At first, we didn't expect the movie to be as popular as it was but news started hitting Tribes news sites and forums alike. Downloads kept coming and we were awe. Over the next three and a half days the movie pulled in over 1000 downloads and over 20GB (21.578GB to be precise) per day! What's more, we were sucking up more than 80% of the server resources just to keep up with the mess!
Since we were on a shared server, the more bandwidth we suck up - the less others get (which is why a limit is put on most servers; if you pass that limit you will be denied access to the site, thus saving the rest of the server from withdrawl of resources). However, the hosting plan we were on ... although we had a limited amount of bandwidth, it wasn't capped. Meaning that, even if we exceeded our daily limit the site would stay up - a very nice thing because often major sites go over their limit by a 1GB or couple hundred MB's; generally no big deal as long as it isn't a recurring thing.
However, since we did not just go over our daily limit of 1GB/day (approx) we obliterated it by 20GB and not just for one day but for a little more than three; without notification the host cut us off (resulting in the Forbidden error). So, over the next few days the Staff and I would send tech support emails after emails; unfortunately for us, they didn't work on the weekend. Great. So, we had to wait until Monday (at the earliest) to hear from them.
First thing I do come Monday morning is flip on the monitor and check emails and what do I see? A rather blatant notice from the CEO containing the following:
"Your account has been permanently suspended due to severe policy violations. Your traffic has soured just prior to suspension to 80% of the server, and almost 20GB per day. We suggest you cancel your account via fax as per policy to ovoid and further payment responsibilities."
I just love how he / she took their sweet time writing this email; notice the several spelling and grammatical mistakes. So, after a little bargaining I was given access to FTP (as email, FTP and telnet were restricted as well) for 24hrs so that I could backup the files.
Now came the tedious job of finding a new host with the same (if not more) goodies that our previous one offered at a reasonable price. It wasn't looking too good at first, as it took us several weeks just to find the host we were on and the chances of finding another one in the coming days was looking pretty grim. However, as luck would have it we were approached from a representative from Gameshack.net and they offered us a deal that we could not refuse.
Thus, after a few site tweaks and the DNS servers given ample time to move over the site is back up again, better than ever! I also took this time to upgrade our UBB and in doing so I inadvertantly, heh, lost the Member files so if you had previously registered you will have to do so again. We're really sorry, but hey, it's a small price to pay
. Our forums are now located at forums.the-junkyard.net.
We now offer unlimited space in our hosting plan, we got rid of that dorky tilde (~) key in the hosted site's URL and are also offering sub domains (username.the-junkyard.net) upon special site approval. Now you really haven't anything to lose hosting with us! Be sure to check out the review of No One Lives Forever and our exclusive interview with Tribes 2 Programmer, Kelly "East" Asay. Accompanying this interview are some pretty cool looking shots we snagged from Tribes 2.
Enjoy and welcome back!
