RadioNX Moves and Improves

Well, the move to the new and improved (and hopefully much faster) server was pretty painless. Our new host, Media Temple seems to really have their act together.

mt-120x60-lt__69262f3.pngI’ve moved hosting services for assorted sites I’ve run and designed over a dozen times in the last dozen years, and Media Temple pretty much gets my vote. The hosting at Media Temple will cost you a couple of bucks more than your typical all-you-can-eat hosting service, but the technology and forward thinking Media Temple puts into building their hosting service makes it worth ponying up a few extra pennies a month.

The funny thing is about web hosts, is that they offer you the world, and never deliver. I’ve been through quite a few, offering you unlimited bandwidth and huge amounts of file space and blah, blah blah… The truth is, that you share a server with hundreds or thousands of other web sites. A little ‘bad behavior’ from just a few other sites can bring your web site to a crawl. Then, if you get a spike in traffic, usually the host has a ‘back door’ on their terms and conditions and whether you like it or not, they can shut you down in a heartbeat. I’ve seen it happen.

Media Temple takes a different approach. The servers are set up on a grid, so you share the power of all of the collective servers. Even if you get a major digg, your site is going to share the resources of other servers. Sure, there are a couple of caveats. You are alloted a certain amount of ‘grid’ units per month. Go over the 1000 grid units and Media Temple charges you an overage (ten cents per unit). While this sounds like a drag, it’s actually a pretty darn good idea. Here’s why: The allotment of grid units insures that the other sites on the grid are not taxing the servers with bad behavior and using all the servers resources. Why? Because abusing the server’s resources is going to cost them. On top of that, keeping your grid units down motivates you to make sure your pages and web apps are tuned.

Anyways, enough about the new host. Still, if you are looking for a new hosting, Media Temple out. It’s not your typical fly by night, fast-talking hosting service. They are home to Starbucks, Sony, ABC, Warner Brothers and of course RadioNx. Ha!

Now on to the updates…

The original idea behind RadioNX was a fast loading site with all the links to the daily radio news from across the net. Sure, it’s still that, however RadioNX has continued to add more features and well, stuff. The recent addition of tabbed pages with loading rss feeds to the radio trades and radio job openings was a great idea. Unfortunately, it dramically increased load times. So, the radio trade and job feeds have migrated to their own pages.
new radio news feed and job source navigation

Hopefully you will notice faster load times now and in the coming weeks as RadioNX works to slim down the code and load times to the site.


Your humble RadioNX admin.