The irony of ironies is that you could’ve received better service with the free-of-charge WordPress service, whose servers are accountable to tens of thousands of blogs across the intro-net.

On a related note:

Wonder of wonders,
miracle of miracles,
BAB is back
and it’s here for keeps!

Well, it’s nice to see the site back online. And it’s a darned good thing you backed up all of your data. Since you requested that I post the content of my email to you here, here’s some information that might be helpful.

Another site I frequent has recently been having bad problems with Servage. His account kept getting hacked, and malicious scripts inserted. Before considering them or other hosting companies, you might want to check out hostjury.com to see what others are experiencing. I recommend whenever contemplating a hosting solution, check the guarantees, and call customer support a few times. You should be able to reach a real tech who knows what he is doing and can access the machine your site is hosted on. If you get India, or canned responses, keep looking.

I’ve hosted my own company website before, along with mail servers and ftp servers. I’m not an expert, but I learned a few things along the way.

First, server software that supports Frontpage extensions seems to always be under attack. A lot of people are recommending not using that, and sticking with companies that host on Linux boxes, and that stay on top of updates and security issues. It’s not impossible to be secure with M$ software, but I try to stay away from it on either side of the connection. Wherever it’s not possible, it takes constant attention to stay ahead of the bad guys.

You already proved the wisdom of doing your own backups. Always do that!

Since your data throughput is not extreme here, you might want to consider hosting on your own computer. It takes some learning, but it’s not too bad if you make it another hobby. But that also depends on whether your ISP is reasonable. Back when I finally and with extreme prejudice was able to dump Comcast, that wasn’t an option.

Another alternative is to look for small ISP’s in your neighborhood that offer dialup and web hosting. If they are local, and run the machines in their own building, and know what they are doing, they might be a valuable resource. Even if you can’t get the techie on the phone until he shows up in the morning, at least he’ll be able to do a restore on your account and view the logs to find out what happened, and upgrade whatever needs to be fixed. That’s what we do for the small company I work at. I get a pipeline to a guy who knows what he is doing, and that’s worth the price of admission right there.

I’m running long here, but since you indicated that advice is welcome, I’ll check with a few buddies about the best low-cost way to keep a blog up with good security.

–John–