The Entry Archive
First Impressions Matter: On Media Temple
It was nearly two weeks ago that I made the decision to purchase a hosting package from Media Temple for my new business, (the) Big Square Dot. As an up and coming web coder-slash-designer, it was extremely important to me that my business be hosted with a company that has a great reputation with web designers. Indeed, reason number 8 on Media Temple’s “Why? Ten Resons” page states that:
The world’s hottest, most talented designers have trusted (mt) for years to serve their digital creations. Being the most critical demographic on the Internet, we believe this has strong merit.
My train of thought when determining which hosting company to go with was that if Media Temple can be trusted by so many great web designers and design companies, then my modest, one man show would have no problems. Boy was I wrong.
Last Friday my website was featured on CSS Mania and remained on the front page for the better part of the weekend. “Great!” I thought, “The site’s been up for only a week and already my submissions to CSS galleries are paying off!”
There was one little problem, though. My website kept going down intermittently throughout the day, which means that the legitimacy of my newly founded business was suffering. I was losing potential designer-friends, clients, and exposure because of Media Temple’s (gs) Grid-Server problems.
Come to think of it, earlier that week, just minutes after I had emailed friends and potential clients and released a note on another website I run, my website went down for thirty minutes. I was livid, but I decided to give Media Temple the benefit of the doubt.
But today, just two weeks after opening an account with Media Temple, my patience is wearing thin.
I have been dealing with website outages all day today. For a person who just purchased a hosting package that includes “hundreds of servers for the price of one”, I’m pretty curious as to why my website has been operating like it’s on one half of one server for the last several days.
Now, I do not mean to vilify Media Temple. The administrative freedom I have with the (gs) package, as well as the sleek GUI of my webmail and account center are impressive, to say the least.
But the parts of my hosting package which matter the most — reliability, uptime, customer service, and prompt replies to my trouble tickets — are lacking, to say the least.
Last week, I was having trouble externally connecting to my WordPress database to do routine maintenance on it. I submitted a trouble ticket that took over 12 hours to get answered, and this was after I had to make a phone call to bring it to Media Temple’s attention that I had submitted my yet answered trouble ticket. I am still having problems externally connecting to my database — and yes, my settings are correct.
Big Square Dot is a brand new company and all I need is a reliable hosting solution that stays up for the time that I have paid for. I could have easily gone with a less reputable hosting company, but I trusted Media Temple because so many other web designers and technology websites are using them.
My life is my work right now. I am a recent college graduate who is attempting to sprint his way into the web development world, and this cannot happen if I have a host that injures my credibility as a web designer, programmer, and frequent blogger.
Again, I do not mean to vilify Media Temple. I simply wish to explain the frequent outages of this new website to you all and let you know that I will do my best to keep things running smoothly around here. I am doing my part; I just wish Media Temple would do theirs right now.
Post Date: March 13, 2007
9 Responses to “First Impressions Matter: On Media Temple”
Dean:
March 13th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Sorry to hear that Philip. I heard great things about MT as well. Perhaps, try A Small Orange Hosting. Lots and lots of web designers rave about those guys too. Oh wait, I guess that means you shouldn’t go with them!
I’m on ASO and never had an issue. On the forum, Webhosting Talk, people are always vilifying hosting companies but ASO is rarely one of them.
Philip Arthur Moore:
March 14th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Thanks for that suggestion, Dean. You mentioned that you use A Small Orange for hosting. Show me your website already! :-)
Dan:
March 16th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Hmm…I’ve spotted quite a few negative reviews of MT lately. It’s a shame, I was pretty much convinced they’d be the next step up from A Small Orange, but I’m starting to think I was wrong.
Support has always been great from A Small Orange, but my site can sometimes be a little slow, and there’s occasional downtime on my server. I can’t argue for $5 a month though. I’d planned to scale up to something like MT for my next project, but maybe that’s not a good idea.
Eric:
April 5th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Hi Philip
i was searching around as i have been trying to set up some wordpress blogs, and then move some existing clients over to media temple (per recommendation of one of those other great designers…who is now red in the face) and i came across your post. TWO months, and lots of talk about upgrades fixing everything, and the sites have been still slow and intermittently unable to reach the database. Here is screen shot from tonite actually.
http://www.bitclone.com/client s/temple.html
i had to screen shot it as this was their last response to me-
Talk about frustrating, we have different definition of “specification” obviously. did you find another host? I really want the MT system to work as i love the options and the interface…but no way will i send traffic to these sites currently. OK i guess i’m done complaining hahaha. Lemme know if anyone has good host suggestions…I use Laughing Squid for a few things but they are a bit steep pricewise, i guess you get what you pay for.
Oh yeah nice blog by the way.
Eric
Spencer Lavery:
September 5th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I had an almost identical experience with MT earlier in the year. I tried both the Grid Server and the Dedicated Virtual servers, both had the same problems. After I few days I went back to my old, two-man-band hosting company grateful that - although their control panel isn’t half as pretty - my sites have stayed up almost completely without fail for 3 years. I experienced more down time with MT in one day than I have in 3 years with this cheap, tiny company I’m currently using.
Simon:
September 5th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Excellent post .. thank you :) Slight problem though .. the code within the post title href:
“title=”">
Doesn’t link through to the individual post page, do you know how this can be linked through to the page?
Philip Arthur Moore:
September 5th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Hm…I’m not sure I know what you mean Simon.
Philip Arthur Moore:
September 5th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I just changed the post slug. Maybe that’ll fix it.
frisk design » Blog Archive » Wordpress, slow, Mediatemple:
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