Update May 2007: The excellent service continues - the Field server is as reliably as ever with new features that helps keep the site running extremely well. Enough capacity is available to cope with the surge of visitors as the exam revision season gets into full swing - over tens of thousands of daily visitors can appear at this time. The server status information has now reappeared and you can see the stability of the service. Update December 2006: As a further upgrade in service, the Field server has now transferred to the UK. Still a dedicated server managed by UnitedHosting.co.uk, but now an even more powerful and brilliant server. As details become available I will update this page with the uptime details and further information about the service. However, suffice to say things can get even better now. For the moment the uptime statistics have been removed as the service no longer exists. The Field server, for the past one and a half years was 'up' for 99.997% of the time. Fantastic! The new server is located in the UK Docklands - in this room (more photos to follow when UH have updated them!)

Update July 2006: The Field server continues to perform brilliantly - I now host all my sites using it and it has coped with an enormous amount of visitors. The SchoolHistory.co.uk site now receives nearly 20,000 visitors a day.

Update February 2005: The new 'Field' server is now online and the site has been successfully transferred. This is a dedicated server just for my websites - meaning that SchoolHistory.co.uk now has much more bandwidth and server space. The 'uptime' monitor below shows how stable the server is

The hosting history of SchoolHistory.co.uk

When the site was first launched it was hosted on free BTInternet webspace. Using a domain name redirect, each visitor was forwarded onto BTInternet space. This was an ideal situation to start with, but soon proved an untidy solution as people tried to link directly to individual pages. There were also performance issues with the website hosting and errors became more and more frequent. BTInternet then changed their terms of service, removing the extremely generous 2 gigabyte storage limit and replacing it with a 20 megabyte limit. The SchoolHistory.co.uk site was already larger than this limit, so I immediately looked for alternative hosting.

As the site was already registered with UK2.net, I simply purchased webspace with them and moved the entire site. This caused a minimum of difficulty, and now meant that the SchoolHistory.co.uk domain could be properly used. There were several months of successful service and as the site became more and more popular I was pleased with the service.

However, a number of issues did begin to emerge. These involved the site not 'cacheing' (I think that is the correct spelling!) correctly. This meant access to the site was slow and updates did not appear as I wished. UK2.net was ideal for starting out, but I decided to move onto something more advanced.

In Summer 2002 we upgraded the server capability via new hosting provided by Dot5Hosting. I was delighted with this service as the new server capabilities offering mySQL, php, cgi and related technologies. I began to explore the possibilities with these and the new teachers' discussion forum (using the fabulous InvisionBoard) was created. While Dot5Hosting worked, it was ideal. However, nearly a year later the server started having difficulties. During June 2003 the SchoolHistory.co.uk site experienced great trouble - this was due to the failure of Dot5Hosting to fix their servers. We had, until that time, had very a very good service with Dot5. The total failure to offer support drove us away.

This time I did more research. I explored the discussion forums at WebHostingTalk.com. They provided an opportunity to discuss who were the best hosts, which hosts seemed reliable and which were best avoided. It was unsurprising to find one particular host should have been avoided. Any guesses?

I very quickly discovered UnitedHosting.co.uk. They responded to my enquiry e-mails politely and efficiently. Even though I had some really annoying questions, they were prepared to respond and explain things to me. I signed up immediately.

What has been the most impressive aspect of UnitedHosting.co.uk is their support. With the previous host I would send a request and not get a response - or only get a response if there was a certain member of technical support. UnitedHosting.co.uk has quite literally been brilliant with requests answered quickly and issues being sorted out without any messing about. The posts on their forum simply highlight this.

As the site has become more popular with the increased demands on bandwidth they help helped me upgrade the capabilities. Initially the site had a bandwidth limit of 40Gig in August 2003, moved up to 60Gig in September, 80Gig in October and was set up at 120Gig for November. In December 2003 I decided, with the help and guidance of UnitedHosting.co.uk, to use a semi-dedicated server instead. This provides even more available bandwidth and will hopefully cater for increased demand in the future.

When this entirely new server was set up there were a few issues. However, I was kept informed and thus completely confident in their work. Since these errors were quickly ironed out, the site has performed really well. The data shown near the top of this screen illustrates this.

So, in short, the site has moved about since its launch, but I believe it has now found its home. I have already recommended UnitedHosting.co.uk to colleagues and have also moved the other sites I am associated with to the company. I've also added their logo to the bottom of each redesigned page - as a sign of confidence and satisfaction with the company.

Six months later, the service has been impeccible. UnitedHosting.co.uk have transfered all their hosting to even faster and more powerful servers. Moving servers is a tricky process, but it was achieved with a minimum of downtime. I have since raised the bandwidth for SchoolHistory.co.uk to 160Gig due to even more demand. I continue to be impressed with their service and have recommended them to my colleagues. They have been similarly delighted. Well done UnitedHosting.co.uk!

Later still - February 2005 - I have now transferred the site to a dedicated server, called 'Field' managed by UnitedHosting.co.uk. This gives this site a much greater bandwidth and allows my to upload many more resources and interactive materials. For now the site bandwith is set to 250Gig, but there is space for more as required!

July 2006 - the site continues to grow and server issues are now a thing of the past. The only problem now is keeping everything updated.

Andrew Field, July 2006.