First, important question. Does anybody have experience with WP Engine private server hosting? Are they worth the money, because the price they quoted me is stratospheric.
Three days ago
Me: There is a giant mosquito.
Gordon, picking up a fly swatter: I’ll get it.
Me: I think you might need a bigger flyswatter.
Two days ago
Me: There is a spider of significant size in the bathroom.
Gordon: I’ll take it outside. ::Reviewing the size of the spider:: Hmm. No, I think I may have to kill this one.
Last night
Me, walking in my nightgown into the study.
Gordon: ?
Me: There is a scorpion in the closet.
Gordon, getting up.
Me: No need. I killed it. I just wanted you to know it was there and I almost stepped on it, so be careful walking in there barefoot.
It was a small scorpion, too, which made it particularly poisonous.
Listen, Texas, I am game and all, but quit it. I mean it.
OMG. Terrorized in NJ.
+1 in Brooklyn 🙂
+1 Boston
I feel you. Apparently, I’m a snake charmer. I don’t have any pesky rats or mice around though.
+1 SLC
I found a scorpion in my washing machine, once, when I lived in Austin.
+1 in NYC. Yikes and eek!!!
When we liven in NJ the worst were raccoons and squirrels. I kind of miss them now ???
+1 on the Left Coast
+1 Connecticut.
I gather that my habit of wandering barefoot in the dark… would not fly in Texas.
In fairness, it’s also dangerous where I live. Legos can launch an ambush from any surface.
+1
OUCH!!! LEGOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Caltrips +1
Last night I stepped out of the bathroom and saw something scurry down the hall. Light wasn’t on, so it was dim. I thought mouse. Turned on the light…spider. Big enough for the kitten to saddle up and ride.? After much screaming I managed to kill it. Not getting near enough to it to capture and release.?
So glad I live in Ontario where the only poisonous creature is the Massasauga rattle snake. Mind you the dock spiders at the cottage are as big as your hand.?
Well, at least if you decide to move to Australia, you’ll be prepared . . .
Australia is a nightmare
Most poisonous snakes
Giant spiders
Poisonous creatures to numerous to name
Surrounded by gigantic sharks
??????
and the box jellies. They are the most terrifying creature on earth if you ask me. If you survive, you’re in for agony beyond imagination. I’d rather take my chances with a shark.
It’s ok! The super killer creatures are rare to see.. well, mostly… but we have a sizeable elderly population, so if it was that dangerous we wouldn’t have anyone alive over 15-20!
In saying all that, am I totally badass because I’ve lived to 35?? ?
So glad I live in Norway where it’s too cold for creepy crawlies.
Where I’m from (Romania) we do have our fair share of snakes and bugs tho. I was in Malta a couple of weeks ago with my Norwegian boyfriend when I heard him screaming like a little girl because a lizard came into our AirBnb. We named him Draco 🙂
We just moved to Houston last year. We recently killed a venomous coral snake next to our drive way. I told my husband if I had known thise were here, we would still be in Ohio.
I’d be willing to bet that there are some snakes in Ohio, but perhaps not as many.
For an urban area, Houston has a lot of “green space” that supports wildlife. I used to watch bunnies on the lawn from my apartment window just off Beltway 8. Now, I watch the coyotes wander past my house after they’ve checked out the trash cans. (Indoor cats, thank you, no matter how big they are!)
If you see a snake, don’t try to kill it unless you are calm and have a plan. Otherwise, get away and call for help from someone who knows what they need to do.
Oh – fun fact – these days, rattlesnakes don’t rattle about half of the time. The feral hogs have learned to find the snakes by the sound of their rattles and eat them. The snakes that don’t rattle are the ones surviving and the percentage of them is rising…
I don’t understand why everyone kills snakes. Most snakes will go away if you just leave them alone. Coral snakes have very small mouths and are unlikely to bite anything unless you’re barefoot and they can get a toe.
