Results 1 to 19 of 19
  1. #1

    KnownHost: 4 year review

    I originally reviewed KnownHost 3 years ago, after being on a reseller account for 5 months. Since then, I upgraded to a Managed VPS, and I have actually been less happy.

    When I signed on for the VPS, I understood THEY would manage it for me - I know nothing about running a server, so this was essential. They did set it up for me, and in most cases they've been pretty responsive when I needed extra help. But... well, let's start with the positive.

    Uptime: Not sure the VPS has ever actually had any downtime. That's awesome!

    Server speed: I've seen faster, but it's good and very stable.

    The problems have had to do with server configuration. Immediately after buying the VPS and actually putting my sites on it, they said I needed to upgrade it because there wasn't enough memory. I told them sales had told me the package I chose would be enough, and they tweaked a few things on the server to make room.

    I don't want to say I had "problems" with support, but it struck me that they expended more energy in trying to shift my need for support somewhere else than trying to provide support. They would tell me I just needed more memory, or the problem I was having was someone else's fault, or tell me some obscure thing I needed to do to the server. I'm happy to learn new things, but some stuff they asked me to do, I was really concerned I'd screw something up bigtime.

    They did always provide support in the end, but you have to be assertive and remind them you're paying for a managed server. There have been a lot of little oddball problems (i.e., something that works on every other host doesn't work on your server) and it turns out there's some configuration that's not quite right.

    I'm now having to find a new host because I have a Wordpress blog hosted with them, and I recently set some deleted articles to return 410 Gone errors for the search engines. But they were instead showing up as regular Wordpress 404 error pages. I checked with my theme developer and the Wordpress forum, and the people who helped me said it had to be a server configuration problem. So I wrote to KnownHost and they told me it was a conflicting redirect in my htaccess, and I should contact a script developer.

    It turned out to be the standard htaccess Wordpress rules. But these are the rules that work on my other hosts, and the hosts of everyone I've talked to, some of whom went out of their way to test their setup for me and see if they could replicate the problem. KnownHost's tone in the tickets suggested they had no intention of troubleshooting it until I told them *twice* how I'd isolated the problem, and it was the Wordpress rules, and I couldn't delete them without breaking the blog.

    They started troubleshooting then. There was a lot of communication difficulty, but eventually we understood each other. But they don't know what the problem is. They say the server configuration is standard, so it should be working... but it doesn't.

    So now I'm having to look for a new host because their servers don't completely work with Wordpress, and they don't know why, and no one I can find online has ever heard of this problem happening elsewhere, so I can't figure out why.

    While I don't feel KH is a bad host by any means, I do feel they've slipped a bit in recent years, and I'm paying more than I should be to be having problems like this. In finding a new host, it looks like I may actually be able to save a bundle while still getting about the same reliability as I've enjoyed with KH.

    I'll email my domain to a mod, as soon as I remember how to do that.

    (Er, sorry, this is in the wrong forum - mods, please move it. I can't delete it and repost it.)

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    207
    I have a WordPress blog with 200,000 pageviews per day. I hire a system administrator and he configures Nginx + Varnish + Nginx, all pages run well. I recommend you choose a managed hosting service which can help you configure Nginx/Apache + Varnish + Nginx, don't use cPanel or other panels.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    207
    And here is my server's configuration:

    X3230
    8GB Ram(plan to upgrade to 16GB because 8GB is small for WP)
    500GB HDD
    20TB bandwidth on 1Gbps port

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    1,785
    I guess it boils down to what you consider managed support should be. To me, it encompasses issues related to the server and server software, not website applications like WordPress. They are system admins not developers.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    207
    Quote Originally Posted by TheJoker View Post
    I guess it boils down to what you consider managed support should be. To me, it encompasses issues related to the server and server software, not website applications like WordPress. They are system admins not developers.

    large traffic WordPress websites always have much problems

  6. #6
    You're arguing against things I never said. That's unhelpful.

    The problem is not with Wordpress - it operates on a ridiculous number of servers worldwide, and I can't find anyone who's ever seen this problem before. Their SERVER is not configured properly somehow. The specific redirect line that they say is causing the problem is used for more than just Wordpress.

