• Facebook – Become our Facebook fan! Feel free to chat with us, ask questions, or share your website!
• LinkedIn – If you’d like a more professional environment and would like to connect with us, we have a company page over at LinkedIn.
• Twitter – This is where we’re most active, and most of you are probably already our friend, but for anyone who’s not, we’d love to be!

Let us know if you’re current anywhere else, so we can sign up and chat with you there!

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On another quick note, we’re making huge leaps with the new website, and it should be up and running before you know it, so look out.

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The key area we’re now looking at is daily CPU usage per account. This gives us a far more accurate representation of single site resource usage consumption, than on a per-process basis where you may have a very high period of activity, but not much happening for the rest of the day.

This is a very difficult topic to write about and discuss, since it effectively hits at the very heart of a topic which is essentially “Is my site fit for shared hosting?” Many hosting providers in the past have put limits in place on resource consumption, and whilst we don’t want to do that, we do need to have limits in place which provide a guideline we can use to determine when a site has exceeded shared hosting placement and needs its own dedicated set of resources.

At this*, as you should know, we don’t oversell our servers. This lets your sites run very well in all but the most extreme of conditions. Whilst we don’t oversell, given the nature of shared hosting, it’s simply not feasible for us to host websites which by their nature or by the mere traffic they receive, out-consume others by many many times. Out anti-overselling policies simply aren’t in place to allow very popular and active websites to “get by” on a shared hosting account without needing to upgrade to something that better suits them.

Many people may instantly jump to the conclusion that “If you need to take action, you must be overselling!”. That’s simply not the case at all. To throw an (extreme) analogy your way; if we deploy a brand new server and had a single account running on it that consumed approximately 60% of the load (permanently) – that’s most certainly a site that needs its own server. It’s not financially viable for us, or any other hosting provider out there, to maintain a website that large at the cost of shared hosting.

We’ve been monitoring accounts for the past few weeks, and we think we have a good idea of a guideline on CPU resource consumption in a “minutes per day” measurement. The sites that have currently exceeded our approximate guideline generate (on average) at least 750,000 hits (and in some cases much more) every day. We feel that’s certainly beyond what you would expect from a shared hosting account, and we’re happy that the guideline is “fair”. If we were to implement a guideline or “limit” on CPU minutes, we would not take immediate action on websites – such as a suspension or termination. Instead, we would notify the user and offer them an alternative solution, or at least make it clear that action needs to be taken, whether that’s a VPS or Dedicated solution with us (coming soon) or another provider. Our intention isn’t to disconnect anyone and leave them without their website. Your websites are important to us, and ultimately we want you to be in the best possible position.

To be clear, this isn’t a package issue. We’re more than happy for our lowest package users to use exactly the same amount of server resources (CPU and RAM) as our highest package users. This is fundamentally a Shared vs VPS/Dedicated issue.

We’re looking for your feedback on this subject. Do you believe what we’ve outlined is fair? Do you have any questions or suggestions on this topic?

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Enjoy!

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What is the quota size for databases now?
The quota is currently hard-coded to 256MB. There are no plans to increase this in the future.

What will happen if my database is over quota?
Your database will have the UPDATE, INSERT and CREATE permissions revoked. This will mean that no new data can be added to the database until you reduce the size to less than 256MB.

Will this cause an error on my site?
Unfortunately this is impossible to determine, and fundamentally depends on how your site is developed. Some sites will generate a MySQL error, perhaps related to invalid permissions. Some sites may be less friendly and show nothing at all. If you’re experiencing odd problems, you should first check the size of your MySQL database(s) within cPanel.

I’ve reduced my database size, when will my site/database be working again?
The quota system is scheduled to execute every 5 minutes, so your site/database will be working within 5 minutes of reducing the size.

Will you notify me if my database is over size?
Unfortunately, due to the very dynamic nature of databases, and various limitations within our billing system (currently), we are unable to notify you if your database has had the permissions revoked. We are working to include this, and other account notifications in a future client area, but presently this is something you will need to monitor manually.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this change may cause, and we hope you understand our reasons for implementing this. As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please let us know.

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Why are you implementing a MySQL Quota?
Currently, MySQL databases are not limited in size, nor are they detracted from an accounts disk space quota. Under our Terms and Conditions we essentially implement a “fair usage” policy, and recommend that databases are no larger than 256MB to 512MB in size. Obviously as a hosting provider we need to draw the line between what is deemed acceptable for shared hosting, and what isn’t. Because of the nature of shared hosting, multiple large databases can and will increase MySQL memory usage on a server and can possibly reduce MySQL performance for others. Many customers are unaware of the MySQL information in our Acceptable Usage Policy, and as a result are exceeding (often very significantly) these guideline amounts. To try and keep performance the best we can, we feel that we need to begin implementing a MySQL quota so that databases simply cannot grow out of control on their own.

