Server Keeps Timing Out [Archive]

BigOkie

08-16-2006, 12:07 PM

Every few minutes.

Bluehost.com and my site iPhotoshop.org keeps timing out with

I cant acces CPANEL or anything. I can access any other sites except these.

Whats the problem?

Same with me; my third day with them after rave reviews from coworkers and friends who use them and this. Not a good start for sure.

StrongBad

08-16-2006, 12:08 PM

I'm getting the same problem. I hope they're not getting another DoS attack.

StrongBad

08-16-2006, 12:10 PM

Same with me; my third day with them after rave reviews from coworkers and friends who use them and this. Not a good start for sure.

Oh this is rare, stick with BlueHost, they're still the best people out there.

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 12:10 PM

http://www.iphotoshop.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1901
Posted to my members... You guys hsould do the same.

Kirk: Our ISP is having some bandwidth issue currently. it should be fixed shortly
Yanyan Xu: Ok so its global?
Yanyan Xu: Not just my problem?
Kirk: yes it's global
Yanyan Xu: Ok
Yanyan Xu: How soon do you think this will be fixed?
Kirk: should be within the hour

Faeton

08-16-2006, 12:15 PM

Yup, same here (site expcinema.com at 70.103.140.129).
It's been having problems since 6 hours ago or so and returning to normal from time to time. Seems to be working ok now. DDoS again? :(

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 12:26 PM

NOpe read above.

ISP issue.

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 12:42 PM

Yup went down again momentarily.

DawnsWebDesign

08-16-2006, 12:55 PM

Oh this is rare, stick with BlueHost, they're still the best people out there.

It's not all that rare...this has happened to me a few times now. I currently can't get into my site/forum/etc...& I also can't check my email. With my previous hosting co...this never happened...not even once I don't think. They also didn't block/delete things without telling you jack. So as to Bluehost's being the best/not...it's a matter of opinion. ;)

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 12:59 PM

Down and up it goes lol.

Hopefully this gets fixed asap.

My site got listed on one big news site so its getting lots of lost members/hits.

PhreakPhy

08-16-2006, 01:09 PM

I think this is going to be the straw that broke the camels back for me.

Hercules

08-16-2006, 01:19 PM

Same problem here for like 8 hours now.
Not only my site (box 42) but even this forum goes down during those periods.

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 01:20 PM

They said it would be fixed within the hour. Been a LONG time now.

aurora

08-16-2006, 01:29 PM

I really like the usability of the bluehost controls and the customer service is fantastic. The main reason I left my previous host is that I could never get responses to questions or problems. But on the other hand... my visitors complain about not being able to connect since I've moved.

I subscribe to a free service called unialert and it sends emails when the site is down... checks every 5 minutes. It is a constant guest at my forum. Today both http and pop had problems. It also sends an email when the issue is resolved. No, this is not an ad for unialert!

Today I had several time outs connecting with THIS forum. I was checking on and off for news of what the problem was.

I'm sticking with Bluehost. I believe they have a lot of potential and the fact that their customer service is top notch lets me overlook the connectivity issues somewhat. I do believe that there should be a hosting report page other then the one in the control panel that posts what is going on with the service and it should be housed offsite. This would free up their employees to address the issues instead of having to field numerous questions regarding server wide problems. One person could update that page as opposed to several dealing with customer queries.

IMHO Bluehost is growing too fast. Perhaps they need to stop offering more and more features to entice new customers. How much more space do we need??? I feel like my site is huge and it doesn't put a dent in my allowances.
If the product is good and reliable, their customers will do the selling for them.

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 01:34 PM

Yea bluehost is great for support i agree but we need more reliability server wise.

StrongBad

08-16-2006, 01:46 PM

I agree that offering too many features is a bad idea. Not only does it give people a feeling of "there must be a catch!", but I expect also that if all customers were to use all their space and bandwidth, Bluehost would cripple. Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't know much about how the whole Datacentre works, or how strong an OC-48 backbone connection is).

However, I understand that allowing more bandwidth than your service can offer is -- to an extent -- OK, because site traffic is bound to fluctuate at various times of the year, when advertising promotes it, and also just due to the chaotic flux of the universe.

Well, those are my rambling thoughts. I hope it makes as much sense outside my head as it does inside. :)

REXTEX

08-16-2006, 02:15 PM

Every few minutes.

Bluehost.com and my site iPhotoshop.org keeps timing out with

I cant acces CPANEL or anything. I can access any other sites except these.

Whats the problem?
:mad:
This is just happening to much this week! Are the servers overloaded or what?
I'm having trouble just logging in today.
HOW MUCH MONEY IS THIS COSTING ME?

tspike

08-16-2006, 02:22 PM

I need access to my site. Even the forums are down most of the time.

grrr.

I've been with Bluehost for about a month, and there have already been 2-3 significant downtime periods... I'm starting to sense a pattern here...

Sageth

08-16-2006, 02:28 PM

Well, I'm glad it's not just me that's seeing it. I thought it was MY ISP at first, but once I realized that I was going to all BH sites, it started making sense. The post stating that it was an ISP issue was posted 2 hours ago. Are others still experiencing problems?

christian

08-16-2006, 02:32 PM

I have been having the problem all day. and still doing it...

