With Halloween just behind us, the topics of horror stories, scary movies, tricks & treats has been ever present.
In the world of web development – horror stories are also evident. Servers fail, content is lost, hosting companies occasionally $%#! over their clients – with many other disasters waiting in the darkness.
Take the time to use the comments to share some of your own “hosting” horror stories from your experiences on the web. What happened, why, and how did you overcome the problem?
Let’s learn from our past horrors – and help each other create a happier, less disastrous future.
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"You’re such a smart boy!" were his first accolades heard. So, it’s no wonder that this phrase became the title of his business, Smart Boy Designs.
Read more about Christian 
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Twitter: smartboydesigns
November 4, 2009 at 5:08 pm
There have been a few times, when I was first beginning my blogging experiences – that I lost entire posts due to a very latent dial-up connection – and not saving my work before trying to post. I surely learned my lesson the hard way.
Also, once before – I purchased hosting through a small company which probably was down (server-wise) more then the website stayed up. I’ve now found my hosting company which I spread the word to everyone about. They’re amazing. http://polarphase.com
My small Internet services company requires affordable yet reliable web hosting (as does everyone else), but hosting with unlimited domains sharing disk space and bandwidth in my case, is required.
Enter VPS Land. A quick look-over of their website hints a good bit of sophistication and reliability. A professional image indeed.
Enter the fine print.
The ONLY, and I mean ONLY support that any customer will ever receive is online via a ‘ticketing’ system.
Fine. I had a few simple problems such as needing my FTP password reset and things to that nature. My tickets were responded to in a matter of a couple of hours. Some even less than that. Semi-impressive.
Enter virtual private server nightmare. I’m hosting about 15-20 sites on my VPS, and one morning I wake up with about 15 emails from clients wanting to know whats up with their website. I check it out.. they are all down! I make an attempt to log into my VPS control panel to do a “reset/reboot”, and I can’t even access my control panel!
I head on over to the ticketing system and put in a ticket with the highest importance rating and type “EMERGENCY – SYSTEM DOWN – INACCESSIBLE” in the subject line, and type the symptoms in the message. Wait.
Wait.
Two hours. Wait.
Six hours. Respond ” BUMP… I still cannot access my server, clients are angry – reply soon please!” Wait.
Twelve hours from system meltdown: nothing.
Skip ahead 72 (yes… SEVENTY-TWO) hours. After about 15 replies on my part, and no phone number to call, (try finding a phone number on their website) finally a response.
“We have tested the connection and see no problem on our end. Please open a new ticket if you still have trouble after rebooting your machine.” oh yes, he did tell me to reboot my computer!
Long story short, at this point, I couldn’t even FTP my files to switch to a new hosting company.
After two or three more days, they got my server running, giving me some “Sorry for the inconvenience” crap, and I immediately canceled my account and vowed to never use a VPS again. Ever. I actually ended up losing two clients because of this fiasco. To a customer, I am their web host. They don’t know any better (and don’t need to know) about some other third party hosting their website.
I am now using a service that is UNBELIEVABLE. The uptime is fantastic, the customer service is FANATICAL, and on top of everything, it’s affordable! At $100/month, your site can run Windows AND Linux OS at the SAME TIME, and unlimited sites can be listed under one account. The control panel lets you do anything you could need to do from DNS changes to eMail address creation, and its just in general a real good deal to be a part of. Check them out at Rackspace Cloud.
Twitter: smartboydesigns
November 5, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Hey Dru, thanks for sharing that story. That must have been incredibly stressful and annoying. It’s great to hear though that you’ve finally found someone you can rely on in a more comfortable way.
Twitter: smartboydesigns
November 9, 2009 at 12:28 am
Hey Dru, thanks for sharing that story. That must have been incredibly stressful and annoying. It's great to hear though that you've finally found someone you can rely on in a more comfortable way.
This reminds me of when I was at Prevahost.com my order was taking forever and then I used the live support to talk to someone for some help. A few minutes later, I got some (apparently a child) who berated me and told me that I was an idiot. I promptly asked for a refund and they told me to fuck off. I had to contact my credit card company and get a chargeback! Stay away at all costs!
Twitter: TheESLChronicle
November 18, 2009 at 10:14 am
I had a terrible experience with Globat Hosting with my first website. They kept charging my account for charges and services I did not authorize. Not only that, their customer service was not good. They were rude and uncaring to my needs as a customer. Plus their up time at the time, was perhaps the worst in the market although I am not sure if they have improved any of these things. Nevertheless, I will never host with them again and will never recommend this hosting service to anyone.
terrible things are using webservers ……i used to work with one and its uptime is really low .. i know how much loses i have due to it
I had a terrible experience with Globat Hosting with my first website. They kept charging my account for charges and services I did not authorize. Not only that, their customer service was not good. They were rude and uncaring to my needs as a customer. Plus their up time at the time, was perhaps the worst in the market although I am not sure if they have improved any of these things. Nevertheless, I will never host with them again and will never recommend this hosting service to anyone.