Church and State blog: I have been dealing with our web host SiteGround for the past three days and I am still no closer to getting answers

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

I have been dealing with our web host SiteGround for the past three days and I am still no closer to getting answers

I just don't get it! According to an email alert I received on 3 February from our web host SiteGround, the Operating System and other proprietary software for the server take 10GB of disk space. Our Church and State website takes an additional 2GB but that still leaves our server with 8GB because our SiteGround plan comes with 20GB. SiteGround technical support tells me that there are also logs, cache and temporary files - generated by the server - that grow until they are 'flushed' at some point, after which the disk usage reverts back to normal. Even if these files took another 2GB, that would still leave our server with 6GB; plenty for me to get on with without having to constantly check my Server Status page, which three days ago stated that our server had used 84% of our disk storage. The problem here lies in the fact that as soon as 90% of available storage is used, SiteGround issues an alert stating that without an upgrade our site could start experiencing service problems. They issued us with such an alert for the first time three weeks ago when coincidentally Declan was at a court hearing (see part two below).

The 84% figure I discovered last Monday made absolutely no sense. On 15 December 2015, when our site took more than 3GB, the standard flush brought our disk usage down from 85% to 72%. On 5 January 2016, when our site took 2.75GB, the flush brought our disk usage down from 80% to 69%. But on Monday, even though our site now only takes 2GB (because I have deleted lots of old pictures we don't need anymore), the disk usage stood at 84%. I quickly contacted SiteGround technical support but by the close of business on Monday all they would confirm was that there would be "no flush any time soon", which meant we could have been heading straight for service problems despite the fact that our chairman in North Carolina, Dr Stephen Mumford, pays SiteGround $1,000 a year to ensure that our 2GB site runs smoothly in 20GB of disk space without unnecessary hitches.

Yesterday morning I discovered that a flush had taken place overnight, but our total disk usage is still inexplicably high at 74% instead of 67% or less. 74% of 20GB is 14.8GB, meaning that, minus the 10GB taken for the Operating System and other proprietary software and the 2GB taken by our site, something is taking more than 2.5GB of disk space - the equivalent of a website bigger than Church and State! Neither yesterday nor today have SiteGround provided me with an explanation to account for this extra 2.5GB that I consider satisfactory. Based in Bulgaria, SiteGround is among the top hosting companies, as their Recap 2015 shows. And this link provides a look behind the scenes at their work, with the interview questions answered by their CEO, Tenko Nikolov.

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***

The following is taken from part two of my blog post on 3 February, "Heavey v The Greater London Authority: Outcome of Preliminary Hearing".

While Declan was at Court, I received for the first time ever an alert from our hosting company SiteGround stating that our Church and State website had used 90% of our available storage and that we could start experiencing service problems.

At first I thought this was some kind of mistake. I have these two screenshots dated 28 January 2016 showing that our disk space usage is 2.48GB and that we are only using 69% of the available storage:

I find it inexplicable how I could have received this alert, especially since our disk space usage is now just 2.39GB (ie, 0.09GB less than when we were only using 69% of the available storage). Our chairman Dr Stephen Mumford is paying SiteGround $1,000 per year to host the site and I am hoping this can be sorted without another upgrade.

SITEGROUND UPDATE (4 February): After two days of correspondence with SiteGround, a technical support supervisor has finally explained that the reason for the 90% usage was "the cPanel upgrade done by our system administrators recently". All the files left behind by this upgrade have now been 'flushed' and everything is back to normal.

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

I have been dealing with our web host SiteGround for the past three days and I am still no closer to getting answers

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