TDH: Portfolio » A Small Orange

A Small Orange Downtime for tdhedengren.com: 10h 29m 8s

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:38:34 +0000

And that’s just today. I’m not a happy customer.

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A Small Orange: The Good and the Bad

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:10:55 +0000

I’ve been using A Small Orange (ASO for short) for several years, they are my host of choice for international projects. My sites in Sweden are located in Sweden physically as well, but everything else is on ASO.

As regular readers of this blog know, my relationship with ASO isn’t simple. The last year or so the uptime have been poor, at least to my demands, and that culminated in me deciding to move to another host. However, ASO suggested to move my account to a different server, and that actually did the trick. I haven’t seen very much downtime since the move, which is great.

In other words, if your ASO account is on the Ana Lucia server, then ask them to move it. It’s not a stable server, if you ask me.

However, the move didn’t go as smoothly as it should. There were DNS issues, and it turned out that not all e-mail aliases were moved, and so on. No data was lost other than the bouncing e-mails, but that’s bad enough. I had to setup some subdomains again as well. Still, the ASO support was prompt and helpful as always, which is the main reason I wanted to give them another shot and not switch hosts. I have absolutely no complaints about the ASO support, they are great. Sure, they are human and sometimes they make mistakes, like just now when they accidentally messed up some stuff for the tdhedengren.com domain.

I have not yet decided if I can start recommending A Small Orange as a host again. Everything seems to be working well enough since after the move from the Ana Lucia server, but it is still a bit early to start waving the orange flag. However, I can tell you this: If prompt and good support is what you value the most, then give ASO a go. That is their strong point, the selling point if you will.

Personally, I’m taking a careful yet positive stance here. I won’t be so shy not to drop you an affiliate link, should you want to give ASO a go.

What host are you on, and what are your experiences? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments, if you will.

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E-mail Issues Resolved

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 29 May 2008 09:45:06 +0000

For some reason, the settings for my tdhedengren.com e-mail accounts didn’t migrate with everything else in the server move made by the good folks over at A Small Orange. Everything else did, but not these, which is weird. I heard about this just now, and have resolved the issue. Sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused, if you e-mailed me in the past 48 hours and haven’t heard back, please resend as the e-mail either have bounced back (which you probably noticed), or disappeared along the way.

Thanks for your patience.

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Looking For A New Host

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:49:12 +0000

I’m officially looking for a new host, having finally had it with A Small Orange. They have great support, and I love the control I have over my account, but at times my sites are going up and down like a yoyo. I can’t stand that, it’s a total buzzkill when it comes to blogging. I mean, here I have a great interview with Ankit over at BloggerTalks, and then the server starts coughing. That sucks. Luckily, this time the downtime wasn’t so long, they usually get everything up pretty quick, but it’s just too often for me to feel secure and confident with them.

That being said, I am indeed working on next week’s interview for BloggerTalks, and hopefully getting it out of beta (i.e. fixing some silly stuff and getting the real front page up) as well. After that, I can concentrate on Feeling Productive as well, and give this blog the TLC it deserves. After all, I can’t blame a blog for taking down servers at ASO, now can I?

Err…

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When To Move On From A Webhost

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:29:19 +0000

I’ve been a happy A Small Orange customer for a few years now. They’re my choice for everything international, so to speak – I host my Swedish projects in Sweden. I get CPanel access and the freedom I crave to make my work as a webdesigner easier.

Problem is, they’re having lots of issues with downtime. I expect that it’s not something that everyone experiences, but the server I’m on – Ana Lucia by the way – is having weekly hiccups now. The support is great, they get right on the problem, reboots and whatnot, but I’ve had it. I’m working online, I publish websites, I can’t have them go up and down like a yoyo.

I’m giving A Small Orange this month, and this month only. If they don’t cope with these problems, I’ll take my accounts there – more than one – and move someplace else. This is not a host I can recommend right now, and that’s never a good sign.