Our intention isn’t to charge people more (see below) or somehow otherwise inconvenience users, it’s merely to safeguard the integrity of our the servers by ensuring that particular resources cannot be abused or exceeded dramatically at the risk of performance degradation for others.

Why can’t you just combine the MySQL usage with the purchased disk space?
If we do this, and the disk space of a particular user is met or exceeded, MySQL will crash when new data is attempted to be added – bringing the service down for everyone.

What exactly is the quota going to do and what will happen if I reach it?
If a database exceeds our hard-coded quota, the “CREATE” and “INSERT” permissions on a database will be revoked. This will allow your databases to be used (such in a forum, it will still be accessible and readable by others), however new content (such as new forum posts) will be unable to be added and will generate a MySQL error upon query.

This quota is based on single, individual databases, and is not account bound.

The system will be 100% automated, so reducing your database size will cause the system to reinstate the relevant permissions within several minutes of making the changes.

What quota are you going to implement?
We are going to implement a 256MB quota, and modify our AUP Accordingly.

How do I know how big my databases are, and whether I’m at risk?
If you login to cPanel and access the ‘MySQL Databases’ screen, it will inform you how large each database is. Our investigations have shown that this quota limit will affect less than 1% of our hosted sites, so it is very unlikely to cause you any issues at all.

What do I do if my database is too large?
In many cases, the size of your database can be reduced by simply pruning old data. If you run a forum for example, deleting very old posts beyond a certain time period can clear up significant amounts of space.

I don’t want to delete old data, is there anything I can do? Can I upgrade to the Ultra plan and still use it?
I’m afraid not. If you are unable to bring your database size to below this new quota (256MB), you will need to seek an alternate method of hosting said database. In this instance we would recommend a VPS/Cloud hosted solution or Dedicated Server. Please contact us for possible options if you wish to persue hosting with us.

Please note that this quota is global and is not attached to particular accounts. If you are on the Ultra package or the Starter/Blog package – you will receive the same 256MB quota. Upgrading your package will not remove or increase this quota.

When will you implement this new quota system?
We will be bringing this new quota system online on February 1st 2010. This should allow ample time for existing customers to take the necessary steps to ensure they are not affected by this change.

As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please let us know by either opening a ticket or responding to this blog post.

EDIT:

It seems that in some vBulletin databases, the ‘Attachments’ table can grow extremely large due to vBulletin defaulting to store attachments within the database instead of as files on the server. To remedy this please try the following solution:

“First go to the cPanel’s File Manager and create an “attachments” directory in your site’s offline root directory (the directory that File Manager defaults to) and CHMod it 777. Keeping this directory offline is good for security purposes (no one will be able to view attachments they do not have permission to view). Now go to the AdminCP, expand the Attachments list on the left side and click on Attachment Storage Type. Move your attachments out of the database and into the file system. Here is the path you will want to use, replacing yourCPanelusername with the username you use to login to cPanel:

/home/yourCPanelusername/attachments”

Many thanks to Chad for providing us with this information.

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For new clients, you can enter in the coupon code END2009 to receive 50% off your first month, on any hosting package.

For our existing clients, we’ve decided to provide you with a unique coupon that provides 1 months free hosting on any new hosting package between now and the end of the new year! We would of sent emails directly rather than opening a ticket like we did, but it worked out easier to do it that way since it hooks into the same system.

From all of us at the This* team, we wish you happy holidays and hope you have an enjoyable new year!

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All shared hosting servers have been recompiled with XLST support, as well as being upgraded to the latest version of cPanel’s PHP: 5.2.12. This now means that we fully support the Symphony CMS software. Not only that, we also include support for the “zip” option, so you should be able to utilise all of the great features of this software. Enjoy!

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When signing up, enter in the coupon code “THISTURKEY” to receive 30% off your first month on our Standard and up packages! It expires at the end of November, so hurry up and happy hosting!

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Starting today (November 1st) and running right up until the end of the month (or maybe longer), we’re going to be providing people the chance to try our service for just $0.99. That’s right – we’re now offering the first month of our Starter/Blog hosting package for just $0.99. It’s hard to get any cheaper than that, isn’t it? Now, obviously this doesn’t include domain registration, domain transfer(s) or dedicated IP addresses. It’s simply our Starter/Blog package for $0.99c so that you can get a feel for our service. At the end of your first month, the price will revert back to the usual $2.99/month.

We’ve already updated the order link on our products page to include the discount coupon needed, so there’s nothing to enter. Everyone signing up to the Starter/Blog package from this moment on will automatically receive their first month for $0.99c. When ordering, you won’t see the coupon immediately, but simply choose ‘$2.99 – Monthly’ and on the next page the coupon will apply and it’ll be reduced to just $0.99c.

So, please help spread the word, and let people know they can try the awesome this* hosting for a ridiculously low price!

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