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My experience with WPEngine

chester.id.au

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Re: My experience with WPEngine

#31

Post by gozmike »

robgough wrote: post #27
gozmike wrote: post #21

My experience with WPEngine : Jason Cohen saved my ass. We went live on a WebbyNode VPS, thought we had configured our system well and suddenly we hit the top spot on HN. The server was on fire and Jason personally showed up and worked on migrating our site over. Your configuration may have posed problems, you may have had what seems like a shitty support experience, but this public bashing doesn't help anyone in the…

Give these guys a break and work with them one on one to find a solution to your problems. In the article it sounds like instead of them trying to work one-on-one to fix the problems, they just outsourced it to a digital removal firm. If that's the response he got, in what way would you expect the OP to be able to work with them one-on-one?

I think it's a matter of how one approaches the issue. With WPEngine, we didn't bounce around e-mail after e-mail.

It took a 10 minute phone call. I knew the names of everyone on my case and they kept me updated through the process.

I'm SURE there was a big fuck up in the support process for the OP. I just feel that there are other ways to skin a cat, particularly in our community where we should be working hard to find constructive solutions to things like this instead of creating a cloud of negativity around young businesses.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#32

Post by sgdesign »

jacques_chester wrote: post #10
saltcod wrote: post #6

All of these sites have fairly standard themes. All could be hosted, worry-free, at WordPress.com.

My bloggers have several non-standard plugins and non-standard theme tweaks. Edit: and oh yes, 2.5Gb of media. The big kicker is that my migrations can only occur by SQL. Using WXR is fine for any blog that can be turned from XML into PHP objects ... inside the execution-time limit. Otherwise Wordpress thinks it's just hilarious to silently fail to import anything that doesn't make the execution-time cutoff. And I do…

Any reason you're not hosting media on S3? That makes it a lot easier to move hosts, too.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#33

Post by gozmike »

jacques_chester wrote: post #25
gozmike wrote: post #21

My experience with WPEngine : Jason Cohen saved my ass. We went live on a WebbyNode VPS, thought we had configured our system well and suddenly we hit the top spot on HN. The server was on fire and Jason personally showed up and worked on migrating our site over. Your configuration may have posed problems, you may have had what seems like a shitty support experience, but this public bashing doesn't help anyone in the…

I worked "one on one" with them for weeks. Weeks . They did not move mountains. It was a parade of apathy. As soon as they could flick pass me to WebSiteMovers, they did. Your positive experience is every bit an emotional one as my negative experience was.

I can totally understand your negative experience, I have email threads between myself and WPEngine as well as between common customers and WPEngine that prove quite the opposite.

It really sucks that you went through this. I'm just suggesting that you refrain from the public flogging and find another solution. I'm not affiliated with these guys other than as a client and I can tell you that I respect what they bring to the market.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#34

Post by jacques_chester »

aneth4 wrote: post #30
jacques_chester wrote: post #3

Of all the things I've ever written on the blog (and ok, most of the earlier stuff is as tedious as watching the guy who watches the grass grow), it's sorta sad that only the one with the sensationalist title has ever made the front page at HN. So, while I'm here, go look at my very nice bloggers. I regularly submit their stuff. http://ozblogistan.com.au/ Take, for example, this recent extremely intelligent discussio…

"my bloggers"? How are these blogs related to you?

It's a convenient shorthand for "bloggers whose websites I host at my own expense because I like and admire their sites".

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#35

Post by qeorge »

A hosting company without 24 hour support is not a hosting company.

Go with Rackspace. They're expensive compared to budget hosts, but they seem to have an army of sysadmins available 24/7/365 that never say "that's your problem" / "not in scope".

PS: that redirect bug is probably a mismatch of your site_url setting in either wp_blogs, the wp_options table of your primary blog, or the wp-config.php. If the domain set in any of those 3 places doesn't match you get that endless redirect loop. Could also be htaccess sending you to www or no-www, and your config is set the other way. Its an annoyingly common issue when moving MU sites, and they should have been able to fix it.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#36

Post by jacques_chester »

sgdesign wrote: post #32
jacques_chester wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bloggers have several non-standard plugins and non-standard theme tweaks. Edit: and oh yes, 2.5Gb of media. The big kicker is that my migrations can only occur by SQL. Using WXR is fine for any blog that can be turned from XML into PHP objects ... inside the execution-time limit. Otherwise Wordpress thinks it's just hilarious to silently fail to import anything that doesn't make the execution-time cutoff. And I do…

Any reason you're not hosting media on S3? That makes it a lot easier to move hosts, too.

Put simply: cost. Collectively it's a few hundred Gb per month of traffic which is completely covered by my Linode plan.

These days I've put most of the sites behind Cloudflare, which has the effect that a lot of my media is being mirrored in their Sydney DC, which is nice because most of the readership is Australian -- the same reason I went to the Tokyo centre this time.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#37

Post by killahpriest »

qeorge wrote: post #35

A hosting company without 24 hour support is not a hosting company. Go with Rackspace. They're expensive compared to budget hosts, but they seem to have an army of sysadmins available 24/7/365 that never say "that's your problem" / "not in scope". PS: that redirect bug is probably a mismatch of your site_url setting in either wp_blogs, the wp_options table of your primary blog, or the wp-config.php. If the domain set…

I highly doubt it's something that simple, the OP had been self hosting a blog network on Linode. There's no way he made that simple of a mistake.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#38

Post by jacques_chester »

gozmike wrote: post #31
robgough wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give these guys a break and work with them one on one to find a solution to your problems. In the article it sounds like instead of them trying to work one-on-one to fix the problems, they just outsourced it to a digital removal firm. If that's the response he got, in what way would you expect the OP to be able to work with them one-on-one?

I think it's a matter of how one approaches the issue. With WPEngine, we didn't bounce around e-mail after e-mail. It took a 10 minute phone call. I knew the names of everyone on my case and they kept me updated through the process. I'm SURE there was a big fuck up in the support process for the OP. I just feel that there are other ways to skin a cat, particularly in our community where we should be working hard to f…

I didn't mention it in the blog post, but I also rang them. Several times. Mostly I got placed on hold until I gave up.

I am in Perth, Australia. This means I need to stay up until 10pm in order to speak to them.

Like I said, that part is on me for not finding out their hours in advance.

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#39

Post by highace »

dugmartin wrote: post #23

This is a bit of a meta comment but it must really suck to wake up on a random morning and find a blog post like this about your service as the top story on HN.

Pissing off bloggers is probably the worst thing you can do, given that they'll likely blog about it..!

Re: My experience with WPEngine

#40

Post by jacques_chester »

gozmike wrote: post #33
jacques_chester wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked "one on one" with them for weeks. Weeks . They did not move mountains. It was a parade of apathy. As soon as they could flick pass me to WebSiteMovers, they did. Your positive experience is every bit an emotional one as my negative experience was.

I can totally understand your negative experience, I have email threads between myself and WPEngine as well as between common customers and WPEngine that prove quite the opposite. It really sucks that you went through this. I'm just suggesting that you refrain from the public flogging and find another solution. I'm not affiliated with these guys other than as a client and I can tell you that I respect what they bring…

I'm sorry, why is it my obligation to be nice to an expensive, specialist business who utterly let me down?

Especially given the content and tenor of their marketing.

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