I’ve never seen/heard of Media Temple, but it’s a pretty good price for such a good package, eh? Good luck with the move and hope you enjoy your new home!

Let us know how you find MT, Mark! Saw the Grid Server a few weeks ago, and it sounds superb for $20 per month. Can I ask how you, and others, feel about hosting on US servers? Am I right in thinking Google will place your site in the relevant country search results based on the server location (ie I have a site hosted in the UK, Google will tag it as a UK site)?

Hi Mark,

I just made the move to MT for a Rails app I’ve built - seems pretty good, although the $20 plan can really only run one Rails app at a time.

The traffic and disk space allocation is pretty great though :)

Myles

I’ve been on a (dv) plan since January with MT. I’m UK based and they have been great. Email support is great and the service has been very satisfactory. They have their reputation for a reason.

I heard many positive comments about the new grid server of MT, good choice! Although it’s not guaranteed that your site won’t go offline when you’re being dugg: http://www.digg.com/hardware/Digg_Proof_Shared_Hosting_From_Media_Temple_Let_s_Find_Out

Mark: I’m doing exactly the same thing, I’m about mid-way through the process right now. Dreamhosts performance of late has been embarrassing, and I’ve had complaints that my sites have been slow or unavailable for too long now.

Slightly sad to be leaving Dreamhost, but the level of attention from Media Temple so far more than makes up for it!

I have been on my current host for a while now. Part of the reason I haven’t updated the look/feel is because of the offerings of my current host. I want the ability to use PHP5 instead of 4, and also want the ability to develop Rails apps. Those two things alone have brought me to the point of switching to MT. I will be switching mine in the next month or so, and then begin building my site to be what I want it to be (instead of a default wordpress...ha).

Through research, and talking with others who are using MT, I have found it to be the best and most affordable option.

Let us know how you like it! :)

I recently got my money refunded from Dreamhost (which will have killed your referral fee sorry) as I was really hacked off with ‘em. I sat in a webmasters chat channel one night, and lots of people were complaining about their sites being down.

This happened a few times, and we were all on Dreamhost. I moved out - first time I’ve ever got a refund on hosting. just as well it was 97 days refund period!

As for the hosting thing. If you host a co.uk in the US, you’ll show up in the UK only search at Google. If you host a .com in the US, you won’t even if the content is UK specific. If you physically host the .com in the UK (if you fancy paying through the nose) then it will show up in the UK only searches.

I am planning on doing the same thing. I really liked dreamhost, but this summer was a rollercoaster ride that I don’t want to take again…

Plus, I have used MT for over a year now (for some of my personal domains) and I have never had a problem with them - their customer service is the best in the biz.

Nothing wrong with MT - been hosting with them (albeit on a DV PHP server) for four years. You can pick up the phone any time and speak to an American - it is like talking to the Internet itself!

Email support can be a little slow, but at least the outcomes are good.

So what do they mean by a terabyte of “short path bandwidth?” That’s the only thing that makes me a bit leery; other hosting services talk about bandwidth but MT talk about “short path bandwidth” limits.

This does look like a fantastic deal, especially considering that I’m paying $20/month for only 100 megabytes of disk space, although that does come with 15 gigs/month of bandwidth. I was considering switching to TextDrive since that will be bundled with the new Joyent Core and I already use StrongSpace, but they only offer 5 gigs/month bandwidth for their base package ($15/month) and that’s pretty paltry. But before I switch to MT I want to see if there’s some hidden catch in this “short path bandwidth” business.

I’m thinking of moving to MT, too. The only thing that turns me off a bit is moving about 8 domains (some of them clients) over there. I don’t know if people will be altogether happy at being down for up to two days for propogation, and I don’t know if I’m up to switching all their info to be ip-based temporarily to prevent it ;)

I’ve heard very good things about media temple, though, and that grid plan looks excellent. I think I’d sleep better at night with it.

Phil: I’ve hosted with Media Temple for ages now, and them being in the US in no way gets infront of recieving top notch service. Dio mentioned the Google thing earlier.

But the top thing that impresses me the host is just how shiny everything is (if you know what I mean) - the cp interfaces are nice to work with, and they respond to support requests online in about 30 minutes usually (unless it’s urgent).

I’d definately recommend (mt).

