MY SITE IS DOWN AGAIN!!!! I AM SO SICK OF THIS!!!!!

I have four template sites and never had a problem with anyone of them.

Here are they are in the order of my preference (features, ext...) but it is also the order of the cost. But sometimes, as you are finding out, you get what you pay for.

Livebooks
Clickbooq
Big Folio - they are having a 1/2 price sale this summer.
iCreations

Good luck.

Mike

Hey, how do I find out about Big Folio's 50% off, I don't see it on their site.

The posted prices are the sale prices.

Mike

Oh geez...lol

Sorry, it is clearer here in their blog post:

http://bfstop.bigfolioblog.com/

Mike

Its back up and running.

Switch hosts. My blu site is never down. I use vervehosting.com.

Stupid question, when you host elsewhere, do you have the same admin area?

I assume you do. It is just PHP code that should run on any host. Although the full control panel over your hosting should be different.

Hosting with Blu is not a good idea now when you can switch it over to a decent company for probably less money. You won't see the site down issues like you do now.

Big Folio? Seriously? Dude...rock out with Showit Sites or Portfoliositez!

I can't afford ShowIt Sites right now...sorry or I would consider it. I will check out Portfoloiositez though.

Livebooks is my first choice and what I use for my main site, but I think BigFolio is a good option.

I really have not been impressed with what I have seen from the Showit Sites yet. The Portfoliositez option does seem pretty nice, especially for the price.

The one thing that I like with Livebooks is the SEO rocks. I am first for my market in Google and that's about how 75 percent of my clients say they find me - with a simple web search.

Mike

Mike. SWITCH HOSTS DUDE!!!

http://www.ipower.com will host your site for as little as $6.95 a month with TONS of features and very little downtime. I have hosted with ipower for YEARS and I'm extremely happy with them... and my blu site is all up and running with no problems there. Just email bludomain and they should switch your site over for you once you get your domain and everything switched to ipower. If you have any questions let me know.

Portfoliositez definitely rocks. The girls will definitely take REALLY good care of you. Showit Sites obviously allows for more creativity, and more freedom to do what you like to your site. Regarding SEO, SIS is also a google friendly flash site. We're on page 2 with some of our keyphrases for the Album Guys site. That's pretty friendly...and Google is picking up an earlier version at that.

Good luck with whichever route you decide to take. Just remember, your web presence is equally as important as your shoes, and your bed. Those are the things you should spend the most one, because they are the things that get the most attention (besides family of course...thats number 1!).

I've only seen the admin section on a blu hosted site once so I don't remember it all that clearly but I do know they are a bit different. You'll have a separate admin panel through your host where you manage some of the functionality. Here's a screenshot of what my blu admin panel looks like...

your actual SITE's admin panel will remain the same. other features of your hosting such as MySQL databases, email account control etc etc etc will be through your web host's control panel.

We have been with Blu for about 3 years and have hardly had a problem with them. Good luck

Watch out. My WHOLE problem with them is that I requested it to be hosted else where. They only put up a few referring files on my host and the MYSQL database stays on their server. Everytime they went down or hickup'ed. I did too.

As well this set up caused other connection problems and my site didn't load properly - the preloader would just spin because the refering files were not hooking up with the MYSQL .

I requested for them to move my site in full for over a year - and they never came though, nor would answer an e-mail about it. If you move it to your hosting just be sure the WHOLE thing is moved over.

Hosting your own blu site may not be the answer. It sure wasn't for me.

ditto

i have had a few problems here and there, but certainly nothing to write home about. i have 3 sites going with them now and i couldnt be happier.

anywhere you go, you have the chance of their servers going down - please dont tell me it wont happen, cause it will. its just an inevitable happening with the technology.

+1.

I know all about sites going down. However, companies like 1and1 have measures to prevent this as much as possible.

Blu has been good to me but it seems that things just don't work without me placing a tech support ticket. Just yesterday I could not get my Google Analytics to work, I tried everything I could but nothing worked. I put in a support ticket and a little bit later they replied that they had fixed it and voila!

