It’s all gone the shape of a pear!

Just a few weeks away from our a series of concerts, just when publicity is critical, and the BMTG site is down. It’s displaying an internal server error, which at first I thought might be my fault, until I realised that I hadn’t changed the site since it was previously working.

Having said that it was pointed out recently that a sub-domain, used by members, was broken. It too was displaying the same error and it turned out to be due a PHP variable I was displaying on the screen (invisibily at the bottom of the page for debugging purposes). Not sure why it caused a server error, but removal of it fixed the problem. At the time I thought it was odd that it hadn’t affected the main site because that too used the same variable. Anyway, I changed the main site as well. That was weeks ago.

So, the site is down. It’s been like that since, at least, first thing this morning and there’s no sign of it working. The host, Streamline.net, “escalated it to a 2nd line engineer”. Whatever that means. But they’re saying it might not be fixed within 24 hours. Great.

Which is why I’ve taken this opportunity to sign up with Memset. Not only are they regularly voted as the UK’s best host, but they provide their service free of charge for charities. So I’m already set up and I’ve copied the site into a test region. I just need the BMTG site to come back up so that I can  start testing the Memset version. If it offers me everything I need, I’ll be waving goodbye to Streamline. I’ve been plagued by downtime and speed issues (particularly FTP speed).

This site is also hosted by Streamline. Memset is more expensive for your general hosting, but I’m certainly seeing the advantage. The BMTG site will be a test - if all goes well, then I can’t see any reason why I won’t migrate this domain to Memset as well.

And they’re carbon neutral.