Journal
Mosso + Textpattern
5 July 2007 › 15 comments
For the past few weeks, I have been trying out a new host, Mosso.com. During my search for solid hosting, I have been using my own site as a guinea pig.
Update: Please use the referral code REF-SONSPRING if you sign up as a Mosso customer, because you will save 20% off your first month of hosting.
Backstory
I had been on the lookout for a new host, since the up-time at Dreamhost had been questionable over the past few months. They also recently had a security breach that left quite a few user accounts vulnerable. Thankfully, mine was unaffected. Still, I feel a certain responsibility to keep Godbit reliably available, as the forum is a resource many people use daily.
Previously, I tried the Grid-Service plan at Media Temple, and loved it. It handled the traffic to SonSpring just fine, with a GPU projection of about 45% resources used. However, I knew that a single Grid plan wouldn’t support the additional traffic of Godbit, so I did the next logical thing and signed up for a Dedicated-Virtual plan. However, I quickly realized this wouldn’t do.
There are two things I like about Dreamhost and the Grid plan at Media Temple. First, the FTP directory structure makes sense, with primary domains and subdomains treated equally, in directories that reside side by side. Secondly, is a control panel that puts a slew of options at your fingertips (arguably, Media Temple has a better admin UI than Dreamhost).
I dislike that Media Temple’s Dedicated-Virtual plan doesn’t feature the beautiful hand-crafted panel used on the Grid. Instead, you are forced to administer sites via Plesk, a Windows-ish eyesore to put it bluntly. Just trying to use it creates multiple errors on Firebug as you click around.
I also dislike how the Dedicated-Virtual plan handles FTP directories, nesting subdomains within the primary domain. This makes it cumbersome to redesign on a subdomain, then “flip the switch” so to speak.
Enter Mosso
I first heard about Mosso from Alex Giron, whom you may know as the guy who runs CSS Beauty (to be fair, CSSb is hosted at Media Temple). A fellow Dallas-based web developer, Lauren Smith, had recently documented his switch to Mosso. After talking further with Lauren, he said his experience with Mosso has been positive, so I decided to give ‘em a try.
For me, this is the hosting I’ve been looking for. It boasts the reliability of Rackspace, the platform upon which Mosso is built. The admin management panel is very well done, offering the control I need in an intuitive manner. The FTP directory structure is conducive to how I like to organize things. Their tech support has also been amazing, with 24/7 coverage via live chat.
Textpattern Tweak
With the drama of my meandering hosting experience out of the way, let me offer this quick tip for those using Textpattern who might consider hosting with Mosso. Firstly, make sure to un-comment the RewriteBase line (remove the # sign), and put “/” if you run Textpattern from your domain root.
Secondly, Mosso seems to handle 403 Forbidden errors slightly different than either Dreamhost or Media Temple, serving up an Apache page, rather than passing the error on to Textpattern for processing. This is a simple enough fix, simply put ErrorDocument NNN /path where NNN is the error number and “/path” is the page you want to serve up for the corresponding error.
Here is an example of my .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /#Remove www. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.sonspring.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://sonspring.com/$1 [R=301,L]#Textpattern RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^(.+) - [PT,L] RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php</IfModule>Options -IndexesErrorDocument 400 /whoops ErrorDocument 401 /whoops ErrorDocument 403 /whoops ErrorDocument 404 /whoops ErrorDocument 500 /whoops
Other Tips
Obviously, I’m being lazy and simply passing all error types to one page, but you could just as easily have different scenarios for each. Note that I am stripping “www.” when it is added to my site’s URL, simply because it is antiquated and unnecessary. According to some SEO experts, this prevents “splitting the vote” between example.com and www.example.com.
The line that says Options -Indexes is one I would recommend, especially if you use Dreamhost, which causes any directory without an index.* file to auto-generate a list of all files contained within. Meaning, someone could go to your /images directory and easily steal all of your graphics. By taking necessary precautions, it generates a 403 Forbidden error instead.
Sometimes when doing client work, I do want Apache to generate a listing of all files contained in a directory, allowing me to quickly upload samples via FTP and let them dig through. For this, simply put Options +Indexes and voila, no 403 error is shown – instead a listing of files appears.
Summary
So, for those of you who wanted to know what’s up with me switching hosts so often, there you go. Hopefully some of the .htaccess tips have proven helpful, whether you use Textpattern or consider hosting with Mosso.
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 David Brooks
I was hoping you would write an article like this in the near future. I’ve been interested in leaving Dreamhost behind as well, though having quite a few sites hosted I was worried about making the switch without people noticing. How was the downtime between switches? Did the DNS information switch over pretty quickly? The last site I switched off of an unreliable host made me a bit nervous, they just kinda lagged a bit. Just thought I’d see if you had any issues with it. Great article man.
#2 Jason Beaird
Sometimes I hate to be Dreamhost’s advocate (intentional pun), but for personal sites and projects I would never go anywhere else. They’re the goofy t-shirt and worn blue jeans of hosting and although their reliability may not be the best, they beat the heck out of anything else in the price range. I understand that the Godbit visitors expect the site to be there for them, but is the uptime really worth paying 10-12 times more per month for 50% LESS storage. I can see justifying that kind of move for a business where uptime is mission critical but for Godbit and Sonspring? I guess I’m just cheap and easy to please. :)
#3 Nathan Smith
@David: The DNS switch took about 24 hours or so. I think that’d inevitable with switching any host, because it just takes time to propagate.
