What happened yesterday sent me on such an emotional roller coaster, it may take me a week to recover. My nerves are still raw. My emotions are still running high. But I know many people are wondering what the hell happened so I’ve gotta spill the details.
Yesterday I wrote a post that went so viral that my hosting provider couldn’t handle the traffic I got, and terminated my service, without any warning whatsoever. The post was up for 8 hours, and in that time it pulled in 10,000 page views, 865 people shared it on Facebook, there were 150 comments left, and it was reposted all over Baby Center, The Bump, iVillage, and dozens of other message boards and websites. I have no idea what I said to even get that kind of response.
Of course, someone like Dooce gets that kind of traffic every hour that her blog is up, so the I cannot understand how my obviously-worthless hosting company couldn’t handle my little surge.
I just purchased 3 years in advance from this hosting provider, thinking I’d make the investment and not have to worry about this again until Jonas was in grade school. But instead, on the one day I need good service, I get shut down instead. Here is the email that I find 3 hours after the ordeal started:
Hi Gina,
As you probably aware, here at Just Host we proactively monitor all our servers to ensure that our clients websites are loading as fast as possible at all times. During this outine monitoring we have found that your account is utilizing an excessive amount of system resources, and we have been forced to suspend your site as per our terms and conditions ’10% CPU/Memory Policy’ For your reference, here is a copy of your usage report:
Top Process %CPU 153 /usr/bin/php /home/aheadma1/public_html/thefeministbreeder.com/index.php
Top Process %CPU 117 /usr/bin/php /home/aheadma1/public_html/thefeministbreeder.com/index.php
Top Process %CPU 116 /usr/bin/php /home/aheadma1/public_html/thefeministbreeder.com/index.phpJust Host offer unlimited hosting space and unlimited bandwidth, but as per our terms we will suspend any website which exceeds our 10% CPU/Memory policy. We hope that you understand our position in ensuring that we provide the best possible service. In order to continue to provide this high quality service, you will need to upgrade to a dedicated server, which will give you an abundance of additional resources and speed up your website. As a loyal Just Host customer we have arranged for you to receive a special deal on a dedicated server with SingleHop, (our trusted dedicated partner) who will assist you with everything you need to make your switch a smooth transaction.
Please visit this link to upgrade to a dedicated server: http://www.justhost.com/godedicated
Sorry for any inconvenience, and we hope you understand our decision. Once you have made the switch to dedicated, feel free to contact us at billing@justhost.com for a refund of your current Just Host account. On behalf of everyone here at Just Host, we wish you all the best with your online ventures.Thank you.
__
Kind regards,
Oliver Leach,
Just Host
www.justhost.com
That’s it. No recourse except to buy a dedicated server. No offer to purchase more bandwidth. No offer to keep my site up until I can get my files off. JustHost – you are slimy assholes.
No, this is not the kind of thing a hosting provider usually does, unless you’ve apparently signed up with World’s Biggest Criminals Hosting Provider, a.k.a. JustHost, for your service. I tried calling them – no phone number could be reached. I tried doing their live support chat – but that guy told me my account had been suspended and there was nothing they could do, then he hung up on me! The nerve! According to the link they gave me, my only option for retrieving my files was to immediately purchase a $150 dedicated server. Nothing else. They were essentially holding my site for ransom.
Meanwhile, visitors are pouring into my broken site at 2 every second, and then the panicked messages start coming to me, and then I’m even more panicked, and the whole thing starts to become a massive panic attack.
(now, I realize this could sound totally childish to some people – It’s not like I got sent to war, or lost a child, or something that traumatic. But please, understand that in this moment, this was one of the most frightening, out-of-control things that I’ve ever been through.)
This company is holding my files hostage. I’ve been robbed. 5 years of writing. 5 years of pictures. Thousands of comments from readers. My whole hub has been taken from me and I can’t do anything about it. I didn’t even have EMAIL anymore because that was tied to my hosting. Everyone’s freaking out around me. I’m shaking, my chest closes up, and I’m bawling all over my keyboard. I can’t do anything but just cry.
Then, my community kicks into crisis mode, and what happens next is most generosity I’ve ever experienced in my life. I don’t even know how to describe it. It was astonishing. It just breaks my heart. I will never be able to thank all the people who came to my aid last night.
Immediately someone suggests I set up a PayPal account to accept donations. You’d have to know me, but I never, ever take anything from anybody, especially money. I was raised to never accept help (which is kind of a stupid and ultimately selfish thing at times, but hey, that’s the way they raised me.) But I’m desperate, and I don’t know what else to do. I try setting up a PayPal account but I have no email address so I can’t. I couldn’t even focus long enough to think about setting up a Gmail account to setup a Paypal account, so one of my new cyber friends, Kathy Fitz-Lopez (@milkstained) swoops in and sets up a donation button for me.
This is the unreal part. Within 18 minute – 18 minutes – she brought in the $150 ransom fee. More donations came after, even when people knew we reached our goal, and we got up to $190 (last I checked).
Also, friends on Facebook and Twitter are writing angry letters to JustHost telling them to give me my service back. Friends are trying to get them on chat because Support wouldn’t talk to me anymore, and people all over Twitter telling JustHost where to stick it.
While that was happening, StarryMom (my unbelievably talented and resourceful webmistress) managed to ninja her way onto the phone with someone at JustHost, and got them to unlock my account long enough to get my files off. I immediately got on the phone with GoDaddy (who I buy all my domains from) and had them set me up with an account big enough to handle all the traffic. Sarah (StarryMom) stayed up all night transferring the files to my new servers and sorting everything out. At 4 am, I finally saw TheFeministBreeder.com homepage again. And then, I cried some more.
And after all that – I couldn’t help but think…
All I can do is try to chuckle about it now. I’m still spent, but thankfully my support team mitigated the damage as much as humanly possible, and I can publish this post today thanks to all their dedication to my silly little website.
I cannot express the gratitude I feel for having people around me who would donate their time and money into helping me – a relative stranger. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything to deserve that kind of help and support, but I only hope that I can deserve it someday. I’ve got a lot of paying it forward to do.
To everyone who donated to me, Kathy forwarded me your donation receipt and you will ALL be receiving a personal thank you note from me. At first I was going to post my donor list here, but in consideration of one’s privacy, I thought it better that you can leave your name and a link to your site (facebook, twitter, whatever you want) if you’re willing to let your graciousness be acknowledged publicly.
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