A while ago, I tried to access a website I like to read, home of the odd and unusual, offbeat news, with plenty of gorgeous pictures to support the content, and flawless copywriting. To my surprise, Google had blocked the site in my browser, because it contained malware. This happened because of a flaw in MediaTemple’s security patches for sites built on WordPress, that allowed hackers to insert a malicious script. It had to be there, unobserved, for quite a while, if Google decided to block the site.

To my knowledge, many MT customers who host there blogs, have to pay enormous sums, sometimes ridiculously high, for hosting, bandwidth, etc. A popular site like Life in the Fast Lane has seen, no doubt, bank-breaking bills. The price would be well worth it, if the site owner had peace of mind. But if it happened once, who says that it will never happen again.

MT assumes no responsibility whatsoever for WordPress-based sites hosted on their servers. This, in my opinion, doesn’t justify the high prices paid by their customers. Some bloggers are not IT experts – a hosting company has to provide a level of support that gives these website owners security and confidence.

Luxembourg-based Stidia is such a company.  Stidia’s IT engineers actively monitor logs, server access, website uptime, and fluctuations. In addition, they also simulate full scale attacks on Stidia servers and client websites, and apply the fixes without disturbing their customers. The monitoring is on-going, the highlight of this company’s offering, human powered service versus automated security patches.

I am not aware of their prices – the services are available, apparently, only for Stidia’s corporate customers. An amateur blogger cannot always afford the price of safe hosting like this. But for Life in the Fastlane, this could be a better choice than MT – and who knows, even cheaper? Although server-location could be an issue: Life in the Fastlane would become a Canadian website hosted on a Luxembourg server. Server location would influence search engine positioning for the site, probably not in its owner’s best interest. On the other hand, it’s always better to be a few positions lower in the search results, than not appearing at all because of a Google ban.

So if your website is in need of desperate attention, Stidia’s engineers might be the answers to your problems. Or some other company that offers actively managed hosting. If you can think of any, list it in the comments, and don’t forget to add server location for us.

Disclosure – Stidia is a Pamil Visions PR customer

Yes, after a quite bumpy two weeks ride, Words of a Broken Mirror is once again up and running! It took two weeks to get a new hosting account, backup my old files and get the answered approved, two days for my to partly import stuff on my new account and majorly screw everything up and about 2 hours for Alex to get everything sorted out and clean up my mess .

While my blog was down and I couldn’t share anything with you through posts and comments, I realized that this blog is such an important part of my life that I really wouldn’t want to live without it. I could, but why would I ever? So many friends, so many thoughts, so many moments, why waste something like that?

Again, I apologize for the down time and for all the hassle you might have encountered when trying to access my blog. Hope you quickly forgive me and get back to regular visits.

P.S. From what Twhirl shows up, Joanna Young was the first to comment after the move! Thanks so much for that!

I’d first like to apologize to anyone who’s been trying to access my blog and got errors instead of my posts. I know it’s really frustrating, so I’ve decided to do something about it! I initially planned to move at the end of the month, but as my site is temporarily down a few times a day, I decided my current webhosting provider is no longer a wise choice. I’ll be moving to GoDaddy.

I’ll officially start working on this tonight, but the effects might last for a couple of days. I’m sorry for all the trouble you’ll experience in the meantime. Please stay tuned as I’m sure the situation will be significantly improved after the transfer!

As you all know, I’ve been promising and promising my blog will finally be transfered from GoDaddy to THC. I finally managed to do so, thus the lack of GoDaddy ads. The transfer took five days, and for backup reasons, I chose not to blog that much. It was mostly for nothing, as the transfer did not go that smoothly.

Actually it went bad, especially after the mess WordPress did with its own exported file with posts and comments. When I uploaded it, I had no categories, no headlines and it was all a mess. Therefore, if you’ve linked to some of my posts, the links might no longer work. Some of the headlines are definitely changed, as I couldn’t remember them all. The photos are also pretty much gone

Still, I have a big thank-yous to say every day for a while now to Eric from THC and to Mig. They both helped me a lot in the process. The look of WOBM will of course be different soon enough, as this is just and intermediary solutions.

I do apologize for my absence and hope you guys will be back to read the posts and comment, after this long update time-out and after having the whole blog down for about 2 days. I am happy I transfered it, as it turns out everything will be better!