@Jason: Every time there is a hiccup with Dreamhost, I get emails about Godbit not being available. If DH was a bit more reliable, I agree that it’d be a good choice. The problem with their business model is that it is reliant on most of their customers not actually making use of all that storage and bandwidth. When that capacity starts to be reached, you get the “bad neighbor” effect – slowing down everyone’s sites on that particular shared server.
#4 Lauren Smith
Dude glad to see you’ve had a good experience so far. Tell Matt I said hello. =)
#5 kartooner
When we briefly talked about this on IM and your argument about FTP directory structure made total sense.
Mosso does look great, the only sticking point for me (at the time when I was considering moving) is the price. It’s a bit too steep for my personal site but I could foresee using it for other things.
Other than these few issues, does TxP work smoothly on Mosso?
#6 Nathan Smith
@Erik (kartooner) – Yep, aside from the few minor tweaks, this is the fastest and smoothest that Textpattern has ever run for me, on any host. Granted, I’m also using the very latest – version 4.0.5, so there could have been speed boosts due to core upgrades of TXP itself.
As for price, I think that Mosso is nice because you can fit everything on one reliable plan. It’s worth it to have consolidation with consistent up-time.
#7 Jonathan E
We’ve talked about this already Nathan, but after my own dreamhost issues I decided to make the switch to (mt) Media Temple’s Grid System, and I haven’t looked back since. It may cost a little more, but the quality is definitely worth the extra money.
The only question I have about your choice of Mosso’s hosting offering is this: Wouldn’t it still be cheaper to have both SonSpring and Godbit on 2 separate grid plans? Is it based solely on having the 2 sites under one admin interface?
Also, (mt) has since modified their GPU algorithm, so it may not be as overstated as it once was.
#8 Nathan Smith
Jonathan, two Grid plans would be cheaper than Mosso’s single plan, but I don’t want to add a Grid plan each time I want to add a dot-com. For instance, my wife’s blog olgasmith.com as well as a few ministry-related sites I host for fellow seminary grads. I just like all the eggs in one basket!
#9 Mike
I also went through the DreamHost and MediaTemple dance but had a bit too much downtime to my liking. I am currently evaluating two somewhat smaller but promising hosting companies: ASmallOrange and WebFaction
So far I’ve been pretty impressed: zero second of downtime in 3 months and very friendly support.
I don’t think you need to pay $100/month to get a stable host that can handle Digg traffic.
#10 Nathan Smith
Mike: Yeah, I’ve heard good things about both ASmallOrange and WebFaction, but personally haven’t had any experience with either company.
#11 Nick Ciske
I’ve had some sites on Mosso for a time, and I’m leaving… (and not looking back).
It seemed perfect at first, but once I saw behind the curtain… well, it wasn’t as pretty.
Their control panel, although nice to look at… is dead slow most of the time, and limited in it’s functionality compared to cpanel or plesk.
Also, they were having severe uptime issues just a few months ago, which I beleive theyv’e solved… but Mosso was never supposed to have uptime issues in the first place ;-)
Also, for a few weeks, every site I set up didn’t “propogate correctly” and I had to call support to get it working.
So, I switched to a VPS at half the price and have been very happy with it.
#12 Nathan Smith
Nick: I’m curious, which VPS hosting company did you end up choosing?
#13 Brian Zerangue
Nathan –
I too was quite disappointed with Media Temple’s Dedicated Virtual. It’s not Media Temple, it was that horrific Plesk app. (not a fan)
Actually, I recently moved to Slicehost (A lower cost VPS that rivals MT’s prices). They have been awesome! Now, this hosting company is not for the faint hearted. You have to build your own slice. They give you the choice of the Linux Distribution and you can install to your heart’s content. Actually, if you mess you can easily rebuild your “slice”. All that said, now that I have everything installed, it is wonderful.
I’m actually running Litespeed (Web Server) on Ubuntu on the 10GB / 256 MB slice. It’s been awesome and it’s blazingly fast! For Textpattern and other sites I’m running.
They have a great community with a great Wiki that helps you get your stuff up and running in no time.
I’m glad to hear you’ve had a great experience with Mosso. Lauren’s article was very helpful, and I really considered Mosso but wanted a little more control over the server than what MT and Mosso provided.
You can’t go wrong with Rackspace-backed Mosso. They are top notch.
Glad to see it’s working great for you!
By the way, excellent work on the TXP book! Very helpful! I’ve referred many new users to that book.
#14 Nathan Smith
Brian: I’ve heard Slicehost is great, but I wanted something geared more towards right-brained people. I’m glad you liked Textpattern Solutions!
#15 beth
This reminds me that I’d like to see someone write a post that compares and contrasts (with visuals) admin interfaces from several popular hosting services.
I am very happy with Bluehost, the provider I’ve been with for four years now, and have never experienced outages, but their UI isn’t the best.
Glad the new hosting is working out for you!