by When you life your life on the web, the most important part of that devil’s bargain is finding the precisely right web hosting service that can meet your needs while sustaining and exceeding the robustness you hope bring to lighting up dark niches of the world. For the past 18 months — our longest stint with any web hosting provider — we have been with Pair Networks on their entry level QuickServe QS-1 dedicated server and we are happy to announce we will be extending our contract with them for another year after upgrading our server to the new standard you see below.
Pair Networks have been a fine and reliable hosting solution. We are on our own Pair QS-1 dedicated server, we pay our own way and we spend our own money where we wish and as we want.
We are happy to finally have a hosting home after restlessly bouncing away from Earthlink, SimpleNet, DeltaNet, Lunarpages, Media Temple, Network Solutions (after only three days) and Mosso (now Rackspace Cloud) along the past decade and a half.
Over the weekend, we upgraded our QS-1 server because, for the first time in 18 months, Pair offered substantial increases in CPU speed, hard drive size and server memory that was worth the $150.00USD upgrade fee. We also added ShadowDrive support to our server as a twice-a-day automatic backup system.
We appreciate the fact that Pair, unlike other hosting providers, don’t change their server offerings every month to fit the bribing whim of the moment. We want a careful and methodical approach to offering the best server configuration at an appropriate price — and Pair delivers for us.
Pair, in their service, technical support and business mandate, are always fair minded, quick to help and cogent in their seamless responsiveness. We cannot recommend them highly enough for any and all web hosting needs from a shared server to a dedicated one.
Here’s our Resource Usage report from our old QS-1 server:
Here is our Resource Usage report with the upgraded QS-1 dedicated server.
The most incredible data we can provide in quantifying the rationale for upgrading our server can be found in that slow and monstrous publishing behemoth called: Movable Type.
The Boles Blogs Network runs nine of eleven blogs on Movable Type and that publishing platform is not for the poor pocketed or the faint hearted. Movable Type is a powerful way to present a blog, but it demands a fast server and tons of resources to get the mammoth moving.
We have never been satisfied with the backend administration speed of Movable Type 4 and we have high hopes and deep expectations that Movable Type 5 will be a huge improvement over the current version — but, until then — we are forced to slog along and do the best we can to publish new work without becoming a slave to a forever backend experience.
Pair Networks take care of the installation and updating of Movable Type for us and we delight in the fact that if Movable Type burps or breaks, Pair are there to wipe away the mess or rebind the cracks.
If you know Movable Type, you are aware that the biggest load you can place on your server is re-publishing a blog. Whenever you made a design change or an interaction change with Movable Type, you always need to re-publish all your blogs. For us, that means nine blogs need to be re-published from start to finish and that can, and has, taken forever.
On our old dedicated server, re-publishing this Urban Semiotic blog took 30 minutes 18 months ago. In the last week or so, re-publishing this same blog had grown to taking 45 minutes. As more entries and comments are added to a blog, you will always slow down in re-publishing because there is more content for the server to process.
With our upgraded QS-1 server, the re-publication time for this blog dropped to 20 minutes!
That undeniable savings in time and energy only expands the Pair greatness as our better hardware brute-forces Movable Type to perform better. We are thrilled to save more than 50% of time wasted waiting for a site re-publish.
All of my projects run on the same server we use for Movable Type. My personal website, my university website, my publishing portal and our online learning opportunities all perform faster and better with the server upgrade and our streaming videos really scream now.
If you want a no-hassle fast web host — you cannot go wrong with the Pair Networks QS family of dedicated servers. We urge to you to sign up now and stop waiting for the rest of the web hosting world to catch up with your virtual dreams and ethereal goals. Pair Networks are waiting right now to serve them all up to you in a dandy and dignified way.
David, I still remember you facing endless trouble before while upgrading the server – but this seems to be going without that much hassle – even it worked pretty smoothly while logging in and posting comment…no hitch so far.
Thanks for that report from India, Katha! It’s good to know you are able to see and feel the speed and robustness of our upgraded Pair server.
You’re right that we went through total misery with those other hosts. Never the right fit. Trying to get what we needed would have — they variously argued — cost us thousands of dollars a month.
Now we sit alone on our dedicated server and we feel on top of the world! We don’t have to worry about getting charged “per CPU cycle” or some other nonesuch wackiness that is intended to cloud and confuse the consumer coin with other web hosts.
Wondeful upgrade, David. Everything thusfar has been smooth in the flow with no hiccups over here that I have noticed.
I appreciate the direct feedback, Gordon. That helps because we know our tweaks and settings are really working.