Anyone from BH can post a status update ?:mad:

burner

08-16-2006, 02:36 PM

Was alble to get live chat & they said they are getting more bandwidth. Doesn't really address what the problem is. Is BH having a DDOS issue, power & etc. Seems to be on all boxes too so it's not isolated problem. Would be nice to be communicated to..............

Smoothice

08-16-2006, 02:46 PM

Just got off the phone with support and they are telling me that it could still be hours. They said that the ISP is having harware problems and thier techs are helping the ISP to get back up and running as soon as possible. Absolutaly no eta to get this one fixed other than er hope a few hours.

Smoothice

tspike

08-16-2006, 03:31 PM

Thanks for the info

John

08-16-2006, 03:42 PM

aurora

08-16-2006, 03:49 PM

Smoothice

08-16-2006, 03:56 PM

If I have a connection issue, I come to this forum to see if anyone else is having a problem BEFORE I BOTHER the support staff.
If I see there is a problem on other sites, I don't contact support with probably the 50th call or ticket of their hour.

As noted before: There needs to be a reporting tool in plain site and accessible if our control panels are not so we don't need to let each other know when the service is down. If a reporting system was in place, there probably wouldn't be "my site is down again" posts.

And the thing of it is, it really probably isn't that hard to setup. Alot less time to do that then to keep deleting all these posts and ramblings. Just set it up as a blog and put the annoucements there. Leave us the abillity to leave comments for one another and to complain in the comments section of the blog post and then let these forums be used for what they were originally intended for.

You can't tell me the guy who answered the phone when I called, didn't already have 300 of the same questions asked just before that. Why not instead of wasting that guys time, the 1-800 charges and our waiting time and aggrivation(which by far has to be the biggest expense if we get fed up and leave) when a simply written one paragraph post of what the problem is and it could save hundreds of phone calls and tons of money for bluehost over time.

Just my two cents as I sit here and slowly wait for files to upload to my new site.

Smoothice

aurora

08-16-2006, 04:08 PM

Smoothice,
I wasn't criticising you for calling support,
just responding to the post that says not to post on this board and to contact them. I don't need to contact them - I see that someone else has.
Isn't that what forums are for? to communicate?
As you pointed out, a report system would save them money in the long run.

Mauldor

08-16-2006, 04:16 PM

Hey guys, how about we use this forum for what is supposed to used for:

Announcements
General Questions
Fantastico, Advanced Scripting, and Coding help!
Developers And Designers
Off Topic

I've been with Bluehost for over two years now, they have been upgrading as of lately, and have had some router issues, and power outages. But!

Coming on this forum and saying over and over the same thing isn't really helping anything at all. Let's try to make this forum a community, where we can help eah other out with design, and coding issues, and not a place to just post complaints.

Do one of the following things first, calling support will get you a human to talk to.

Open a support ticket (http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/help)

or

Call Support
(888) 401-HOST
(888) 401-4678

;)

Right lets see - Im in the UK so I aint gonna be calling the USA anytime soon. What about a Ticket? Well I got sick of the "Its fine now, maybe its your ISP" and lastly the Live chat system.

First person said Hello and that was it for like 45 Mins.
Second person explained he was not a robot (I did wonder if there was some fancy AI Script involved) and nothing for another 30 mins.
Repeat above 10 more time until finally I got chatting and answered by a person (Huray). As people have said - A Simple explaination of what is going wrong on the forum and then updated would have solved the problem.

So only ONE ISP line coming in? Is it not common practice to have dual connections from different providors? I mean at work if the connection went down from one host another kicks in quickly....oh well

Yanyan

08-16-2006, 06:12 PM

Threads like these arnt meant to criticize. These threads are meant to get information aacross. Each one of us posts what we learn from calling and live support saving Bluehost time as well as our time.

If we can figure out what is happening is global and what the problem is it helps put our minds at somewhat ease knowing the problem isnt just our own.

areidmtm

08-16-2006, 09:26 PM

AND as you can tell, I have chosen to keep this thread...:D ;)

dkinzer

08-16-2006, 09:37 PM

As a solution to the problem of each person wondering if they're the only one having problems, I would propose adding a section to the forum entitled "Outages and Problems" or something similar. As soon as BlueHost becomes aware of a problem that they don't immediately solve a post could be made saying that box154 is having connectivity problems, mySQL problems or whatever. Then, if I'm on that box and having that same problem, I at least know that BlueHost is aware of it and ostensibly working to solve it and I may elect not to sit on hold (suffering the unbearably loud background music) waiting to talk to someone in support.

As much detail as possible in such notices would be greatly appreciated, especially including an ETA, updated as necessary as the problem and its solution become better understood.

The host that I recently left has such a forum section. See http://forum.powweb.com.

