All the latest news and announcements, straight from the WooThemes HQ!
Rocking a New Server
05. Oct, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in WooThemes News
We’re extremely excited to announce that since last Friday, WooThemes has been rocking out on a brand-new server sponsored by the awesome RSAWeb. It’s been a while coming, but things finally fell into place last week, which allowed us to switch to a new, improved server.
Part of the excitement however comes with a sense of humility, as we need to apologize for the downtime we have suffered in August & September (and even with this downtime, we managed to record two record months in terms of traffic; so thanks has got to go out to all of you for your patience!). The downtime has definitely been part of the reason for us switching to a new server and we’re hoping that you will love the speed & stability of the new server.
So we’d really like to thank Fused Network for bringing us here, as they’ve been a vital cog in our journey up until this point. There is no doubt they are a top-notch hosting provider and they remain highly recommended to our users. Part of our problem was the fact that we were in completely different time zones and although support was fast and efficient there was still times when we needed support at 3am state side.
As for RSAWeb… they are a South African based hosting company, with servers both locally and in the US. The huge advantage is that we know these guys personally and can pick up the phone to speak to them whenever we want. We’ve been impressed by their ideas in terms of optimizing our server and whilst there are definitely still a few kinks to be worked out, we’re sure that within a week or so, we’ll be rocking a super-optimized server. We also plan on working with RSAWeb on some new web hosting packages that will integrate seamlessly with your WooThemes account. Whilst there is currently no timeline on this, we hope to make this available early 2010.
So again – thanks for all the patience and support during the last couple of months. We do however hope that downtime is something of the past now and that your experience on WooThemes going forward will include super-fast browsing! 
12 Responses to “Rocking a New Server”
5 October 2009 at 9:18 am #
WROOOOOOOM!!!!
5 October 2009 at 10:09 am #
You should have rather chosen instead.
Media Temple have the best, fastest and most secure servers.
But if this can provides same features as Media Temple provides then it not a big deal!.
Anyways Good Luck with your new servers.
5 October 2009 at 1:43 pm #
Hehe, it’s funny how MT are always the obvious choice. But I can remember at the beginning of this year, when MT was really struggling with their VIP accounts and a lot of people in the design & development industry suffered severe downtime.
So hosting ultimately remains a massive grey area and you’ll probably suffer downtime wherever you go. The biggest consideration in deciding who to go with though, is passionate & effective support imo.
5 October 2009 at 3:11 pm #
Definitely agree with that. As far as support and passion go you cant beat hosting companies like slicehost, and rackspace.
As far as judgment of host quality the age old adage “You get what you pay for” is your best friend. The pricing structure of a company is the biggest indicator of personality, philosophy, and organizational structure.
I’ve always had the impression of mediatemple as taking a “make it easier for the user to do it himself” approach . You’ll often find the first reaction of support at mediatemplate is to direct you to the relevant wiki article.
This approach works well in the huge majority of instances but its important to realize that the hands on direct help and support structure is almost non-existent. You’ve to go through allot of bureaucracy and waiting before you’ll find someone to talk to and help walk you through something.
Slicehost takes a less wiki heavy approach and instead fosters a community of individuals willing and ready to help you. The forums at slicehost are a excellent resource for direct help from other slicehost users. Rather than have bunch of people to link you to a relevant wiki post they have a dedicated support staff who will either help you directly or help you find someone who can.
All hosts cut costs of course, but its how they cut costs that is most revealing.
5 October 2009 at 3:44 pm #
Ditto.
5 October 2009 at 10:40 am #
What other hosting servers do you think are great too?
5 October 2009 at 1:40 pm #
I think that there’s quite a few that would’ve been great, but we decided to go with RSAWeb partly because of their passion to extend the value we could offer you and partly because of the fact that there support function are based locally.
5 October 2009 at 10:57 am #
Much better!
5 October 2009 at 3:11 pm #
IMO support is top priority when choosing a host. After I made the switch from shared to my own box, I wished I had done it many months sooner. I can definitely tell a difference in load up times.
6 October 2009 at 3:15 am #
The fastest will only be limited by the pipes they peer with.
If you are truly looking for speed across the globe, then having your systems/site closer to the end-point (customer) will be the trick.
CDN is the answer – Akamai or Limelight. And since Wordpress is the chosen technology, then the chose can be as easy as a plugin for Wprdpress with Limelight. The hosting platform you should consider then is Rackspace. And they are a passionate bunch.
6 October 2009 at 3:45 am #
As we grow, we’ll definitely consider going for a CDN of sorts. I don’t however think that we’re *quite* there yet to justify a CDN and the costs involved with that.
9 October 2009 at 5:00 am #
You’d be surprised on how cheap this is getting these days.