Heck when I first got into playing with php, I couldn't get my php script to connect to the database. Worked locally just not on Vida. Contacted support asking if there was an issue with the databases and they rewrote the php for me within the hour
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We always tried to do that, we employed far better PHP coders than me and usually didn't mind if someone spend 20min on one ticket for example. Obviously not all of that scales and when there are 20 people waiting in your queue it's harder to go the extra mile I suppose. Well, I know, it exhausted me!
Recently I've had some DNS issues and my support ticket is still unanswered 48 hours later.
I joke with friends and ex-colleagues that my Facebook messenger is also known as DomAPI. These days however I think they've replaced most of the scripts I wrote.
But what I think I did bring to the company is the way of thinking that a formal comp sci education brings, especially to the hosting/cloud world which is primarily rehashing old concepts first used in the 60s/70s/80s.
A very different company these days
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Just much bigger, for all the good and bad that brings I suppose. Bear in mind that for every bad ticket there will be 100 good ones. The operation is huge these days. I guess most of my old colleagues don't read OcUK but many are enthusiasts who do.
It doesn't matter if you're swimming in cash or not if you felt it was the right time to sell up then you shouldn't second guess yourself. You should take this thread in a positive way that everyone appreciated how you ran things. I work for myself, and there are times on longer contracts where I make good friends and I am tempted to close up take up the offer of permanent employment but the reality is I cannot let emotion dictate business decisions.
Thanks. Appreciated.
If it helps just remember you guys weren't perfect and I still have the correspondence to prove it!
I remember this always in everything I do. And I can remember most problems I've ever dealt with, and the names, server names and special items of most old/key clients. I have a geeky memory.
I'm moving my business presence to AWS, partly because of the issues with TSOHost, wanting to showcase my talents with AWS and to split my personal and business hosting into separate accounts.
AWS is great. So is GKE. Not feasible for the average small WordPress site run by an SME though.
I would be happy to hear about any alternative suggestions you have for my personal sites when you finally get bored of "swimming in your cash".
I spent my teenage years swimming competitively at a national standard. I'm fedup of swimming
I use Digital Ocean myself for small things. And Namecheap and Catalyst2 for some other stuff. I know senior people / founders at NC and C2 and and count them as friends
Yea it wasn't even about the service itself, which was usually good, but rather the support you got. Always remember a personal and friendly service from all of you guys, had a few issues over the years, few silly issues too, but always resolved with that personal touch you just don't get with many companies.
Thanks. It's because we all had literally nothing to fall back on so it was everything to us. None of us inherited a million quid to build our DC or even a hundred quid a month for our first servers. Big companies forget this perhaps.
Whats your name Beansprout? (which one are you! lol)
I'm Dom. Seb was (is) my old school friend. Adam and Darren founded Tso (more or less) and we met via OcUK.
Why is Krystal any good? I checked their site out and there was a few glaring issues of trust, firstly no physical office and secondly when searching for a map it pulled up a Krystal brand design agency that had done work for them who’s site is riddled with malware, I’d assume the people who worked on their brand design are also hosted with Krystal which is a terrible example of a potential hosting service.
That's not entirely reassuring but I know a Krystal sysadmin and some other staff there. They seem an honest operation and not yet growing too large. I've not used them personally.
But, bear in mind that malware is rarely due to hosting and more often simply an outdated WordPress plugin, or a new exploit from a badly-written plugin. mod_security and Cloudflare etc can help a lot but aren't perfect. That said they really should fix it so let them know!
The internet is what we all make it, and those of us on forums are years ahead of the general public.
[/useless philosophy]
If anyone has big issues with Tso/Paragon/etc my trust email should be up to date and I can advise but honestly these days I know few senior people, only some good sysadmins. And if you have to ask me then, tbh, there is probably a more techy-focussed company for you. Maybe I'm not allowed to say that and some lawyers are going to chase me down so shh
Maybe I should do an OcUK ex-Pig client reunion hosted at my house. I've got **** all else to do these days and it was OcUK members who started the whole thing!