I had an issue once where whenever I would try to select certain images to show on the site by clicking in the box, when I clicked save, it would shuffle my selections!!! That was annoying but they fixed it with a support ticket.

I had a font color that I was unable to change, whenever I would change the fonts on the page all would change with the exception of the submit button on my contact page...it was black. Since my page background was black you could not see the text...they fixed this with a support ticket. It is just little annoying things.

I will probably stick with Blu in the end because they are a cost effective alternative and their product (templates) aren't that bad. Was just frusterated yesterday.

Mike

So what you're saying is that though you've had a few hiccups.... all of them have been quickly fixed with a support ticket? Sounds to me like things are fab!

My site was down last month and while it was VERY frustrating... they quickly fixed the issue and had me back up by the next day. I was in St Maarten on a destination wedding so didn't have access to my phone... I returned to hear a message from a blu employee making sure everything was okay.

Over the years... I've had various sites hosted on various servers and every one of them has gone down at one point or another.

I think that because Blu has such a huge photographer presence... it's easy to gang up on them.

Just my 2¢.

~Bobbi

Try these guys - they absolutely rock.
Ryan Pelerin
WebSiteMovers.com
They will take EVVVVerything your website needs and set you up with whichever hosting company you tell you them want. Zero hassle and everything is set up for you. Yes it costs, but a total bargain just to have to not deal with blu - but oh, no they were in vegas at the time.

I have a Blu site hosted bu GoDaddy. I kept the admin area and the service from Godaddy is awesome , and affordable. Not one problem in 2 years.

Well you need to compare any host to the competition. Most of the time you don't even realize the site is down (hour here, hour there). Anyway, just to be it all out there, compare your Blu experience with other major hosting companies below.

http://uptime.besthostratings.com/webhosts-uptime.php

That should make it clear that you can easily get cheap hosting with 99.9% uptime. That means that if your site is down more than 8 hours a year, you can do better and it doesn't always mean more cost. Or at least if you want to use one of the others for your own reason, at least get 99.6% uptime which is 35 hours/year downtime. So just compare your experience to those hosting companies below and make your own decisions. Is your blu site down more than 35 hours/year? If so, then you should definitely complain. If not, sounds pretty typical. Next question is how much are you paying for it? If you are paying more than $5 or so a month, you are overpaying IMO.

Just some of the hosts that I hear on here:

ipower - 99.775% - Costs: $4/month - tons of space and transfer

godaddy - 99.962% - Costs: $4/month - tons of space and transfer

dreamhost - 99.381% - Costs: $6/month - no where near as much stuff as ipower or godaddy

ixwebhosting - 99.643% - Costs: $5/month - unlimited space and transfer

Long story short, you can easily get great hosting for cheap. These are just small samples, but it should make it apparent what you need to do.

*EDIT/UPDATE*
I just looked for reviews and I can find terrible reviews for every single provider mentioned above, so it is easy to find the bad for all of them."

Disclaimer: I have a Blu Site hosted on GoDaddy. GoDaddy has been great, but my initial experience with Blu was awful, but that thread went to hell fast, so I'm going to keep it "Hosting" only.

Chris, I am paying $8.33 per month. I would say that the last time I was down, I was down for at least 2 hrs that I knew of...but I was sleeping before that.

I have had Blu since March and I would say that so far I have been down 3 times so maybe 6+ hrs so far in 3-4 months.

Bobbi, I am not trying to get anyone to gang up on Blu...I think DJ already handled that...lol. Me, I was looking for an alternative. At this time I plan to just stick with what I have but I am keeping my options open incase something better comes along.

I currently manage two sites, both hosted with different companies and in the past year, combined they have been down less than my site.

Make sure you get something that can function for more than just your website. You need to make sure you have a total solution for all your needs.

Also remember that your site is not that of a major company. It will be down from time to time because you aren't spending enough for the redundancy like major company can have based on multiple locations and instant failover.

...and its down again!