Also, rattle snakes rattle to warn you. They want you to go away. Snakes act aggressive because what other way do they have to scare us off? We have so many snakes on our property but we leave them alone. Other than relocating a few large rat snakes from our chicken coup, and the one curled up in my husbands passenger seat. Ha! I had no idea he could scream like that!
That’s because you never met an aggressive copperhead in the stream during their mating season.
I was going to point that it could be worse and you could live in Australia. I still remember that video of the giant spider dragging a dead mouse up the side of a washing machine.
My workplace uses wp-engine. We love them, but I’m pretty sure they’re not cheap. We used to use GoDaddy. OMG, what a mistake….
Just wait until you get a snake in the bathroom. Texas is full of fun stuff like this. lol
There was a 4″ spider in my tub yesterday. Normally they go down the drain, but I had to get this one out of doors because it was too big! There was some hyperventilating involved.
Thankfully Seattle only does the spiders, not scorpions or mosquitoes.
Oh yes, Seattle area does so have mosquitoes, just in the “wetlands” areas … e.g. marshy areas where (unfortunately) a lot of condos have been built. And frogs. Lots of frogs singing lustily and loudly of ‘amore”. But generally no scorpions or dangerous snakes.
And more and more sugar ants in Seattle…
In theory if you kept a small herd of skunks, they would eat the scorpions. (I particularly dislike the crunch scorpions make during the death by shoe process, but I never could get any of my housemates or landlords to allow me to keep a small herd of skunks.)
There is a Large herd of skunks that lives in the forest preserve next to the mobile home park where I live. They particularly Do.Not.Like. to be startled by loud noises, so Fourth of July week was really stinky, between gunpowder of firecrackers, etc., being thrown around at night, and the odor of startled skunks. Yay. Happy holiday.
Have any R. O. U. S.’s been spotted in House Andrews?
Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist…
Ah yes, memories of Beirut – and flying cockroaches too.
Gross.
Don’t come to NC we have palmetto bugs, which are basically giant flying cockroaches
Talk about icky crunchy noises when squishing!!!!!
We lived in El Paso for 2 years. They had freaky scary bugs! I forget the name of this one in particular that looked almost like a fat giant centipede – it could actually eat small birds. I am definitely not a fan of insects.
There is a very large millipied and vinegarons, called whipped tailed scorpions. Both are harmless, just scare the hell out of the unaware they are so large. Google them.
Since I have moved to Texas (from Arizona) I have survived an ice storm that split trees, power out for 3 days and over a thousand dollars to get split tree off house, save another tree that started to split (giant bolt – it’s really cool) and made me drop my chemistry class. Then there was the softball size hail (there is documentation – not exaggerating.) I saw the bottom of a tornado as it went by overhead. Inside my brain the science teacher was thinking “cool!” and the rest of me was thinking “what the HECK??” and “why did I move here again??” I have seen strange bugs, had both bugs and spiders fall on my head and I have planted 3 trees that have actual leaves. (desert people will understand) Welcome to Texas!
Living in northern San Antonio, a bit south of you. Neighbors have been reporting a lot of coral snakes. And of course rattlesnakes. I think all the rain we’ve gotten has resulted in more food sources for them.
Sorry, can’t help on wp-engine. We use Siteground. Not expensive, fantastic support (by smart helpful human beings) but we don’t have super intensive needs. Maybe an option ?
It’s hot outside, they just want to get cool too… But I totally get your POV. I don’t have giant mosquitos here but I have a metric ton of the ones I do have and all of them are devoted to the idea of toting me off to be their temporary blood supply (until they suck me dry.)
To be fair, most “giant mosquitoes” are Crane flies. Some crane flies eat mosquitoes (although this might be crane fly larvae eat mosquito larvae) They don’t bite.
And while some small scorpions are very poisonous, not all are. Some just hurt when they sting (a lot)
The Emperors in the photograph are raised in many homes. They can sting, but are easy to handle.
I love nearly every aspect of fall–except for the bugs. And rodents. Fall is when they all decide it’s too cold outside and start to move indoors. And unlike in spring, now they are all fully grown and terrifying and icky. Thanks, but no thanks.
