by As I finish staring into my navel — my gaze turns outward — and I am, once again, reflected back in your eyes while my head explodes, in super-slow motion, all over our brand new Pair Networks QuickServe Dedicated Server!
My exploding head is a good thing, really, because the blood and bits are evidence of refusing to settle for a solution that doesn’t quite fit right. We now have a great fit with Pair Networks, but the downside is my hats no longer fit my head.
You may remember — fondly or not — that we spent the last 10 days or so roaming The Internets and wondering where to host this Urban Semiotic blog after leaving WordPress.com for Movable Type 4.1.
We first landed on Pair Networks Shared Hosting — we loved Pair, but we didn’t get the performance for the price we were seeking.
Next, we jumped over to Media Temple for a moment until we realized — in addition to some non-technical angst at Media Temple — there was a FastCGI configuration problem with MTOS 4.1 that could not be reasonably solved.
We then spun around and finally — and exquisitely — returned to our true home here on a Pair Networks dedicated server.
I don’t have a sweetheart deal with Pair. The Pair logo does not appear anywhere on this blog in exchange for free or discounted hosting. There are no reseller links — or outside advertising of any sort — on any of my sites.
Pair didn’t pay me to write this review. I like to support what I enjoy and Pair Networks is at the top of my Love List today and, as a Jersey Boy, I really love it that Pair are — right there! — located in Pittsburgh! East Coast all the way, baby!
As you can see below, having your very own Pair QuickServe setup is not a cheap want and I pay my own way for my own hosting.
And those are the cheap Pair QuickServe plans!
If you really want to slurp up some dedicated server goodness at Pair Networks, read on:
Pair do not play around with their systems or your money.
The great thing about a Pair dedicated server is that you totally control what you want on your entire box. You don’t share hardware with anyone and you can taste and smell the difference in performance from the first time a site loads.
Three of my blogs now run on Pair using MTOS4.1:
UrbanSemiotic.com
RelationShaping.com
WordPunk.com
I also moved all 10 of my other websites over to my Pair setup from Media Temple:
Boles.com
BolesUniversity.com
BolesBooks.com
HardcoreASL.com
DavidBoles.com
ScriptProfessor.com
UnitedStage.com
GoInside.com
ScientificAesthetic.com
DramaticMedicine.com
Click to load any of those websites and you’ll see how fast the images and pages snap into place — and now you know the beauty and the power of having a dedicated Pair server.
Another great thing about having a Pair QuickServe dedicated server is you only rent the machine. You can move up to a better server later if you want to pay a move fee. I like that freedom of not being stuck on an old server and Pair won’t argue with you if a better CPU becomes available later — and there’s always something better, faster and prettier just beyond the horizon.
Also, Pair manages the backend for you. Pair does not allow root access and they provide the security and firewall for you. That means I don’t have to stay awake at night wondering about the status or the safety of my server or websites. If there’s a problem, I know Pair will spontaneously repair it for me.
If you registered as a new user or if you placed a comment that is now missing, please repeat the process so we can find you and welcome you.
Please also let me know, via a comment here, how the speed and interaction of this blog feels to you. We’re once again back to — “login once, comment everywhere” — so you can now Sign In and Comment on any article on WordPunk.com or RelationShaping.com or UrbanSemiotic.com. You might have to login for each domain, but all your information remains the same for all domains.
In the coming days and weeks we will be doing more server fine-tuning. We haven’t yet invoked FastCGI and there are some other additions we hope to try out to see just how fast we can make MTOS4.1 fly on our Pair dedicated server.
Thanks for sticking with us through our Internets travels and travails!
We found a home with Pair Networks. We’re already settled. We’re staying.
We’re putting our heads together again and we’ll be creating some interested reading for you — and we are, as ever, grateful for the ongoing company of your eyes, spirit and mind.
Ok David – I am in finally!
I couldn’t sign in yesterday for some reason – it kept on bouncing back.
Will poke around and let you know…
Thank you for the direct comment here, Katha! I appreciate your help!
UPDATE:
As our DNS continues to propagate across the internet, Movable Type Open Source 4.1 in the basic, standard, install we have here on Pair so far is running tasks and interactions about 3-4 seconds faster.
Republishing the entire Urb site is four times quicker than anywhere else we’ve been so far.
Having the entire computing power of a Core 2 Duo CPU comes in mighty handy when you need raw horsepower!
We’ll be doing some cache and FastCGI testing soon and we’ll report back those findings here, too.
Feel fast to me. Can see the images are quick. Done moving?
congrats on the successful move. I visited all your sites and all feel faster to me. Thank you for the email to get me here. I was getting some odd page for a few days. Wondered where everybody went.
David–So far so good! I still have to refresh the page via F5. I know I’ve probably missed some instruction along the way to fix that.
But it’s instantaneous once I do that.
I’m glad you’re pleased with all this.
Because if you’re not happy, then how can we be?
You’re persnickety for sure, but in the end you’ve gotten what you want.
So I’ll borrow one of your expressions, YAY TO YOU!
Thanks for the feedback, Karvain! Good to have you finally back here with us. Yes, images are working pretty well. We’re done moving. Over. Finished!
Thanks for the report and the support, Anne! I’m so happy you checked the other sites, too. That means a lot to me. Glad you made it! Clearing your cookies and browser cache were the keys to “seeing us” again!
The page refresh issue may be with us for a bit, Donna. It’s sort of the nature of the MT4.1 publishing platform right now to give the non-commenters the most speed possible as they zoom in to read us. The next version — MT4.15 — should fix that soon and it is being beta tested right now.
I do like things to be right — I understand perfection is impossible — but getting something to work more right and less wrong is always my main goal, even if it costs more and takes a bit longer to achieve.
I’m happy right now — tomorrow might be a different story, SMILE! — but we’re staying here on Pair and we aren’t changing servers or web hosts again for a very long time.
YAY US!
it is fast and i dont wait so long for pictures to see them
Hi arin! Thanks for the feedback. The images are loading superfast for me now, too.
Hi David,
Love the “Live Traffic Feed” and “recent visitors” by Feedjit…it’s fun watching!
It is a pretty wild ride to see how people come and leave the blog, Katha. It changes every second. It’s mesmerizing!
How fast are the comments?
Dale Berra —
I’m not sue what you mean about fast comments. Can you give me a little more context?