Of course, having such posts is a two-edged sword. It documents the nature and frequency of problems that arise but it also affords the opportunity to demonstrate how serious BlueHost takes such outages and how diligently they work to solve them. Each of us knows that all hosts have problems - an unavoidable fact of life. What differentiates the good hosting companies from the bad is how such problems are dealt with.

redsox9

08-17-2006, 05:26 AM

I must be one lucky puppy because I have not been experiencing what others have in the past week or so, i.e., server timeouts, downtime, etc..

I will add that I've been with BlueHost now for 18 months and I've been super-happy with the service. A friend recommended them to me and I've pointed a few other people in this direction, too.

Someone else pointed out that BlueHost has been upgrading a lot lately and perhaps that is the reason for the problems that some, albeit a few, boxes have experienced. It's too bad that it is giving some of the newbies a bad impression but I would guess that a poll of the long-time account holders would say otherwise.

Chip Diller: Remain calm... all is well! :D

Early Out

08-17-2006, 05:35 AM

I must be one lucky puppy because I have not been experiencing what others have in the past week or so, i.e., server timeouts, downtime, etc..
The problems folks were seeing yesterday, reportedly caused by bandwidth problems with BH's ISP, were the kind of intermittent, flaky things that you could easily miss if you weren't actively using stuff, or having your email client trying to get your POP mail. You'd get nothing at all - no bluehost.com, no cPanel, no forums, no email, zip, zilch, nada - for a minute or two, but then everything would be back to normal, and as fast and responsive as usual.

You didn't notice because you didn't happen to be looking at the right moment! :)

dvessel

08-17-2006, 06:40 AM

Oh, is that what it was? Any word it being resolved?

redsox9

08-17-2006, 07:45 AM

The problems folks were seeing yesterday, reportedly caused by bandwidth problems with BH's ISP, were the kind of intermittent, flaky things that you could easily miss if you weren't actively using stuff, or having your email client trying to get your POP mail. You'd get nothing at all - no bluehost.com, no cPanel, no forums, no email, zip, zilch, nada - for a minute or two, but then everything would be back to normal, and as fast and responsive as usual.

You didn't notice because you didn't happen to be looking at the right moment! :)

Yeah, I'm not saying that **** doesn't happen and, as I've stated before, my livelihood does not depend on the status of my site every minute of every day. I'm just saying that long-term, I have found BH to be extremely reliable.

It might not be a bad idea, as dkinzer noted, to create an "Outages and Problems" segment to the forum but, if these problems as you've described are intermittent, the post is going to be irrelevant before it gets queued. :)

Paint me oblivious. :rolleyes:

StrongBad

08-17-2006, 09:00 AM

Excuse my 'n00b'ness, but how do I find out which box I'm on?

Early Out

08-17-2006, 09:04 AM

Excuse my 'n00b'ness, but how do I find out which box I'm on?Easy, but not obvious! Call up a command window (Start, Run, cmd, Enter) and ping your domain (ping www.mydomain.com). DNS will translate your domain name into an IP address, like 71.123.45.34. The last octet of that number is your box number (in this imaginary example, box 34).

aurora

08-17-2006, 09:54 AM

Maybe we should post our suggestions for service outage reporting in the "bluehost best that it can be" section. I see there are some references already. Perhaps if we request it enough, it will happen.

I want to say I am VERY HAPPY with Bluehost.
And I am VERY HAPPY that these forums are here.

I tweak and fiddle with my site all the time.
I am constantly updating with new security releases of the scripts I use.
One goof up on my part and the site can be trashed.
I was updating security, tweaking the php.ini and the .htaccess during the hiccoughs yesterday and I didn't know if it was on my end or not.

I would love to be able to pull up a page or have a forum category that I can visit for the latest news of server status.

Perhaps there is hesitation because they don't want to be advertising their downtime openly. There is the possibility that one thing or another isn't working correctly at any point in time. We all understand downtime and it is probably fairly common considering the scope of the network they have built. We just want to know if it is us or a server issue.

Yanyan

08-17-2006, 10:00 AM

I am also very satisfied with bluehost.

In the future i just hope that they will let you "combine accounts"

SVFan

08-17-2006, 01:05 PM

This is the longest outtage I've had on box133. It has been going on for about 10 minutes now. I sent a ticket, but any response is useless since my email is down too.

Smoothice

08-17-2006, 01:13 PM

Once again it seems that I am down. I am getting frustrated. I have teken time off of work to finish a website and I can't even work and test it properly because My server is constantly going up and down. arggggg

Guess I will just twiddle my thumbs and wait for it to come back up, then work for 10minutes then twiddle again as it goes down. hmmm, if I needed this equiment so bad to stop these problems I would be flying to cisco and knocking on thier doors and flying back with it in my hands. No more fussing around with 4 day over night service!

Smoothice

dvessel

08-17-2006, 01:20 PM

Why don't you have a local system to test your site?

Smoothice

08-17-2006, 02:23 PM

For starters I know absolutly nothing about linux, second I do not have the funds to buy a spare system for testing, third, that is why I have hosting.

Upload and test. Then there are no quirks of oh the database is acting weird or hmm mail isn't sending or many other various things. Plus I need access to the domain name to make sure some of the stuff I am testing is working properly.

Smoothice