My apologies to the people who received a 'This Account has been suspended - contact billing/support' message during the last hour. It seems that the (shared) server crashed (it seems to about twice a day, suggesting they don't have enough servers), and because News Emails were going out at the time, they decided that W2S was the culprit. What makes this a bit annoying is that this particular host, which came out at the top of the pile when I tested speed, limits outgoing emails to 200 an hour - so I wrote an extra section that filters News Emails out at 1 maximum of 170 an hour, giving priority to emails off the website like 're-send my password' emails and still keeping these under 190 an hour. I also had long chats with them about their email limit because of negative comments from others amongst their users, and they assured me 'keep under 200 an hour and you'll be fine. Even 200 an hour is an incredibly small amount (most hosts have a limit, if any, in the thousands), and Hostgator is not a cheap host.

For fun, here's part of my chat with hostgator.com:

Andre: Suspended
Andre: For bulk email
David: how do I fix this?
David: I am within the limits that I was told, and I asked specifically, and I wrote a php script to throttle and check the amount I was sending
Andre: That caused the server to crash
...
David: I can't believe that sending 200 emails per hour max, individually and 6 seconds apart would be responsible for a server crash...lol
Andre: No? It is very possible. That is considered bulk email David
Andre: You have to realize that this is not your dedicated server. You share resources with other people.
Andre: If 10 send that amount at the same time the server goes off
Andre: Always remember you share it with other people
...
Andre: Set it to send 150 or so
...
David: all my email mout goes into a Mysql table which then feeds it out at under 190 per hour
...
David: I can easily set it lower if this helps you restore the account.
Andre: Yep
Andre: SImply set it to a little bit lower
Andre: and send us an email to support@hostgator.com
Andre: And you will be reactivated
David: I set it at 190 for emails requested by people from the site (eg re-send password), and at 170 per hour for my newsletter mailing
David: I can't send you an email because my acount is deactivated...lol
Andre: Yep
Andre: You have to remember always that
Andre: You can send us a trouble ticket
Andre: Same
David: ok, thanks
Andre: http://www.hostgator.com/ticket
Andre: No problems, David
David: many thanks... cya

Anyway, all resolved now, News Emails are going out at the sort of slow rate that makes mailing them by Australia Post look attractive. Site logs show that a lot of people are cruising around W2S since the new website (even though few are yet posting on the Forum), so it's only a matter of time before this hosting company finds some other reason to cancel the service. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

So my apologies to everyone who has been inconvenienced...
Submitted by David on 21-09-2005

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