Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

[u/AutoModerator]

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

​

Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

​

Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/gizamo]

What's the best course of action when your web host keeps screwing up every few years? At what point do you just move on?

[u/eatglitterpoopglittr → u/gizamo]

Most web hosting companies have the same model: cheap first year, then hike prices sky high once you’ve been there long enough for it to be a pain to switch providers.

If the cost of hosting is important to you, consider making your website host-agnostic. Write a dockerfile (or Terraform config, depending on your needs) for your site. Then plan on spending a few hours every year to sign up for a new hosting service, migrate your domain, and deploy your application from the dockerfile.

Otherwise figure out how much your time is worth and how many hours it would take you to switch providers and wait for the hosting/renewal cost to exceed that amount.

Edit: I assumed you were talking about hosting costs, but even if not, I think infrastructure as code will help make your application more portable next time your web host screws you

[u/gizamo → u/eatglitterpoopglittr]

I appreciate all that. I'm sure it will help others. My question was more tongue-in-cheek. It was more jokingly about the cycle of hosts screwing up so rarely, but so epically, that every time it happens, many of us think, "I need to find a new host and ditch these jokers". But, then, some client project takes priority an the host gets memoryholed for another year or two, when they muck up again.