Private – I want to call that dedicated. I work in the “cloud”.
Private could be a standalone separate physical server, or could be a dedicated segregated virtual server. One is much more expensive than the other.
Then what is included?
Licensing, monitoring, remediation, patching, backups? What’s needed to support a dedicated WP site? Would it all fit in one server or are there multiple? One for the back end and one the web front in? Any tolerance for downtime, and how much? There are so many option for cloud and hosting that you really need to make sure they give details of what that environment will be and services included.
It’s a dedicated server, which is hella pricey. For this amount of moneys, we get CDN, staging environment, 24/7 support, they take over security and caching, so there are no more plugins. We get their version of cPanel, and there is practically no downtime. Basically, they take care of everything except for the typical wordpress updates.
The problem I am facing now is that the current host, while stable, only allows FTP acess to the back end of the site and they are not responsive. For example, they informed me that there 600+ entries in the htaccess file, when there should be like two. I haven’t touched the htaccess file. Any edits within it were done server side.
Also, I want to switch the site to https and when I informed my host of this, their response was “you have a lot of work to do.” No, I don’t want to do work, I want to give you money to do work for me. So I am kind of stuck.
The problem is that our year-to-date stats right now are showing over 6 million unique visitors and over 14 million pageviews, plus we have traffic spikes, which prices us out of most non-dedicated options. So I guess we are victims of our own success.
Sorry not sorry (to increasing your stats).
I bet you saw an uptick on Fridays when people were refreshing to get the latest Innkeeper installment.
My work have been using WP Engine for basic hosting, not private server, and have had zero issues with it. Pricier than others, yes. But provides a lot more for the money.
We could have DEV, STAGING, and LIVE on ours as well, but don’t need it at this time.
We have to manage plugins in WordPress, but that’s not too difficult for us.
Your website is a marketing tool. Sometimes the budget hurts, but hopefully the ROI is there to justify it.
Is this your only private hosting option? My brother owns a tech consulting company, and I’m guessing he could find you something less than “stratospheric”. If you are interested in a quick free consult, please get in touch with me.
Maybe the rule of three was in effect and you are done for a while?
Always and I mean always shake out your shoes before putting them on your feet when you live in Texas!!! Let me tell you, you will only have to feel something squirming around under your foot once before that lesson hits home. I moved to Louisiana and then to Florida. I still shake out my damn shoes! I don’t care if I can see in the toes I am shaking that damn shoe. Just mentioning it makes me shiver and I can still feel it in my shoe under my foot wiggling back and forth.
Opinions on hosting. Back years ago we ran a hosting company before everyone had cable options. No matter what you are paying, you are paying too damn much unless they are doing every single thing for you 100% on a 24/7 flat fee. (I’m talking down to making your webpages exactly as you want them to dealing with DDOS attacks at 3am or major bandwidth usage on new pages) Then it can be worth the money. Otherwise the reality is, server hosting companies have very little invested in keeping your website up and traffic clean. (Amazon is $77 a month for one of their basic packages and they are a top level hosting compared to hostgator.com that runs $12) Lots of basic info https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/web-hosting-prices/
I’m right above ya in oklahoma. It could be worse, at least we don’t live in australia.
Nopenopenope! I think I’ll stay in safe Maine. There was a snake in my bedroom last fall. Adorable little thing. That said, the only reason it was adorable is that there is nothing venomous enough to humans to worry about up here, so I didn’t have to worry about it killing me in self defense. Basically no tornados/hurricanes/earthquakes, either. We get noreasters, but as far north and inland as I am they’re not that bad.
I visited a friend in Richmond last year; she was constantly reminding me to stay on the beaten path because copperheads are a thing.
Tell me more about Maine. I heard you guys have good health insurance.
I think they have winter.
I think winter starts in August…
My Maine raised brother in law told me once that Maine had two seasons–July and winter. And my husband and I once asked a Mainer what people did in the winter if they did not ski or ice skate or any other winter sports. She looked slightly shocked and asked “if you don’t do those things, why would you live here?” Nuff said.
