After 13 years of very solid service, our Western Virginia-based web host encountered issues which they were unable to fix. To wit, certain users—predominantly in the UK but also in Switzerland—were no longer able to access the site. This included yours truly. I could not access my own site with Safari, Opera, Firefox or IE, upload to it or send/receive email. Yet all other websites I frequent worked fine. Our local Swiss ISP and web host in the US couldn't identify any issues whatsoever on their respective ends. Yet via remote log-in onto my work PC, tech support from either IT firm plainly verified that there was a very grave issue with 6moons; for my access, not any of theirs. Neither found anything wrong with my computer or my router settings. Yet ping speeds between 6moons and my computer were lousy, package loss up to 75%. Both sides were stumped as to cause. Both disavowed any responsibility for my scenario. Huzzah! My own interim solution became the Tor browser. Because Tor randomizes web traffic via multiple remote nodes, it bypassed whatever congested traffic node between the US and my router caused the time-outs. Since my web host couldn't identify the location of this trouble spot to reroute our traffic, it was time to migrate 6moons to a new data centre.


As of March 12th and after setting up a new host and migrating 18GB of site files, we're thus hosted in Europe. Our new hosting plan includes a virtual speed booster to optimize load times. The above test rates us 100/100 on performance, with our 4MB home page consisting of 38 requests (individual image and script data) loading in less than one second depending on location. As you can see, the biggest item of our home page is our galactic background. Without it, this page would load 0.3s faster. That said, once cached, reloading the same background for subsequent pages is a snap. As is, we're rated in the top 10% of all websites tested on speed. That's not too shabby. For most readers, this change should have occurred invisibly behind the scenes. Some may have noticed temporary log-on issues as the name host change propagated around the web, usually a process of 8-24hrs. Those who had been affected by the earlier time-out freezes should now be back in business. For many, the site may now load even faster than before. To all who experienced issues, thanks for your patience during our transition!