Why Cheap Hosting Isn’t So Cheap

When I’ve got time to kill, I like to read my fellow web developers’ tales of woe. It’s like when I watch a movie about a post-apocalyptic future — I’m both fascinated and happy I’m not the one getting chased by nuclear mutants.

Well, today I have a tale of my own. Friday I wake up to a phone call from a panicking client. Their website is down, and since the site is a major marketing tool for the company, it’s a pretty serious issue.

We hop into *figure this out figure this out what’s going on* mode. We realize that the site isn’t really down–every page but the main index was accessible, but none of the includes that rely on the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] variable are working.

Transcript after the jump.