You forgot Mud. July, winter, mud.
If you like winter, with below freezing temperatures, and lots of snow, then Maine (as well as all the Northeast) is your state. My maternal grandmother used to go to the southern coast of Maine for vacation. I haven’t been able to get up there yet.
So beautiful June to September. Air so clear you can taste it. Colors so vibrant it doesn’t seem real. But then October to May clear and COLD.
Okay, that’s 3. That’s enough. It can stop now!
We moved into a log cabin a few years ago. I went from panic attack at a thumb nail sized spider to naming them like pets. Right now I have Larry the pervert who only comes out when I shower. Larry just hangs out on the ceiling then crawls back into his tunnel when i get out. I also have Susan and Doug who have a web in the chinking by the back door. They do an excellent job bouncing unwanted flies. I have had to kill a few that got a little too bold in their exploration of our home (as in too close to the bed). But all in all, I can definitely say I have been cured of any phobia I may have had with bugs. Though I really, really, really don’t want to wake up to another scorpion walking across my husband and I.
I live in Oklahoma and have had similar weeks. The scorpion getting into the bed and stinging me and the dog only to be killed by the cat was an eventful night. Glad he didn’t get you.
And you just know the cat is lording over the dog about killing the mean scorpion.
Our cats huffed at us for flinging the sheets of the bed. AND THE DOGS! they just rolled over and went back to sleep. The whole lot is worthless if it’s not something they bring in themselves.
I feel you. I found 2 big spiders the other day in the garden, while watering the plants. One was on a very big spiderweb (all of my armlenght) ?
When I was a teen, I spent some of my summer at my aunt’s mountain house: little scorpions under the pillow were scarily frequent…
In NYC we sometimes have small spiders, or large water bugs. You learn to deal with them, shoe, vacuum cleaner, newspaper. I usually try to be fast and say OMG several times. After killing, I generally put lots of baby powder on it, I can’t stand seeing all those legs.
And dispose of corpse in toilet.
And then there are mice and rats, several times I was on the subway when one emerged or got on. They don’t bother me, had hamsters and worked with rats in college. I have seen grown men scream and run away almost trampling anyone in their path.
True NewYorkers, just go with the flow. And ignore them.
But scorpions, they would scare me.
Did you say you have six million unique viewers !!
Wow , that is incredible and just proves that your fans are worldwide and very devoted.
I remember our first house on the lake. We got it cheap because there was temporary flooding, something about a 20 year cycle. We put in pumps, got the water out of the house, and woke up to a muskrat having clawed through the wall and moving into our living room.
Oh that southern living! Lets see since I moved to SC….
I have encountered our State bird; the Palmetto bug.A giant roach that flies and hisses. With this frightening image now in your mind. I have survived Palmetto Bug- Apocalypse where a freak occurence of millions of those things surrounding my apartment building. I wish I was exaggerating. It was a horror film scene.
Shortly after there was a frog in my bathroom…no idea how it got there…but there was a frog.
Then there was a freak ant experience. Where fire ants tunneled from their nest into said appartment into at the time my 4 year old daughter’s room.
2 years later we survived a snake in the apartment.
We finally moved. Now we just share space with giant wolf spiders.
I miss NY, where roaches don’t fly, ants don’t bite and there no snakes. Where spiders just tell you “what’s up?” as they walk by you in the shower.
Palmetto bugs are called tree roaches by the people I knew is Houston. The first time I saw one was in the first month of living there. One of our leasing people lived on the floor above me and I took advantage of that and dragged her downstairs to help me with it. She was as freaked as I was and we couldn’t catch it. So I lived with the knowledge that the damned thing was Still In The Apartment!!! Eventually, I saw it limping across my bedroom floor (EEEK!) but slowly, so I got a bowl and covered it and put a book on it to be sure. A few days later, I asked maintenance to come remove it. It was dead. Dead dead. The guy looked at me like I was nuts, but at least it was dead and out of my place. That was how I dealt with any of those damned things that stupidly came inside. (The apartments were sprayed outside monthly and inside as needed, so I think the roaches were weakened by the poison, causing delusions that lead them inside.
