provides an account management control panel, as well as Virtuozzo Power Panel and Plesk — three separate areas — for server management. But when my VPS was first provisioned it was still up to me to install Plesk via the 1&1 control panel. I assume this is because there are a few options for which version of Plesk to install.

But after installing Plesk and kicking the tires by attempting to set up a test site, I found that there were a number of problems. The most dire was that MySQL and PHP were woefully out of date, so much so that my WordPress sites would not run properly. I attempted to update them via the command-line, but this only ended up completely hosing my server. My only recovery option was to re-image the server.

Re-imaging the server is really easy, and it’s kind of cool thing to be able to do. It essentially lets you put everything back into a pristine state, as if you’d never done anything on the server at all. Most VPSes have this capability. But the big bonus I got when I re-imaged my 1&1 VPS was that all of a sudden I had a newer version of Plesk and updated MySQL and PHP. Moreover, this new Plesk version allowed me to update MySQL and PHP to even newer versions, though doing so took a few attempts for some reason.

I don’t understand why my 1&1 VPS started out so crippled, and I don’t understand why re-imaging it brought it to a state that was actually better than when it was new, but I’m happy it did. It would seem that their initial image is a bit out of date with the image used for re-imaging. All I can say is that if you ever end up using 1&1 for VPS, my advice is to re-image the VPS first thing.

Site Migration and Management
Once my server was finally usable I went about the odious task of migrating my sites. I won’t go into too much detail. It’s pretty much been the usual: copy files, recreate databases, fix inconsistencies and change anything that’s specific to the new server.

I will say, however, that Media Temple’s tools are superior in this realm as well. The main problem with 1&1′s tools is that there are too many of them, with too much redundancy, and this makes setting up services far more confusing and difficult than it is on Media Temple. For example, to set up a domain to be hosted on Media Temple’s GridService you simply go to the control panel and add it, then make the appropriate DNS changes at your domain registrar. There’s only one way to do this, only one interface for it at Media Temple.

On 1&1 you do most of your work in Plesk, but there are certain things that must be done in the 1&1 control panel, outside of Plesk. Things like domain management. Unfortunately the tools for domain management exist in both places — both in the control panel and in Plesk — so it’s unclear where you need to make the change. And since you’re usually working in Plesk, there’s a tendency to attempt setting everything up there when, in actuality, you can’t; it must be done in the control panel. Until you realize all this, you may spend quite some time setting things up in Plesk, realizing they don’t work, and re-setting them up in the control panel. I know I did. It’s a drag, and far more confusing than it ought to be.

Media Temple’s online help is also really, really good. They provide you with a terrific knowledgebase, forums, server information and guides for doing most anything you’d want to do with the GS. 1&1′s online help is much more scattered, poorly organized and just has less information.

Nevertheless, once you’ve finally ironed out all the procedural kinks, migrating and managing sites is pretty straightforward. SSH and root access are all there and working normally at the outset. Coda is easy to set up, if that’s your thing. And I was even able, with some difficulty, to get my local SQL editor to connect and edit databases.

So: Is 1&1 VPS Better Than Media Temple’s Grid Service?
I guess the thing is this: when it comes down to it, while Media Temple clearly has better, easier tools to use, once you’re done setting up your server, you probably won’t use them all that much. What you will access — and what your users will access — every single day is the site. And this is where 1&1′s VPS just kills the Grid Server.

As I stated earlier, some of my sites used to run very sluggishly on the GS. And now these same exact sites run very fast on the 1&1 VPS. I’d say on average maybe five times faster, and that’s a fairly conservative guess. That increase is totally worth a bit of extra setup hassle and ten bucks a month. I finally feel like I have a decent server behind my sites now, and I feel like I can send people there with confidence. The speed of my sites before this switch was, frankly, embarrassing. And I’m fairly certain I lost traffic because of it. Even my mom said, at one point, “Honey, I go to your website, but nothing happens.” Even with easy setup, that’s just depressing. And, in the end, untenable.

The Future
I’ve only been running on 1&1′s server for a few weeks now. So far, I’m a very happy customer. As with anything, if my happiness levels fall, I will again go in search of yet another host. But for now I can confidently say I’d recommend 1&1′s VPS service to a friend. It’s not perfect, but the bang-to-buck ratio is pretty great.

All About the Money
Oh, and one last thing: If I’ve managed to convinced you to order from 1&1, use this link to do so and I’ll apparently get some sort of kickback. Mmm… Icing…

Thanks! And happy hosting!

To start, I’ve pretty much gone with a black and white color scheme. Body text is now a dark gray and links are black. The only place we see color, really, is in the rollovers. Hopefully this is easier on the eyes than the muted blue-gray I had before.

But perhaps more importantly, to my tired aging eyes at least: body text size has been increased to 16 pixels and the line height has been increased as well. This (for me anyway) greatly increases the readability of posts. Before I found myself hitting command+ all the time; now it feels just right.