    And these sites are far from heavy traffic. Traffic has nothing to do with these issues, anyway.

    I've run much busier WP sites on several hosts with no configuration problems. KH is great in some ways, and I acknowledged that. But it sounds like you just skimmed my review, saw Wordpress, and launched into a bunch of arguments that sometimes apply in hosting issues... but not in this case, as you'd know if you read carefully.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Hong Kong
    Posts
    207
    As I said, I have a WordPress website with 200,000 pageviews per day, of course I met some strange issues, including the 404 error you said.

    I can visit the page but Google said 404 error, not WordPress issue? Small traffic WP website never met those problems.

    I believe that causes by WordPress for large traffic.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    United Arab Emirates
    Posts
    468
    Im in the same boat as you with Knownhost.

    I also opened a thread asking for alternative hosts for transferring my site to them.

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1039362

  9. #9
    Hi BlueMushrooms,

    I'm sorry to learn you feel this way. Could you please either PM or post your ticket number where I can learn about the situation to see what might have happened there? Generally speaking in my 17 years in this industry this is a very first time I'm hearing about 410 http status code anywhere but RFC, I won't be surprised if not many people (including but not limited to our support team) know about this.
    Also, I found this: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-410/ after a quick search for wordpress and 410. Do you have this plugin installed or you're trying to handle this somehow differently? I guess all this information is provided in your ticket so I just need a ticket number to see what is going on.
    Please note that we do not and, actually, cannot provide full blown support for 3rd party applications. This is not something that is doable in this world. I would appreciate if you can let me know if you'll find a company who will claim they do - I'll signup with them myself to see how they're doing this

    Farrukh - do you have problems with WP and/or our support? If so - please post/PM me the ticket number(s) where I can learn about your situation. As far as I'm aware you're unhappy with the network downtime which happend on Saturday and was due to the massive DDOS which took down whole Colo4 premium network. If this is not the case and you're upset about something else please either post ticket number(s) in your thread and PM them to me so I can investigate and, possible, correct the situation.

    Regards,
    Paul
    Last edited by KnownHost-P; 04-13-2011 at 09:05 AM.
    KnownHost Linux VPS Specialists
    Toll Free: (866)-785-5479
    www.knownhost.com sales@knownhost.com

    New look & New plans!

  10. #10
    Hi Paul,

    The ticket is 161362. Yes, I am using that plugin as a stopgap solution, but since every plugin adds "weight" to WP, I don't consider it a longterm solution. (That plugin makes it so every post I delete instantly begins sending 410s by adding them all to the database - I would prefer to add just the 410 redirects I want into htaccess.)

    I would not expect you to troubleshoot a third party script - but since the script is not having this problem on any other servers I can find by posting online in several forums, that suggests to me it's not a Wordpress problem.

    (And of course, even if it turns out there's a good reason why your servers are configured the way they are, I will still have to leave, because my sites depend on Wordpress and I need a host whose server configuration works with it.)

    Thanks for looking into it further.

  11. #11
    BlueMushrooms,

    Thanks for the ticket number, I'll check your system/site to see if I can find what might be a problem there. So far I'm seeing two key things in the ticket history:
    - From one of the replies from you:
    I removed everything but the redirects, and it worked fine, like you said. I put back ONLY the standard Wordpress rules, and it stopped working. Therefore, it is the Wordpress rules your server can’t handle, not anything else in the htaccess. No script developer is going to tell me anything different.
    - Part of one of the replies from our team:
    Its the wp rule "RewriteRule . /index.php [L]" causing this problem. When I comment that entry from .htaccess file, everything works as you said, and I can see the "410 Gone page". When that rule is present everything is being directed to wp and that's is how the plugin wp-410 being called upon on 410 error. I do not know what specific things to be modified on server as the mod_rewrite rules work in similar manner on all servers. If you have any suggestion here, I'll make the corresponding changes on server.
    It sounds like a conflict of rules defined in your .htaccess. I'll research this a little further to see if I can find a way to get this working in the way you want.
    Your VPS doesn't have any kind of KH-specific Apache or mod_rewrite - your system is running with standard software components with standard cPanel, etc.

