[sf-lug] Dreamhost.com, BALUG.org, BerkeleyLUG.com, WordPress, ... (was: Re: wish? to sole? operator/hoster of majority of ... (was: Re: spam vs. anti-spam(2)))

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Todd Hawley" <celticdm at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] wish? to sole? operator/hoster of majority of  
> ... (was: Re: spam vs. anti-spam(2))
> Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 09:59:47 -0700

> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:10 AM Michael Paoli <
> Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>> Well, for bit more background on BALUG and DreamHost (not SF-LUG
>> relevant, skip this (long) paragraph if you're not interested in that
>> bit), BALUG had for quite some time prior to that been hosted on
>> DreamHost.com - wasn't my decision at all - someone else did that - not
>> sure where things were hosted earlier than that (at least I certainly
>> don't recall off-the-top-of-my-head, and also predates me having any
>> BALUG involvement other than having attended, probably joined list, and
>> did my first BALUG (and first LUG) presentation at BALUG on ...
>> 2005-05-17:
>> https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce/2005-May/000032.html
>> ).  Anyway, prior to about 2013-07-13, DreamHost.com services had been
>> relatively fine ... sure, some glitches/issues, but nothing catastrophic
>> or from which they(/"we") couldn't well recover from.  That all changed
>> in 2013, and continued to be a repeated hot mess until we fully
>> extricated ourselves from DreamHost.com.  So, e.g., exhibit A:
>> $ cat */archive_date_ranges
>>
>> 2005-03-18--2013-05-24,2014-01-11--2015-01-31,2015-05-01--2015-11-30,2016-02-18--
>>
>> 2001-06-15--2013-07-12,2013-11-18--2014-09-30,2014-11-14--2015-01-31,2015-04-20--2015-11-30--2015-12-15,2016-02-15--
>>
>> 2001-06-15--2013-07-13,2013-11-09--2014-10-19,2014-10-22--2015-01-31,2015-04-06--2015-12-05,2016-01-23--
>> $
>>
>
> Admittedly a bit off-topic but I used to maintain a web site for a local
> professional group that used
> WordPress and we switched to DreamHost (who was highly recommended to us by
> a couple people).
> When they found out we wanted to use WordPress, we were told we had to jump
> through several
> hoops (including having to use DreamHost as part of our URL). I had no idea
> they were clearly very
> familiar with WordPress and were trying to get free advertising through us.
> The few months they hosted
> our web site we constantly ran into issues and their tech support was
> virtually nonexistent. So we
> dumped them. Another time I maintained a site for another professional
> group and discovered to my
> horror it was also hosted by DH. Again, we ran into problems and moved on.
> I've heard of others who
> swore by them (or at least did). Considering their terrible business
> practices, I'm amazed they're still in
> business. So I agree that friends don't let friends use DreamHost.

Yup, DreamHost.com very much sucks ... or at least they did by starting
around sometime in 2013 - they might've been anywhere from excellent to
fair(ish) before that ... but not after ... at least well into
2015/2016 ... in any case they screwed up so severely and repeatedly in the
2013 to 2015 or 2016 or so time frame, I'd never trust them again,
and sure as heck would never recommend them - in fact quite the contrary.

And ... not /that/ hard to run a WordPress site, either.
BerkeleyLUG.com is a WordPress site.  Used to be on WordPress.com and
we migrated to self-hosted.  Not exactly (super-)trivial, but far from
rocket science.  See, e.g.:
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=berkeleylug:digital_resources
... mostly the outline section within.
And new site and content would've been easier, but in our case we wanted
to preserve the existing content, etc. and migrate everything over - so a
bit more involved to do that.