(LinuxWorld) — A company called iPowerWeb now hosts my two non-profit sites, VarLinux.org and Petreley.com. I used to host them on my own servers that were connected to the Internet via SBC/Pacific Bell Enhanced DSL, which includes five IP addresses. The transition was painless. All I had to do was notify Directnic and Network Solutions of the new name servers at iPowerWeb for my domains. It wasn't easy to notify Network Solutions. I have no idea why, but I didn't have the correct account number or password for my domain there, so I had to jump through hoops to get into my account to make changes.

It's a good thing I got the sites off my DSL and hosted on commercial servers when I did. The best way to explain why it's such a good thing is to draw a comparison to Fry's Electronics. Fry's Electronics is a California experience no tourist should miss. Fry's is an electronics superstore chain that has, let's say, interesting service. The best way to describe the kind of service personnel is to browse this spoof of a Fry's Employment Application. The default address for the applicant is YMCA, the default level of education is "some grammar school" and it gives you multiple choice questions like "English is my 1. second, 2. third, 3. fourth, 4. next language."

Don't worry if you can't qualify to work at Fry's. You an always get a job at SBC/Pacific Bell. If anything can be said of the kind of service I've received over the years from SBC/Pacific Bell, it's that they value under achievement like a precious jewel. My ISDN and then DSL lines had numerous performance problems, they've been mistakenly canceled with no explanation offered, SBC has made changes to my DSL line without notifying me (thus causing service disruptions) and more.

The latest was the coup de grace, however. I am about to move to North Carolina, so I called to have my phone service and DSL disconnected on the 19th. A couple hours later, I picked up the phone to make a call, but there was no dial tone. I called SBC/Pacific Bell on my cell phone and endured the phone navigation system twice (I was disconnected the first time).

It turns out my order was recorded properly. I was to be disconnected on the 19th. However, for reasons unknown to anyone who helped me, they executed the order on the 12th, the day I called. Someone just decided to execute the order early, I guess. It was probably one of those employees for whom things like calendar dates and numbers are too confusing to obey.

After about an hour on the phone with a helpful repair technician who himself had trouble finding the right department to correct the problem, he was able to issue an order to have my phone service reconnected. However, the only way I could get DSL restored was to put in an order that wouldn't be acted upon for two weeks — long after I wanted to be disconnected permanently. Therefore, I'm stuck on dial-up until I arrive at my new home.

The bottom line is SBC/Pacific Bell proves being incompetent is no excuse for being unemployed.

Hosting on the cheap

I had several generous offers to host my non-profit sites for free. For various reasons irrelevant to this column, however, I chose a commercial host for my sites. Money was a major issue, so I looked for the cheapest hosting company I could find. I found iPowerWeb, which costs less than $100 per year, and has all the features I need. The tightwad plan includes 200 megabytes of storage space, 150 POP mail accounts, 20 gigabytes of data transfer per month, Web access to e-mail, support for PHP, mySQL, server-side includes, and everything else I could ask for.

According to Netcraft, the new server is Linux-based, although iPowerWeb also seems to use FreeBSD. The secret to the low price is a reliance entirely on open source, and iPowerWeb minimizes the need for phone support by providing a Web solution for almost everything you would need to do to set up and maintain your site. I created all the mySQL databases, transferred the data, installed the PHP files, and did all the other maintenance without having to place a single phone call to iPowerWeb.

It's hard to complain about any hosting service that gives you so much for such a low price, but I do have a couple of minor gripes. First, the Web-based control panel for the sites is awfully slow, at least from my location. Second, iPowerWeb doesn't make it easy enough to transfer large amounts of data from an existing mySQL database to the iPowerWeb mySQL database.

Here's the obvious way to transfer data to an iPowerWeb site. You use the mysqldump command to dump your data to a text command file with CREATE and INSERT statements. Then you use the Web-based access to mySQL that iPowerWeb provides to upload the command file. The problem is if the command file is too big, the Web interface refuses to use it. I can see why iPowerWeb doesn't want to let you upload huge files from this interface, but that makes the process rather inconvenient if you can't get shell access to your server — and you can't. iPowerWeb doesn't provide secure shell or any other terminal access.

In retrospect, I suppose I could have written a little PHP program that would load all the data into the mySQL database, but I simply broke up the text file into pieces and used them one at a time until all the data was transferred.

Finally, the site experiences occasional problems. Since I moved my sites to iPowerWeb, there have been two periods where it wouldn't serve up pages due to mySQL "too many connections" errors. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with traffic to the site, so I suspect it occurs during system administration.

Other than the above problems, I'm happy with iPowerWeb. If nothing else, iPowerWeb shows how much one can deliver for a very low price when one bases their services on open source.