Important: Status of Earth-2.net


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All,

As of this moment, GoDaddy has suspended Earth-2.net because they claim I'm taking up too much space on their server. (200 GB is the issue.) This, despite the fact that I've been paying for unlimited storage and bandwidth through them for more than 12 years. Basically, they're extorting me. They've finally realized I've been paying $13 / month for this service, and want to jack it up to $120 / month (minimum). Until something's resolved, they will not bring the site back online.

This means everything except the forums are offline. No site, no podcasts, nothing.

I will be spending the next who-knows-how-long attempting to get it back online. Please bear with me at this time.

- Mike

Update 1: It might not be a file-size issue, but rather:

  1. How the files are sorted
  2. And / Or the number of files

Both are bullshit, but are being investigated.

GoDaddy apparently has a cap of 250K files. Earth-2.net has nowhere near that cap, especially in the folders they are deeming a "primary concern," but we'll see what they say.

Update 2: The absolute earliest this could be fixed is 10:00 AM PST / 12:00 PM CST Monday, and that assumes their Network Violations Team is open on Memorial Day.

The site is fully backed up, so if I need to remove files, they can be restored at a later date.

Update 3: There are three directories they are concerned with (images, podcasts, theshow). Those three directories have ~175 GB of data in there, with the smallest being images at 18 GB. However, they now made me aware that a fourth directory concerns them: videos, which is only 1.3 GB in size. If they're crying about a 1.3 GB directory, I don't know what they want from me.

Update 4: I'm looking at new providers, such as Squarespace. The plan I'd go with is more expensive than GoDaddy, but not out of my range. The issue here is it can take up to 15 days to transfer a site from one provider to another, and I don't know how iTunes will react to RSS feeds being down for that long.

Update 5: Okay, here's the deal. The site is back online. Yay! However, to make this so, I've had to completely torch every podcast archive. This sucks, and I am deeply sorry that all of your amazing work has to go offline for the time being. (More on this in a moment.) Currently every show -- active or otherwise -- is limited to having one episode on the site. For example: Dread Media 665 hit today. As soon as 666 drops next week, I have to remove 665. One in, one out.

That said, everything has been backed up redundantly. (I am exceptionally anal about this.) So though it blows that the archives are not presently live, I have every episode of every podcast safely stored on multiple hard drives. In the coming days, I will be looking for non-GoDaddy solutions to bring them back online.

What this will look like or how it will work, I do not know. But as soon as I do, I will update everyone.

If anybody has any suggestions, please toss them my way.

The most recent GoDaddy tech I worked with suggested an online / cloud media server, and I have a guy I'll be hitting up tomorrow to look into that option. Soundcloud and Dropbox are also possibilities.

On another note, if you would like me to send you your archives, I will absolutely do that. They're your shows and I don't want to give the impression that I have dominion over them.

Update 6: Fuck GoDaddy. That's the theme of this post. While I have found other excellent hosting services, I do not have the time, money*, or energy to migrate everything (eg domain, hosting, emails, forums). That said, I am in the process of re-uploading everything to the GoDaddy servers. Because fuck GoDaddy. (Theme!) I've paid for their "unlimited" services for a decade-plus. So the archives are going back up. If they nail me again, I'll complain as best I can, without Karen-ing. But that does not mean I'll win or stick with them. This is most likely a temporary thing. But I cannot stand being told to take 15 years worth of work -- from all of us -- offline because the most prominent hosting service "cannot handle" being "a repository for podcasts." Fuck GoDaddy. (Theme!)

*The asterisk above is not me mugging for donations, patrons, etc. I'm just relating that moving a site is not inexpensive, nothing more.

Update 7: Except for Dread Media and Earth-2.net: The Show, all archives are back online. Dread Media is being uploaded as I type this, and The Show will probably go back up in the overnight.

Update 8: All podcasts are back online. The images and a few misc items still remain down, but they'll go up silently.

When / If GoDaddy complains and / or I have an update regarding moving the site, I'll let you all know.

Update 9: It happened again. 🙄 So the archives have been taken down once more, and we're doing the one episode in, one out system. Sorry this has happened once more.

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Scumbags.

Maffew of Botchamania fame (also a neighbour of mine, even though we've never met) had something similar happen to him with Vimeo re: his 400+ videos. In the short term I'd check your terms of service to check what basis they have to do this. They'll inevitably have an out, but if it gives you a short term reason to keep things going beyond the forums, as well as looking for a new provider, it's worth fighting your corner.

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22 hours ago, slothian said:

In the short term I'd check your terms of service to check what basis they have to do this.

The upper-level techs are of the mind that I'm using their servers to simply backup files, which is against their TOS. When I explained what Earth-2.net is to a mid-level tech, he was sympathetic and relayed that info to the upper-level team. Sadly, they would not budge because of the TOS.

They also didn't like that the MP3s are "called back to" via RSS feeds, because it "puts a strain on the servers." To which I said, "But that's how podcasts work." Still, no budging.

As noted in one of the updates, I truly believe they were trying to get me to jump to another tier. They've done it before, but I wasn't having it this time.

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Thank you, everybody, for your kind words of support and immense patience.

An audio update has been posted in the Earth-2.net: The Show, Bigger on the Inside, The Edge of Forever, and 12 Minutes to midnight RSS / iTunes feeds. (http://earth-2.net/theshow/episodes/pau_01.mp3) Basically, all of the RSS feeds of the shows I co-host. If you would like me to post it in your feed as well, I will gladly do so. (I didn't want to presume to add content / updates to your streams without permission.)

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4 hours ago, Dread said:

Please toss it into the DM feed as well.

Wait...unless it removes episode 665.

In that case, I'd prefer a couple more days of the ep online for those who do not download podcasts everyday.

Nah, it won't remove 665. That won't happen until 666 is posted on Monday.

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