I had planned to close this forum, as it seemed to have lived out its purpose. However, a recent forum post convinced me to do otherwise. I hadn't realized that WebFaction was still around (I left at the beginning of the year) and that's its closure was imminent. So I'll leave this forum up and running in case other refugees have questions.

That said, discussing the Webfaction buyout was only half my purpose here. I also wanted to experiment with Vanilla forums, because you can do a lot of cool things with it that you can't do with my old forum software, Phorum. Alas, most of what I was interested in is only available on the hosted paid version so I'm going to switch to different forum software. I'm not going back to Phorum, because it hasn't been updated in a while (I'm not sure what's up with that), and I've looked at a lot of alternatives and I think I'm going to go with myBB. It acts more like a forum than Vanilla does, and it also offers a Vanilla importer.

I'm not sure when I'll have the time to do that—but it probably won't happen for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

Thanks,
-Ken

I searched for a long time for the ISP least likely to get humped to death by GoDaddy or EIG.

I eventually settled on $10/mo MDDHosting after talking with the owner Micheal (who is easy to reach in their very good support system) who let me know "We have no plans on selling to EIG or GoDaddy. We have no plans on selling to anybody at all...The only way we'd ever sell is if we really truly believed that the company purchasing us would maintain or improve our service and support. Those are fairly high bars so I don't anticipate that even being a possibility" and he has consistently said similar things on webhostingtalk.com

During my migration my support items were answered promptly and with no-bullshit answers (usually from Micheal directly) that solved the problem, and were honest and full of meaningful technical details when/if there was going to be some delay in solving the problem.

MDDHosting is not super programmer-focused like WebFaction was, and for shared hosting it is a cPanel host BUT (don't click away too quick) I discovered that cPanel actually DOES have an API that does all the things that I needed from the WebFaction API (create websites, create forwarding emails, create databases, lots more...). For more info on that see this post: https://forum.kjodle.net/discussion/20/surprise-api-cpanel-shared-hosting-actually-is-a-webfaction-alternative

MDDHosting is clearly a small outfit and I prefer that.

MDDHosting had a rare and major major multi-day outage in September 2018 due to a command mis-typed by an admin, and throughout the whole process they remained transparent about what was happening and what they did afterwards to make sure it doesn't happen again (see http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1731410 and especially https://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/1582-major-outage-092118-09242018/ ). I agree with the WebHostingTalk.com poster here http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1731575 who says "The way MDD Hosting is handling this catastrophe, on top of the top-notch service I've had from them for over three years, in which they have gone above and beyond in customer service, makes me more likely to recommend them rather than less."

The only gripe I have is that MDDHosting does not make a C compiler available to shared hosting accounts (in an attempt to make it harder for script kiddyz to download premade coin miner packages). This makes it harder for me to install certain Perl modules. But I can use my shell and there is ssh support.

Well after tons and tons of work migrating my sites and a few months to settle, I am ready to push the "cancel account" button on WebFaction.

Below you can find a list of the numerous WebFaction support forum threads about this cluster-fork, some of which contain helpful advice about new ISPs to migrate to, as well as some off-site links for when GoDaddy finally takes down this forum.

For the former staff of WebFaction, I want to join everyone else in thanking you for years of awesome programmer-friendly service, and I hope you can find employment somewhere that is worthy of your talents.

Thank you GoDaddy for destroying yet another good ISP and wasting thousands and thousands of hours on behalf of your customers. And thank you to whoever at WebFaction allowed this travesty to go through without insisting on the right to properly give advance warning and meaningful status updates to your customers, instead just bending over to your Daddy's gag orders---we hope you are enjoying your millions. I'm sure when GoDaddy finally shuts down WebFaction's servers, GoDaddy will care so little, and things will be so disorganized, that despite the good intentions of any remaining WebFaction employees, there will be zero warning for former WebFaction victims who have not yet migrated away on their own. That is how these buyouts generally turn out (I have experience with two now, sigh). GoDaddy, I hope you feel it is worth the extra subscriber count you can show your shareholders to continue your pathetic Ponzi scheme. As your multi-year record humping other companies to death proves, and as your handful of sugar-coated, marketspeak-dripping, utterly meaningless communications since the WebFaction buyout prove, you are just as bad as EIG. You and EIG are the genital warts on the body of capitalism, and whether it be antitrust actions or fraud lawsuits, you both need to be treated immediately.

