Michael Hart Just another WordPress weblog (quite literally) (No—Seriously!)

UPDATE: Please check out the update at the bottom of this post before taking into consideration any part of my post.

Well, after months of procrastinating, I finally managed to convince myself to, despite the hefty price, switch all of my important websites and services to Media Temple.

While the move from cPanel to MediaTemple's system isn't the most convenient, it's pretty much a manual transfer process. However, I just want  to share my feedback of the service overall and what I think it means for me and my future projects.

First Impressions
I think that their control panel, while made in-house, is too clunky. However, I think that just may take some getting used to. It's like going from the Classic control panel in Windows to the default one in Windows 7. While it may look less confusing to less savvy users, in all honesty, it's probably just better to have a direct icon (or link, in this case) going to the exact feature or setting I need. Perhaps that will just take some time getting used to, especially moving from cPanel, where every set of preferences has its own icon and page.

The speed increase was immensely noticeable. Page generation of this blog lowered by around 20 percent to an average of .4 seconds. I haven't copied over any of my other websites yet, but I'm certain that I'll be satisfied with the results.

The Benefits
I've started building potentially high-traffic websites. The flaw in my previous hosting was that my websites were all located on 1 server, and while it normally ran flawlessly, all it would take is a spike in traffic for one of them and everything I've worked on can go spiraling down from there. In addition, I was building in a system where success (more visitors) was penalized by by gradually degrading performance. With Media Temple, I can stop focusing on overly extensive caching and optimizations, and start focusing on improving the websites and projects I work on. Media Temple will take care of any extra visitors that my old hosting solution simply wouldn't have been able to.

Customer Service
Well beyond my previous hosting provider. Unfortunately, I had a typo when typing in my credit card. So when I got the email notifying me about my payment being declined, I had to call them in order to reprocess my order with the corrected information. While with my old hosting provider, I could have spent up to half an hour waiting before anyone even acknowledged my presence on the other end, Media Temple is different. I dialed the number, and, within a minute or two, I was thanking someone on the other end for their assistance resolving this issue.

I truly feel confident knowing that if ever I have an issue, there's someone there who can assist me. Not only that, they're just a few minutes away. Not many companies as large as Media Temple can say that. Actually, I can't think of any other companies even remotely the size of Media Temple that has support that amazing.

Random Quirk With Domains
I noticed that both domains and subdomains count towards the 100 domain per account quota. While I read from the KB articles that you can have unlimited subdomains, if you, for example, add 99 subdomains and then attempt to add 2 domain, the 2nd domain would be denied because the 99 subdomains are part of the 100 domain total. On the bright side, you can add subdomains manually via FTP, it's still rather upsetting that I was told I would be able to host 100 domains, when in actuality, it'd be fairly difficult to actually have that many with subdomains.

I hope to see this fixed inevitably (eg., before I hit the quota, which I'll admit will probably be a while). However, it's something to consider.

The Good

• Performance
• Scalability
• Customer Service
• Total DNS Control

The Bad

• Price
• Management console
• Domain counting quirks
• Lack of Ruby on Rails as a base part of the plan (it used to be)

Overall
I think I'm going to enjoy my stay at Media Temple. I hope that the service continues to evolve, staying several steps ahead of its competitors. I also hope that the new 2nd generation storage system will not prove to be as big of an issue as the 1st generation one was (based on other reviews I've read). I also hope that despite their growth that they remain true to their customers, providing the same top-notch support that I received earlier today.

Additional Notes
I don't typically use this blog for any type of profits or rewards, however, if you do decide to switch to Media Temple, and you're feeling generous, I'd appreciate you typing "michaelhart.me" in the referrer field. While I won't personally make any money (they won't write me a check), it will make my hosting a bit more affordable. If you'd like, you can click this link to head there with my domain already typed in there

Referral link: http://www.mediatemple.net/go/order/?refdom=michaelhart.me

Know that I appreciate it immensely Feel free to Contact Me with any cool projects or websites you create on Media Temple!

Note: This article was not endorsed by Media Temple, and is strictly based  on my own personal experience. Like all things in life, please take this with a grain of salt.

Update: I admit: I loved Media Temple at first. However, I began noticing things getting slower and slower at times. I researched and debugged, and found that it's primarily caused by their MySQL servers, which are essentially just as bad as any other shared host (because they're shared with many people and the bad neighbor effect is inevitable eventually). I am currently looking for a hosting alternative other than Media Temple, because the sluggishness is not bearable on some of my more important websites.