As I’ve said before, I’m not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, so I’m totally open to comments and suggestions. But hopefully most folks will find the changes to be an improvement.

Enjoy!

Getting an AdSense account was pretty easy — just sign up and wait for approval. And approval was quick as I’d submitted my site to Google’s crawlers in the past. I was approved the next day.

Adding the ads was pretty easy too. The first thing you tell the AdSense webapp is the sort of ad you want to create. There are a few options, those of interest to me being AdSense for content, feeds and search. Once you tell the webapp what sort of ad you want to make — I started with a content ad, an ad that appears on the main site and in posts when viewed from a browser — it will lead you through a series of customization steps that determine the look of the ads — colors, size, etc. — then generate a bit of Javascript for you to insert on your site anywhere you want these ads to appear. I put my code in one of Worpress’s sidebar text widgets, which work very nicely for this purpose. Before I knew it I was seeing ads on my site.

Just a Picture

A few days later I was checking my AdSense account and noticing that I wasn’t getting nearly as many impressions (page views, in AdSense parlance) as I expected. This, I realized, was because a good amount of my traffic comes from feed readers. So I decided to add another ad for feeds. Doing so is largely like creating ads for content. But getting them to show up in my feeds, easily and reliably at least, required the use of a WordPress plugin. This was also relatively easy to install and set up, and once I had done so, I had ads in my feed.

A few more days pass with disappointing results. I’m getting a decent amount of impressions but the money just isn’t flowing, so I make one last ditch effort in the form of a custom Google Search bar. What this search bar does is allow users to search Google right from my site. Any AdSense links they follow from the results will, in theory, generate revenue.

Google Search

It’s now been a full 10 days since I began my little test. I have a total of 2,483 page impressions according to my Google AdSense report and I’m averaging about 220 per day. (For some reason these numbers differ wildly from the number of page views reported by my Urchin stats, but whatever.) After receiving well over 2000 page impressions I’ve made a grand total of — wait for it — five cents. And I’m pretty sure that at least one of those cents was my girlfriend poking around on the site.

I'm Rich! Oh, Wait...

Ten days, 2400 impressions and only five pennies to show for it. Clearly this has not been a success. So what went wrong?

Well, there are two kinds of ad models employed by Google AdSense, colloquially referred to as CPC and CPM. CPC, or Cost Per Click, is pretty much what you’d expect: someone clicks a link and you get money. The other form, CPM, or Cost Per 1000 Impressions, is a type of ad that pays you per 1000 impressions. So if 1000 people view your page, you get money.

Google AdSense is very easy, but it’s also almost completely opaque. You have minimal control over which advertisers are allowed to use your site; you have no control over how much ads cost, nor does Google tell you what your rate is; you have no control over what ads appear; and most importantly, you do not control what type of ad — CPC or CPM — gets posted. All of these things are decided for you by Google and their advertisers.

In my case, CPC ads are all but useless. My site is read mainly by very tech-savvy users who tend not to click on Google ads ever, even if they’re not already using an Ad Blocker of some sort in their browser. And if they want to do a Google search, they either use the browser’s search bar, or they just go to Google. I have reached a certain milestone in terms of traffic, however. According to my webstats I get around 1000 page views per day, give or take. Now, if Google’s AdSense engine was in agreement with this, and I featured ads that use the CPM model, I might be able to make some money (though I have no idea how much). But unfortunately, the CPC model is the default, and CPM ads only show up at the request of advertisers (contrary to how it may seem in the literature). That, coupled with the odd difference in page view statistics means I will not be able to make any money with Google AdSense. And it would seem to me that the only way to effectively do so is to litter my site with ads and to get gobs and gobs of general, consumer-level traffic, two things that are really quite unlikely to happen here at TASB.

I do believe it’s possible, in theory, to make money off this site, with targeted, prepaid or per-impression ads of the sort offered by The Deck and Fusion Ads, but those services are invite-only and seem to cater to a particular clientele, and I don’t really see them inviting me into their networks anytime soon. In my initial post about this, a commenter mentioned a company called Federated Media Publishing. Although I’ve only perused their site, Federated seems to offer a service similar to The Deck and Fusion, but their invite system seems a bit more open. If I read it right, you can apply to them for an invitation. See if there’s anything about your site they might be interested in.

Of all the approaches I’ve seen, this targeted, site-specific one is the most to my liking. It’s very non-intrusive for the viewer and yet more accurately targeted than Google’s algorithms could ever hope to be (I frequently had ads for HVAC and landscaping appear on my site). Down the line I may make another attempt at advertising here using a system such as this. But for now I’ll be removing Google AdSense. It does not work for me, and I don’t think it ever will.

Pingback Settings

The problem for me is I almost never get pingbacks, with two exceptions. The first is spam. On occasion I’ve gotten pingbacks that were spam. This has mostly been cured by installing some anti-spam plugins. The other exception, however, is me. I link to myself all the time. And every time I do I get a pingback in the linked post. I don’t really want these there, though, so I have to go and delete them. It’s a pain.

