When Services are down

[ALElder]

From time to time my hosting company has problems and my site will not open just gets and error saying "Unable to connect to database server!".

Where would I need change this information to look a little better.

I am upload what I am kind of looking for:

[met00]

1) change your hosting company
2) change your hosting company
and
3) change your hosting company

By the way, did I tell you to change your hosting company?

Seriously, I use a hosting service where I run root servers (although I recommend that you look at a managed server solution unless you have a great deal of familiarity with Un*x). Why? This is my business. If it costs me $200/month "rent" to be assured that the machine is all mine and I don't have to worry about a neighbor screwing up my server, then that is a very low cost to pay for ensuring that my server is not affected by some dip who writes bad php and sql.

Every time someone comes to your site and gets a DB warning page it says "I'm not a professional and my business is fly-by-night". Did you lose a sale? Possibly. How many lost sales will it take before you make the decision to take your ISP choice seriously? That's for you to decide.

Now. some people are happy with shared servers and services, and we all know that aabox, the host and major contributor to OSCMax makes their living selling shared services. I should also note that they also sell dedicated hosting, which I recommend (clarification: dedicated hosting, not aabox - I have no opinion about aabox or their services as I am not a customer of theirs) for anyone who is serious about running a store on-line.

[jpf]

All I can say is:
Rinse and repeat....

Change your hosting company!

Please - ASK FOR SUGGESTIONS. I got lots.

AABOX is good - Or maybe the one I use - been like 8 years - total days down was like 5 days. (2-3 days due to "potential" illegal activity on another virtual server and the authorities pulled the plug - literally! And another 6 times for a half to a whole day for server upgrades - every year or two)

Look for host that are well connected though multiple backbones like AABOX and a few others.

I thinks I had more problems accessing MSN.COM over the years due to a major infrastructure router failures (DNS not rerouting properly until 24 hours). I think one time there was a MAJOR fire at a CO office that knocked out the all the internet that was flowing though the area (the only backbone though that area)- took days to get stuff properly re-routed. I know I could not get MSN.COM to come up for 3 days - but my site was still alive and running. I know MSN.COM was not down cause other people on the other side of the country had no problem.

In case I did not say - but...

Change your hosting company!

[michael_s]

Aside from changing hosting, you could add some error trapping, but it would be a bear of a project.

Basically, you would have to add php code that would filter the response. If it is an error then show a special page. if not, continue with output.

You would have to do this wherever osCMax hits the database (that is A LOT of placese in the code).