I opened my account a few months back and have so far had two outages during the day (my site seems to currently be down). I was wondering how often this happens for other users and if there is anything to do about it. Could I have two mirror sites and if one is down redirect to the other? I don't know if that is possible. Thanks for any ideas!
It's possible - but not here, not for the prices we charge. As you might imagine, legitimate suppliers of mirrored, 100% fault-tolerant service are extremely expensive. If you find someone that is offering it for $20 or $30 a month, look closely under the hood, because it isn't true mirroring. Having said that, it is possible to set up a mirroring system for your site yourself, but it's not easy (if your site uses a database it becomes exponentially more difficult), so I couldn't really point you to any one method or tutorial that will work for everyone. I've been maintaining web sites for more than 15 years, and personally, I wouldn't bother with it. It's too involved and requires too much attention, and even a DIY solution requires paying for two accounts on separate services, one of which is pretty much constantly idle as a standby. Our uptime is very good and we rarely experience any extended outages. I understand the desire to have a web site that never goes down under any circumstances, but ensuring 100% uptime is an expensive proposition, and honestly, it's not a claim that we (or any shared host) can make.
