THIS IS FROM BARRYSWORLD.

You've almost certainly noticed the poor quality of our hosting recently. Its
been seriously unwell and has not been something that could be relied upon. Its
all very well saying its a free service, but its been infuriating for you and
us.

Now, the problem has been that, to our surprise, we have attracted thousands of
sites, and many are using our free CGI hosting to run things like message boards
etc. Sadly, this is the root of the problem, and CGI now takes up all the CPU
and kills hosting dead. CGI is very inefficient and a free service like this
does not justify the cash spend we'd need to splash out to make CGI feasible.

So, sadly, we have no option but to remove all CGI support to make our hosting
the reliable and fast service it once was. We will remove CGI first thing on
Thursday 19th July so, if you need CGI on your site, you'll need to make
alternative arrangements by then. Sorry its relatively short notice, but we must
do something about it asap, the service just isnt a service at the moment.

All is not lost however, we still support PHP version 4.05 so if you have been
using CGI for news scripts, guestbook scripts or mail forms then why not try
replacing your scripts with these alternatives that others have mentioned to us?

Well I can see why you'd be a bit worried but PHP scripts will do much the same things as you've been doing with CGI... assuming you're keen to maintain a forum...

Check out http://php.resourceindex.com for more stuff there...

Hope that helps.

As for Barrysworld's actions... well at least they're giving advance warning as opposed to just pulling the plug. It sounds like they've no choice in the matter though.

I agree....good action on the part of barrysworld, especially being a free host....giving notice!

I would have to agree.... To a point...

- They offered CGI support to ATTRACT customers
- They got in over their heads
- They are now trapped by the above
- They now must pull the plug on CGI scripting on their sites
- They are only giving their customers ONE WEEK to deal with it

Good to be proactive, but c'mon, how about a little time to react.

NOTE: Bone of contention here. Alabanza did this to us with their Site Creation tool. One weeks notice. We are still getting emails from our customers.......

Hopefully, Food for Thought.

:eek:

Well, but there's one big difference thou..

Alabanza is an expensive dedicated host, whereas barrysworld is a free webhost.. so I mean one week for a free host is a lot .... :)

Originally posted by thereismore
I would have to agree.... To a point...

- They offered CGI support to ATTRACT customers
- They got in over their heads
- They are now trapped by the above
- They now must pull the plug on CGI scripting on their sites
- They are only giving their customers ONE WEEK to deal with it
(snip)

Compared with one paid host that shall remain nameless.. At least that notice is one week.. Try MINUS 42 minutes notice (ie: notice after the fact) then see what that gets you.

For a free host that week will cost them probably in excess of a few $100 of bandwidth and p***ed off users trying to even access the non CGI sites... So I'd say that week is probably more generous than most would expect.

Bottom line, at least they've realised they're in over their heads and done their best to retify the situation. Interestingly though, they haven't actually banned forums but just asked people to shift to PHP instead. That if anything says they understand their users particular needs/interests.

Actually as a random thought, I wonder why they don't consider running a centralised forum script..

Ah well.. Just my 2p worth again
;)

Hey, try NO notice at all like *****....when they change the same thing three weeks in a row..MORONS!