You would think WordPress would have a setting to block pingbacks from itself. Alas, I can find no such setting. Since I almost never get pingbacks from others, I think I’ll go ahead and turn them off. The annoyance to usefulness ratio is just way to big.

So I’m considering a little experiment. I’m thinking of putting some subtle Google AdSense ads up. This site was, after all, intended as a learning experience, and, more than anything, I’m just plain curious what it would be like to advertise here. Just a bit. And to see if I’d make even enough money to cover my hosting costs now that I’ve left Blogger.

What I’d love from you guys is feedback. Two kinds, actually: I’m curious to know if anyone thinks the site is — or will become — worse with the introduction of advertisements — I can always pull the ads later if it does; and I’m curious to hear other people’s experiences adding ads to their sites.

Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Is there a better way to go than AdSense? Any pitfalls?

I’d love to hear in the comments.

I’ve also discovered that Gruber doesn’t grok Facebook:

Facebook is a good match for FriendFeed, insofar as I’ve never understood why I’d want to use either of them.

I’d just always thought that the desire to use Facebook is pretty self-explanatory. You hook up with people you know and like, or with people you’ve lost touch with. You may not want to do either of those things, but that’s why you’d use it if you did. On the other hand, I don’t get why anyone would want to use Twitter, which I understand Mr. Gruber does indeed use. So I’m working out a cockamamie theory that there are two types of people in the world: Facebook people and Twitter people, with somehow fundamentally different brain structures. Of course, in my theory the Facebook people are just a shade better than the Twitter people. It’s got a long way to go.

Lastly, hysterical links one and two. Damn, that’s some funny stuff.

Okay, so yeah, my reading’s been pretty limited as well. In any case, hi Internet. It’s been a while. But rest assured, I do have posts in the pipe. Coming soon.

But for now I rest.

Upgrade Disks Are for Non-SysAdmins

UPDATE: I knew there was something I was forgetting. (See why I’m laying off the writing?) I really want to show my support for Gruber and pre-order Snow Leopard via his site, but I’m unsure of the upgrade procedure. Seems the only version available is an “Upgrade” version. But what does that mean? Does that mean if I upgrade I’ll get one of those funky upgrade disks? Does it mean I won’t have a full install disk? ‘Cause I’m not down with that. I’ll gladly pay extra for a disk that lets me install the whole shebang from the single DVD. As a SysAdmin I simply cannot abide the hassle upgrade disks entail. So can anyone tell me definitively? Are the Snow Leopard disks available from Amazon full install disks?

Generally speaking, though, commenters here are exceptionally well behaved, and I’m quite proud of the quality of my readership. Even some of my snarkiest commenters have turned out to be really nice guys in the end who are just having a bad day. Guys, I totally get the bad day thing.

But comment snark is my kryptonite!

For whatever reasons, comment snark — and by that I mean condescension, rudeness, or any general lack of graciousness — really gets to me. It ruins my day. Almost as much as good comments can make my day. So, rather than stewing about it every time, I’ve decided to simply institute a comment policy.

We SysAdmins love ourselves some policy, so I’ve added a whole page for them called “Policy,” and it’s here you can find my comment policies. The basic rules are simple, though: keep it polite and civil; snark will be dealt with by me, case-by-case, in whatever manner I see fit. And if you’re asking for help, be clear and thorough regarding your issue and what action you’d like taken.

Thanks to everyone who comes here to read and comment on this site. Your readership is hugely appreciated.

See ya! Woudn't Wanna Be Ya!

Never trust a blog engine that doesn’t allow you to schedule posts in advance, I always say. And since WordPress certainly has such a feature, I’ve queued up a delightful peppering of articles to amuse, inform and entertain you throughout the week.

Feel free to comment (I know how you love to comment), but bear in mind, I won’t be responding until after I return. So expect delays.

Okay! Off I go!

Whee!

We have a new look today. It’s based on a WordPress theme called Blue by Sean McPherson of Brambling Design. I’ve taken some liberties with Blue, enlarging some of the fonts, changing some colors and widening the post area. But the basic look remains the same: clean, simple, but still kinda fun. I really like it.

I’ve foregone the traditional Systems Boy logo this time out. I love it, but it can be a pain to deal with and many themes don’t easily allow for banner images. Plus, I like the idea of preserving the simplicity of the Blue theme and sticking to designing mainly with text.

Systemsboy Logo: We Hardly Knew Ye!

As so often seems to happen (by which I mean twice), today’s new look coincides loosely with the anniversary of the blog, which is May 29th. This year TASB turns four. Wow. Four years. I never thought I’d be doing this for so long. And still liking it no less.

Today’s makeover was also at least partly inspired by fellow systems blogger Jay Young, with whom I share very similar tastes in themes. Seems every time I go to use one he’s already grabbed it, forcing me to go my own way.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who stops by. Your visits are always appreciated.

Enjoy the new look.