Have been very happy with MT for the past 18 months - I’ve migrated 3 sites over to the grid so far ... however, and unfortunately, on my personal (business) site I’m migrating right now and it’s been down for almost 12 hours and not a word out of support.  Other than today’s personal meltdown, they’ve been excellent for 18 months though.

Brad - My best guess about “Short Path Bandwidth” is that they mean it doesn’t route through a lot of network equipment before it gets out to the internet at large.  I’m not sure on this (at all) but I’m guessing they’re mentioning it as a benefit, rather than a catch.  Perhaps they felt the need to qualify because of their clustered architecture.

Good luck with the move.  If it doesn’t work out for you, I’d recommend Argos Networks(http://www.argosweb.net).  In my day job I manage 7 Web sites, one of which is pretty good size.  I’ve used Argos Networks for more than 7 year, and have been very happy with the service and technical expertise. I usually get some kind of reply within 30 minutes of a trouble-shooting call.  You can’t beat that for service.

Nice site!
My homepage | Please visit

David Horn- Just pick up the phone and call them- they will have your transfer done in a matter of minutes.  I’ve had 2 sites with MT (after leaving DH fromt he insanely bad downtime in the summer) for about 4 months and both moved flawlessly to the grid about 2 weeks ago.

The phone support is normally top notch- never on hold more than a couple of minutes.  Usually they can fix what ails you right away.  Sometimes I feel that they are a bit nonchalant about some things that they don’t see an explanation for.  The only catch I have seen is about 5 times I have had small issues like a weird spam message keeping messages from downloading over POP- and I call them to ask if they can find a problem in the queue or something, and they say everything looks fine, and not 2 minutes later things start flowing- almost like they see something they can do and do it while I’m on the phone, then say everything is working fine, and i see it start working almost immediately.  I know it sounds weird but its been like 5 times so i am a little suspicious.  But the fact is they are responsive and their hosting just works.

Its a good call.

Its amazing how much db space you need for websites..

you can mirror the site in a cache so that an access isn’t via your db..

digg has an article about being dugg.

Intersting, I’ve been pondering the exact same move myself… Dreamhost is a wee bit ropey at the moment for my liking!

Here’s looking forward to a more reliable, faster loading Mark Boulton Experience :)

(mt) has been my host for over 5 years. My migration to the grid took 1 day, but I was already on there servers.

They have the best customer service. Friendly, informed and helpful. I’ve only had 1 problem once and when I brought it to their attention they were promptly gracious, and addressed the issue.

Long live (mt) and their great service.

I’m also thinking of moving to the Grid Plan from 1and1 who frankly suck!

I’m also thinking of moving to Expression Engine from Textpattern - anybody know if this will work OK with the Grid?  I assume yes but it’s not on the list of supported apps.

Many thanks

I made the moveback to (mt) and have been 100% pleased.

MT support has stated, in one of the many threads around, that they have been using/testing EE on the (gs). It works, and why shouldn’t it? If you like EE, have a look at CodeIgniter, too.

+1 struggling Dreamhost subscriber now considering MT

BTW, you may want to update the sidepanel from “Hosting from Dreamhost” ;)

Cheers,
Pete

As an EE user I’ll be interested to know how your experience goes there. I have a bunch of installs - on the shared server, grid server and dedicated virtual - and each one needed a different tweak here or there to get going - I’m hoping the grid setup, which runs php as a cgi process, as more consistent.

I set up an old school SS account at MT in late winter and switched to the new Grid Server (GS) plan about a month ago, when it became available.

Sadly, the GS service has been highly lackluster thus far.

I’ve experienced regular email outages and numerous database connection failures - once a week or more - stuff that never, ever occurred with SS.

I realize how tough the hosting business is; I used to own a company that ran such a service. But while MT support is superb, I currently feel like a guinea pig for the Grid.

The last thing I want to do is switch all of my domains back over to another host, but if this pattern continues, I may be forced to.

Sigh.

I switched just hours ago and I’m already having problems.  Everything seems a bit sluggish, even compared to the crappy over-sold hosting I was switching from.  It takes quite a bit of time just to see the results of the ls command, and MySQL queries also take several times longer than I expect from even low-end hosts. 

Gonna keep it for a few days, see if the problems go away.  And don’t even get me started on how slow (both in terms of load time and usability) the control panel is. 

There’ll never be an end to my hosting woes!  :(