If you’ve tried to visit UrbanGrounds anytime between 10:00 p.m last night and 12:30 p.m. today, you might have noticed my site was down, and in its place a lovely error message from my host (SimpleHost) stating that “This Account has been Suspended”.

I tried their 1-800 Support line immediately last night, but of course received the “We are currently closed. Our office hours are..” recorded message.

I call back this morning and found out that my account had been suspended for a MySQL database abuse issue. “OK”, I asked. “What was the abuse and how do we resolve it?” The support desk was of absolutly no help. He told me to call back in about 5 hours.

I called back after lunch, and the 2nd shift support guy couldn’t explain to me what exact ‘abuse’ I had perpetrated on the MySQL database. After about 20 minutes of being on hold and of listening to the support key type, he flatly tells me, “I’ve lifted the suspension, and your site should be back up now.”

Ok…that’s progress. But I press him on “why” it was suspended to begin with. Did they identify whatver caused my resource-usage spike? Did they resolve the issue? He doesn’t know, but has promised to get back to me as soon as he can find the answers.

Sigh.

In the meantime, I’m making backups of my database (which resides on their servers), and am looking for a new hosting company. Any recommendations?