So, for those of you that are interested in the details of PhuseBox going offline for so long... here it is...

December 17th was the day the skies went black... okay, so it was not that dramatic, but it was bad. I got onto the internet and made my usual sweep over all the sites I check frequently... only, this time it was different. This time, instead of the PhuseBox homepage, I was greeted with a nice message from my hosting company that informed me that my account had been suspended. Suspended? I did not do anything. And to add to the problem, this message (which I am sure many of you saw) also said that information was sent to my email about the reason my account was suspended and how to get it back)...

*Nathan checks email* NOTHING. At that point a grabbed a paper bag to help with my breathing. I tried to contact my hosting company to figure out why this had happened. And to make a long story short, they tell me that my account was suspended for taking 40% of the server load. Hmmm... and they shut down my site without any notice whatsoever? This has got to be the best hosting company of all time!

IPOWER or IPOWERWEB (I don't know why they go by two names...) They are the hosting company that I was with. They are the ones that shut down PhuseBox and did not give me access to the databases or files. So even when I finally purchased a brand new server for another company, I was not even able to tranfer the database and photos over. They did not play nice with me, expecially after I told them that I needed my files and database because I was going to another server company.

 Now, I must say, when I started PhuseBox last June, I did not expect it to get this big. I started out on what is called a shared server. That means that my site and all my files were on a server with anywhere from 10-30 other websites. These hosting plans are dirt cheap... I think I paid $99 for the year. Once PhuseBox really started to grow, I knew that I needed to get my own server... not to mention, I wanted to do some things that a shared server host would not allow.

And thus, with PhuseBox going down on December 17th, I was forced to purchase a brand new server from ServerBeach (great company... I have been pleased so far). Now I can control anything I need and I will not get shut down because my site is too big.

After many phone calls and emails to iPower (my old host), I was able to convince them to give me access to my files and my database. Here lied the next problem... transfering 50,000+ image files to a new server. It was not a small task, and it is actually still happening as I type.

I also have to set up a few other things on the server before everything will function perfectly again (that is why image uploading is disabled currently)...

All in all, I call this my 12-day-headache caused by iPower... but PhuseBox is back... and should be faster and has MUCH room for growth. And now, I can add more features since I have more freedom on the server.

The moral of this story is do not use iPower hosting... or any other shared hosting company when your website gets to large... that and find a fiance that is loving and understanding when you have to work on getting websites to work...