New Clook website launched at last

[James]

You can't beat the service from Clook. Not the cheapest, but certainly the best in class.

http://www.clook.co.uk/

[rob]

Like the fact they offer the 10 for 12 if you buy for a year.

[David]

Well, they've been talking about that new website for so long that I imagined something spectacular. Actually, it's rather understated. Obviously, they have no intention of changing the way they promote themselves (i.e. not at all), growing their client base through word of mouth.

At least those of us who host there can feel confident in the knowledge that they won't be swamped with new clients, causing a fall in service quality. ;)

[Tom]

We had a bad experience with Clook - our (shared) server went down on a Friday afternoon and they did not get the website onto a new server until after the weekend. So the plan is to move to another company.

[David]

That sounds very unlike Clook. I guess you were just unlucky. I've had nothing but good experiences. This morning I put in a ticket for a change to my php.ini file. It was completed within the minute - I had to laugh it was so quick.

[James]

I have only ever had one problem. This was where they changed a setting in Apache which caused problems on my site. They denied changing anything at first, then agreed they had changed something but said it wouldn't have caused the site problems (let me tell you it HAD caused the problems).

But they actually re-coded some of my PHP to work round the problem, which I thought was pretty cool.

They also agreed to raise the memory limit as defined in the php.ini file. I can't imagine any other host doing this!

So I continue to rave about them too. They're excellent.

[rob]

They have also helped me and it is so quick!

This was even on a Sunday!

[Tom]

Apparently the problem was that Clook are not familiar with Ruby. We have moved to a dedicated box. Its a good deal cheaper than Clook but there is no technical support except in the event of a hardware failure. Please cross you fingers.

[David]

Apparently the problem was that Clook are not familiar with Ruby. We have moved to a dedicated box. Its a good deal cheaper than Clook but there is no technical support except in the event of a hardware failure. Please cross you fingers.

There are a lot of dedicated servers being advertised at very low cost (much lower than my VPS with Clook) but I wouldn't even consider it as the support from Clook has been excellent. If (when) I need a dedicated server, I'll be staying with Clook, even at twice the cost of other hosts.

[James]

David, have you noticed a problem with Clook MySQL backups at the moment? When I use Backup in CPanel to download a database, it downloads an empty file (although the problem is intermittent).

Clook are looking into it - might be worth checking your sites (if you use this backup method).

[David]

I tend to use phpMyAdmin for backups - is that what you mean? I did a download backup this morning and it's fine. I do depend on this feature so it would be good to know the outcome.

[James]

No, not PHPMyAdmin.
In Cpanel there is an option called "backups" and you can do a one-click download of all your site files and database.

[David]

OK, I just backed up all my databases, including the CADTutor forum (107MB ) and all were fine. I imagine the problem must be server specific. Which server/node are you on?

[David]

No, not PHPMyAdmin.
In Cpanel there is an option called "backups" and you can do a one-click download of all your site files and database.

Oh, that one. I've never used it. It sounds convenient but I've always done it the hard way - although it is now sounding more bullet-proof.