In 1999 we lived in Houston for 364 days, 12 hours, and 16 minutes. We hated every minute of it and the bugs were a bit part of that. Fire Ants, centipedes, millipedes, cockroaches, spiders of all shapes and sizes…UGH. We had a monthly visit from the exterminator guy to refresh the insect perimeter around the house but that didn’t help the fire ant infestation of the lawns. We didn’t want them to use pesticides there because of the dogs and the guy looked at me like I was mental. David still has scars on his legs from the fire ants he disturbed when he didn’t see the ground level nest and ran over it with the lawnmower. We moved back to Seattle as soon as we could manage it and now only have to deal with the annual spider mating season in the fall and the occasional mosquito festival in the summer. We put up a bat-house for the local little brown bats and that has helped keep the skeeters down. I’m glad Gordon bravely handles the invasion and good for you that you got that scorpion first!
I Live In Tennessee with two Siamese cats. They fortunately have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to other animals. They tolerated the Boxer, but didn’t indulge him. Swift claw to the forehead was the norm. Poor Patton. Lizards, spiders, flies, ants, centipeeds, millipedes, catepillars, mice and anything self propelled is quickly handled. They don’t want me to take it away.
I have not heard of WP Engine – I use Siteground, as well, and have for at least five years now. Great customer service. They serve a range of customers from really simple to dedicated servers. I only use the gogeek shared hosting with unlimited websites and overall 100k max visits a month. I have multiple websites (some with test versions), but not a lot of traffic at this time. They do have cloud hosting that is in between shared and dedicated – maybe an option for you there? They mention an auto-scale feature that helps to deal with traffic spikes, but they put the traffic needs in terms of cores, memory, ssd space and TB of data transfer, so not sure how that would translate to your visits.
Almost like living in Australia ?
???
I grew up in the Caribbean with houses that had open areas just below the roof for ventilation. I only ever had run ins with mosquitoes, wasps and flies. Moved to the island of Okinawa where the habu snake bite is so poisonous that if you were bit once, they would re-station your Active Duty member to somewhere else and air evacu off the island. Nine years there never saw one.
Moved to North Carolina in one year I have never screamed about the wildlife as much as I’ve had to here. I had to drive to pick up my kids from school because of bears on the main thoroughfare. Getting out of the water due to sharks near the shore at 3 different occasions (now we just walk on the sand or go to the pool to cool off). House infested with fireants, crickets and cockroaches coming out of the vents and light switches (they moved us to another house). Saw a fox and her cubs take down a small cat in the area directly behind my house. Frogs dropping out of trees onto you while you are trying to relax in the yard. And at 130pm in the afternoon a snake chilling on my front porch.
We are stuck here for the next 3 to 4 years….I have tried to like this state but I dont think it likes me.
I had a client on WPEngine and we moved them to Siteground because it wasn’t worth the cost. Your current host sounds awful regardless, so I definitely think you need to move. I assume your traffic is much, much greater than most of my clients’ sites, so you probably do need either a VPS or private server to handle the traffic, and a good CDN. I’ve heard good things about Flywheel but haven’t used them. There is a WordPress Hosting group on Facebook you can join for more specific feedback, and I know some people in there use WPEngine.
Good luck!
Also happy I live in VA and while we do have very large spiders, there are no scorpions.
You are super brave I can’t stand bugs I have peat people spray inside and outside once a month and if I find a bug in the house in between they come back to respray
Having lived in Texas for 68 of my 70 years, spiders, ants, mosquitos and roaches are as much of the weather pattern as the heat and humidity. I’m sorry, I’ll take them over snow, ice, and lethally cold temperatures.
I understand others will not feel this way. That’s okay, they don’t have to.
I’ve always known I was weird. It no longer bothers me.
Plus 1
Winnipeg Canada here. Mosquitos are the provincial bird, but nothing venomous at all! Very small garter snakes that nest in one area and are considered a tourist attraction. Of course, we regularly are colder than the surface of Mars in the winter. That’s why no bugs….
I know you had a bad experience in South Carolina, but I love my gated community near Clemson University.
In S. Central Texas there is a saying that everything flora and faunas stinks, stings or sticks, possibly all three at once.
I’m not that familiar with WP Engine (other than people I know who use them like them).
I’ve heard great things about Siteground (I have web developer friends who recommend Siteground to all of their clients).
I used Dreamhost when I still had a WP site and really liked them. Especially the back end. I had their mid-level plan, not a dedicated server, but I thought their pricing was reasonable.
That being said, WP Engine’s pricing nearly gave me a heart attack when I checked it out.
I’m a little south of Omaha. A small orb weaver spider took up residence on the passenger side rearview mirror on my CR-V. He/She survived every trip I took for about two weeks. My husband ended up naming it Bob. =) Finally, Bob got more ambitious and built the web between my car and Kiddo’s car. Kiddo did NOT appreciate, so I got a broom and gently evicted Bob from my car. He/She didn’t like that and ran away to find a better home. =) Good Bob…
1and1.com are pretty good for hosting, email, etc.
are you kidding me! I will never complain about the silverfish in oft damp sometimes rainy Victoria BC – just can’t, no way, scorpions nope, no way in hell.
When I lived in Houston, friends and acquaintances warned me about their dangerous creatures, which were mostly fire ants, copperheads, coral snakes (I really don’t know if it was a coral snake or it’s non-poisonous cousin the king snake; I really didn’t want to take the time to figure it out), water moccasins, you get the idea. No poisonous spiders particularly, no scorpions.
Seattle, well, Western Washington, doesn’t have any poisonous snakes and it’s spiders of danger are the black widow (don’t believe people who tell you those only live in dry climates and never in wet ones, because those damned things THRIVE in the dampness here and in Western Oregon), the brown recluse, which you seldom see, and the hobo spider, which looks just like the larger house spiders we get lots of.
Now I’m moving to Dallas. What do I get to see there? Is it like Austin and southward and general are, or does it have it’s own dangerous beasties? (Oh, and in parts of Houston, like where I lived, you need to look out for wild hogs; they are very dangerous and aggressive.)
If you lIve by a lake, Canadian Geese poop all over your yard plus all the other critters.
Dallas insects are pretty much the same as Houston or Austin. The worst are the fire ants and mosquitos, but I hear the brown recluse spiders are gaining ground. They have a potentially dangerous bite. The venom is necrotic in function and while most bites will eventually heal on their own, sometimes medical intervention is needed. Roaches are a fact of life everywhere in the south.
I live in Fort Worth, which is 30 miles west of Dallas. Roaches, mosquitoes, spiders, fire ants, and black hard shell bugs are pretty much the normal pests around here. Flies can be another problem.
Here’s the easy way to tell a venomous coral snake from a nonvenomous scarlet kingsnake, or any other nonvenomous snake (in the Americas anyway):
Red means stop, yellow means caution. If red and yellow touch, it’s venomous. If red and yellow are separated by black, it’s harmless.
We live in the woods, and those dratted things come in our house regularly. Bedroom slippers are a mandatory accessory.
I’m a huge WPEngine fan. I manage four WordPress sites for work. We were getting constant hacks until we moved to WPEngine. None since. Their tech support (I access via live chat) is amazing. Friendly, patient, professional, helpful. It’s expensive, yes, and worth it in my experience. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I’ve only had one mildly wrong answer from a tech in the year and a half we’ve been customers and I’ve contacted tech support with questions so many times. Often when there were complex procedures, the tech people would just do them for me, saving me the time to figure it out. I live in anxiety that they’ll be bought out by some giant hosting mill company. Feel free to email me with any questions.
I’m never ever ever moving out of the Pacific NW.
Not a fan of creepy crawlers. Drago haunts the garage looking for skinks which he brings in to play with and leaves parts laying around for us to pick up. Fortunately only two so far this year.