For the many others still in this process or who have been procrastinating the inevitable, note you have many ISPs to choose from, some of whom offer a hosted model (where OS/server security updates are done automatically for you) and some of whom let you configure a raw VM and give you root access. The most important thing is not to choose one already owned by GoDaddy or EIG (frequently they issue gag orders to prevent the fake small companies from revealing their true ownership, especially in the first months/years after the buyout).

A good general resource for ISP reviews is http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ which has a pretty reasonable policy for separating ads from reviews posted by real users. Always good to do a search for any ISP you are considering there, remembering that the forum members have a huge range of technical skill and so some complaints can reflect more on the poster's unreasonable expectations than on the ISP itself.

A former WebFaction customer created this forum for discussing WebFaction alternatives (kjodle.net goes down now and then but try again later): https://forum.kjodle.net/categories/godaddy-buyout-of-webfaction or https://forum.kjodle.net/discussions

For those who made heavy use of the WebFaction API and are dreading leaving it, note that even the ubiquitous and often-jeered-at cPanel has an API and although it's ugly, it does actually work for almost everything the WebFaction API could do. I provide some sample code and dox to help you get started here: https://forum.kjodle.net/discussion/20/surprise-api-cpanel-shared-hosting-actually-is-a-webfaction-alternative

A notable ISP to consider is this one Opalstack started by former WebFaction employees:

https://opalstack.com/

https://mobile.twitter.com/opalstack

https://pages.convertkit.com/2f68231082/0e9456199d

I ended up going with MDDHosting, which I reviewed here: https://forum.kjodle.net/discussion/21/mddhosting-is-a-good-webfaction-shared-hosting-alternative

Here are all the WebFaction support forum threads about the buyout. These threads are peppered with recommendations for other ISPs, mostly (but not all) ISPs where you have root and configure your own VM:

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/21806/webfaction-joins-forces-with-godaddy?sort=votes&page=1

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22246/godaddy-transition-updates

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/21961/godaddy-buyout

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22010/is-webfaction-shutting-down

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22167/refund-option

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22110/is-webfaction-dead-staff-please-confirm

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22164/an-other-webfaction

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22210/webfaction-alternative-godaddy-problem

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22148/webfaction-migration-6-months-later-and-still-no-answers

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22054/webfaction-moving-forwards-with-godaddy

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22258/a-note-to-put-your-mind-at-rest

https://community.webfaction.com/questions/22203/timeline-of-webfactiongodaddy-shutdown

Good luck and pray that you won't have to do this again (it's my second time, sigh).

I found it in this Reddit thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18869137

This guy seems to have migrated to SSDNodes. Check out some of the pricing:
https://www.ssdnodes.com/pricing/

9.99 USD / month, gets you 24 GB memory (is that RAM?), 120 GB SSD, 4 vCPUs!

This service seems surreal! Of course that may be part of the sales offer, but the offer was also there on Friday (in fact it expired while I was at work on Friday), so maybe it's a semi-permanent offer for now. Plus, they seemingly offer price-locking.

Check out some of their articles and get a feel for their mindset and culture... What is this? A self-hosting guide?!
https://blog.ssdnodes.com/blog/self-hosting-handbook/

I have a very good feeling about this!

Personally, I think I'll be moving my business to them. I'll let you know once I'm in, regarding their UI (or lack there of).

So the question, has anyone had any experience, good or bad, with MochaHost?

Thanks, Paul

I've set up the smallest VPS I can get, at US$15 a month. It provides 30GB storage, 1GB of memory, unlimited traffic, and unlimited domains (and subdomains). I've moved my domain registration to Gandi. (I like to keep them separate.)

They do have a custom panel, which I know and like. (I detest cPanel.) Someone here(?) had mentioned that they didn't know what it looked like; if you are interested, I will be happy to post some screenshots. Just let me know which areas you would like to see the most.

Their VPS packages are here, and their shared hosting packages are here.