    Regards,
    Paul
    KnownHost Linux VPS Specialists
    Toll Free: (866)-785-5479
    www.knownhost.com sales@knownhost.com

    New look & New plans!

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    India
    Posts
    1,453
    I don't think its knownhost problem, its problem from your side because you don't have proper knowledge to setup. But if you want you can learn all these things don't blame on knownhost.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    1,785
    Quote Originally Posted by TheJoker View Post
    I guess it boils down to what you consider managed support should be. To me, it encompasses issues related to the server and server software, not website applications like WordPress. They are system admins not developers.
    Quote Originally Posted by BlueMushrooms View Post
    You're arguing against things I never said. That's unhelpful.

    The problem is not with Wordpress - it operates on a ridiculous number of servers worldwide, and I can't find anyone who's ever seen this problem before. Their SERVER is not configured properly somehow. The specific redirect line that they say is causing the problem is used for more than just Wordpress.

    And these sites are far from heavy traffic. Traffic has nothing to do with these issues, anyway.

    I've run much busier WP sites on several hosts with no configuration problems. KH is great in some ways, and I acknowledged that. But it sounds like you just skimmed my review, saw Wordpress, and launched into a bunch of arguments that sometimes apply in hosting issues... but not in this case, as you'd know if you read carefully.
    We shall see.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
    Location
    CPU
    Posts
    2,187
    Ask for Server IP & Nameservers IP to check if your reseller provider truly provides 100% white-label.

  15. #15
    I belive I found a possible reason for this, just need a bit more information to finalize things. At this point it would be pretty safe to say that OP will have the very same "issue" on any recently built cPanel system. Where "recently" appears to be anything after 8/26/2008.

    Regards,
    Paul
    KnownHost Linux VPS Specialists
    Toll Free: (866)-785-5479
    www.knownhost.com sales@knownhost.com

    New look & New plans!

  16. #16
    Huh - Paul is right. I never dreamed Cpanel would be the issue. Very odd.

    Thanks for the hard work, Paul! I wish the support guys had just passed the ticket along to you in the first place, instead of telling me they were all out of ideas and too bad.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    United Arab Emirates
    Posts
    468
    Quote Originally Posted by KnownHost-P View Post
    Farrukh - do you have problems with WP and/or our support? If so - please post/PM me the ticket number(s) where I can learn about your situation. As far as I'm aware you're unhappy with the network downtime which happend on Saturday and was due to the massive DDOS which took down whole Colo4 premium network. If this is not the case and you're upset about something else please either post ticket number(s) in your thread and PM them to me so I can investigate and, possible, correct the situation.

    Regards,
    Paul
    I am not running WP and my issue is not with the DDos, its with your support.
    Last edited by Farrukh; 04-14-2011 at 11:47 AM.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    1,785
    Quote Originally Posted by Farrukh View Post
    Isnt it odd that when someone opens a thread here at WHT or complains, you come to solve everything up quickly.
    Not really. I see many competent providers coming here to resolve issues with their clients. You don't want the assistance and prefer to bash KH and move on?
    Hosting is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

  19. #19
    I recommend KH to people all the time... you won't find a better reliable value from a real hosting company.

    I'm sure they'll get you straightened out.

Similar Threads

  1. My 2 day and my 4 year review of KnownHost
    By LeMarque in forum VPS Hosting
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 04-05-2011, 03:19 AM
  2. [Review] - KnownHost One Year Later
    By geekie246 in forum VPS Hosting
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 12-27-2010, 12:13 PM
  3. KnownHost review
    By Name68 in forum VPS Hosting
    Replies: 11
    Last Post: 12-07-2008, 02:32 AM
  4. Knownhost 1 year review
    By buzz27 in forum VPS Hosting
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 06-17-2008, 10:47 PM
  5. After being with KnownHost for almost a year..
    By gpl24 in forum VPS Hosting
    Replies: 19
    Last Post: 05-17-2008, 08:55 PM

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •