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March 14, 2006

Recent Blog Downtime and Problems

Some of you may have noticed, over the past week, that there has been some downtime with this blog. Now that things are finally ironing out on this front, I thought I'd pass along what happened.

I attempted to load, one morning at work, a special weather page that I have on this site (private url) that collects a few weather maps onto one page. I use this page at work, so I can track the weather at the location of the customers that I speak to. It helps during the long waits, to help keep conversation up. On loading the page, I was notified that my account had been suspended. No information had been given to me through any means to explain that our account was being suspended, or why.

I sent an email, assuming that our bill was due, and awaited an answer. Meanwhile, my wife informed me that our bill was not due until July. I opened a support ticket, and was soon informed that there was a script in one of the archive directories for this site that was allowing spam to be sent out. For this reason, the entire site was suspended.

Working with the support group, we got the bad script deleted, and the site back online. Two days later, I received an email that we had done nothing to remove or fix the suspect script, so they were cancelling our service. They informed me I should collect my data in preparation for the cancellation, and that they would refund our money for our unused time we had paid for. When I went to collect my data, I found that the entire directory devoted to this blog had been deleted from the server, rendering it inaccessible.

This had me a little agitated. The suspect script had been deleted, yet I was being cancelled because I had done nothing. I sent help desk requests and emails, attempting to get my data back and determine what script they had determined to be the problem. After more than a day, and several exchanges, I got my data back. I NEVER got an answer as to what script was the reason for their cancellation. To this day, I still have no idea what they found offensive, after the original spammer script was removed. I've since checked all my scripts against the original installation scripts, and can find no modifications. With no information from my host, I had no way to "fix" what they say is a problem, because they've REFUSED to give me any sort of answer to my questions.

Now, I've got a new host. My site is back up and running. Other sites that I operate are in the process of switching over, as it becomes possible. My wife's site is lagging behind, as my old host isn't being very quick about approving the domain name change. Soon, though, all will be as it should be.

I'm still in the dark as to what the real problem was with my site. My old host never bothered to answer any questions about this. I'm not happy.

Well, I am happy, actually. I've got a NEW hosting company. They seem to be better in every way.

My old hosting company was AvaHost. I've been with them for a few years. I've sent many customers their way, bringing them plenty of income. With this bad experience, however, I'm unable to continue to suggest them. It's their loss. One thing I will not miss is a help desk that doesn't read the actual ticket request before saying "I've tested your site and it is working" then closing the ticket. I'm gone, and I'm not looking back.

My new hosting company is BlueHost. They cost less. They give more space (almost double). They offer more throughput per month. They offer more databases. They offer more email addresses. They offer more features. They have a better interface. In every measurable way I have needs for, BlueHost is better. I'm glad to be a customer.

Now, I'll just continue to finish the move and get all the little bits ironed out that are popping up. Hopefully, on this blog, you won't notice any more of that.

Now, I can go back to posting.

Posted by Lockjaw at March 14, 2006 10:44 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Aaron Parsons at May 3, 2006 5:04 PM

Posted by: lucy at January 8, 2007 12:55 AM

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