Right now, I just want to focus on creating some content, but in the future, I do want to get back to development. For that, I will probably use their DreamCompute cloud service, which is essentially an unmanaged VPS that you can spin up or down at will, and which is fairly cost-effective. You can read more about that here.

And yes, I have an affiliate link. If you're looking at shared hosting, this link will get you $50 off a shared hosting package. They do offer a 97-day money-back guarantee, which was of the reasons I signed up for them so long ago (2009). I figured that if I couldn't figure out how to create a website in three months, then it probably wasn't for me. As it turned out, it was.

Also, if you've visited here over the past week, you may have noticed this site going in and out of existence. That was me reconfiguring domains, registrations, and the like. This forum is now hosted on DreamHost, and it should be staying put for now.

I did send in a long support request before I decided to do this. My questions and their responses are below.

1) Do you have an inode limit on either shared hosting or VPS hosting? (A
lot of hosts advertise a huge amount of storage or even unlimited
storage, but then limit the number of inodes. Since I’m running CMSs
that have numerous small files, and not large video or audio files, I’m
essentially paying for something I’ll never be able to use.)
-- There is no inode limit on a shared or VPS. The shared hosting does
allow unlimited disk space (for hosting purposes) and the VPS servers are
allocated a fixed size for disk but no inode limits are enforced

2) You are independently owned, which I like. Is DreamHost committed to
remaining independent, or is there a chance you may sell out to the likes
of GoDaddy or EIG?
-- We are committed to maintaining our independence and have no plan to
sell out.

3) What is your support like? My prior experience with DreamHost support
is that either support requests get answered almost immediately, or they
sit there in the queue forever and I have to reach out on Twitter to get
some movement on them.
-- Our support is 24/7 and email responses are generally answered within
24hrs. LiveChat can be used to get in touch with a live support team
member and LiveChat hours are 5:30a-9:30p PST daily. You can also request
a call back and you can schedule them at a given time frame. For more
information please visit:
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/218084068-Contacting-support-overview

4) Is DreamCompute essentially an unmanaged VPS, or is there some
advantage to it beyond that? It seems ridiculously inexpensive.
-- DreamCompute is our cloud service built on openstack. The instance you
provision on DreamCompute will have no default DreamHost services so in a
sense it is an "unmanaged" service. If you need root access to your
server, DreamCompute would be an ideal service plan.

5) Will there be any issue installing AWS CLI via the command line? I use
bash scripts to back up websites, push them to my AWS S3 instance, and
then delete them from the web server. (This is more secure, and also
keeps the web server from getting cluttered with backup files.)
-- You can install 's3cmd' on your web server and this should allow you
to push to/from your AWS instance:
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215916627

6) Is it possible to run a cronjob every minute on VPS? My understanding
is that the highest frequency a cronjob can run on shared hosting is once
every 10 minutes, which can be problematic for some apps such as Moodle.
-- The DreamHost panel will limit you to 5min frequency but that can be
bypassed by creating your cron job via crontab. Running cronjobs at every
minute might not optimal. You will want to enforce a lock to prevent
overlapping of your cron jobs executing.
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215767047-Creating-a-custom-Cron-Job

7) I like your custom built control panel, which also works pretty well
on mobile. Are you planning to keep it more or less forever, and will
never switch to cPanel?
-- We will not be changing to cPanel. Glad to hear you like the DreamHost
web panel. It's built for the people by the people. Your feedback on what
you like and/or what needs to be improved with the panel are always
welcomed and reviewed.

8) Can I set up my own Git repository in a subdomain?
-- Yes, you can create your own Git on a sub-domain. For more information
please visit:
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/216445317-How-do-I-set-up-a-Git-repository-

I have had to put in a few support requests and all of my issues were handled within 24 hours. I work during the day, so this schedule works for me.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to field them.

When looking for a place to flee WebFaction, I originally ruled out all the cPanel-based shared hosting providers because I was dreading click, click, clicking 10000 times in the GUI to set up my sites. I relied on the WebFaction API to automate tedious site config tasks.

But, to my surprise, I discovered that cPanel actually has an API that you can access via scripts from your favorite scripting language.

And that API can actually do most of the things that the WebFaction API could, albeit with a lot more historical warts and much poorer documentation.

• create domains
• create catch-all emails
• create forwarding emails
• create MySQL databases and users

So that opened up a lot of very low-cost alternative ISPs. I ended up migrating to MDDHosting and the process was much easier due to the API and ssh support. I will make a separate post about MDDHosting specifically.

Attached is a Perl script which demonstrates the kind of things you can do with the cPanel API and helps you avoid most of the pitfalls of learning cPanel APIs.

Even if you don't do Perl, see the comments in the script for lots of info about how to use the API and what features it supports.

One of the hardest parts of cPanel API is that there are actually at least 5 APIs and it's a confusing mess. See the comments in the attached script for clarity.

Has anyone found a VPS solution (managed or not), reasonably priced, that also offers an email service? I'm almost resigned to signing up for a 2nd account somewhere on an old-school shared plan, but am not sure how that will work with particular providers and dns re email vs web.

The old webfaction was one of a kind.

Thanks again!

Paul

As I search around the internet for recommended hosts, I'm mostly coming across sites that appear to be reviews but are full of affiliate links. So they're a bit suspicious as to if they ever bothered to use the hosting providers they're recommending or not. I also am searching for a hosting provider that allows me to test a site before I switch the DNS to point at the new hosts. Webfaction nicely had the username.webfactional.com address that let you see a site without your domain name.

I'll make separate posts with some findings. All my findings are from reading only, not actually signing up with anyone yet.

It's a little quirky, which a slightly more attractive, but more complicated panel than WebFaction has.

Some pluses:
1. A free SSL certificate if you also register your domain with them.
2. I transferred a domain to them to test the above, and the transfer process went really smoothly. The transfer completed and DNS updated in about 18 hours. (I suspect part of that wait was me not knowing I had to press an extra button at my old registrar.)
3. Subdomains (I really like subdomains) are fairly easy to set up.

Some minuses:
1. You can't access your instance in a terminal without first activating the "Emergency Console" from the dashboard, and access expires after about an hour. Since I like to do most things from the command line, this is not something I like. I can learn to live with it, however.
2. My server is in France and I'm in the US, so doing things via sFTP takes a while.

https://thishosting.rocks/best-cheap-managed-vps/

This page lists a handful of non-EIG companies that offer managed VPS hosting.

https://lowendbox.com/

This website lists dirt-cheap mostly unmanaged VPS hosting companies.

I've started this forum as a replacement for the following threads in the WebFaction forum:

Godaddy Buyout
WebFaction joins forces with GoDaddy

Eventually, the WebFaction forums will go away. When they do, we will still be able to discuss things here.

If you're experimenting with a different company, feel free to announce it in this thread, and then create a separate thread for it so we can follow your (mis)adventures.

Cheers,
-Ken

I'm currently using 73% of my allocated inodes, but only 16% of my disk space. Which means that I am paying for disk space that I can never use. As I use an AWS S3 instance to hold backups and audio and video files, I will never have enough large files on this host to use up that space without running out of inodes.

I have found that a lot of web hosts have these limits, such as VeeroTech, Geek Storage, SiteGround, StableHost, and Hawk Host (which have the largest limit—500,000 inodes on all plans—that I have seen).

If I were simply coding things by hand, this would not be as much of an issue, but as I tend to use CMSs a lot (WordPress, MediaWiki, DokuWiki), this is untenable, because these packages have a lot of files.

Some of these companies tell you straight up what your inode limit is, but for some of them, you don't find out until after you sign up, unless you make a point of asking beforehand. For example, the only thing I could find on SiteGround's site was this knowledgebase article that mentions why limiting inodes is necessary, but it still doesn't tell you what that limit is. As another example, I cannot find anything on Hostwinds' site about inodes limitations, other than this article in their knowledgebase that talks about inodes and their limitations, but doesn't provide a specific number.

500 Server Error
sorry, system error

system error log is recorded, error will be fixed as soon as possible
please report the error to the site administrators if you wish

The most recent post there seems to be from December 18, 2018.

I'm still looking for "Alternative To" WebFaction. Is anyone else out there?

eo

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