Some time between the last week of January to the first 2 weeks of February, my ex web server was hacked. Somehow, a hacker got into my server and decided to use my server to attack another server. My ex web host, ServInt, could not find out who did it or how they did it. Neither could I do anything about it… Lucky for me, the hacker did not seem interested in what I had on my web server as my files were left intact.

It took an extraordinarily long time for ServInt to revive my web server. I believe they were too sloppy dealing with this issue and I got very fed up when they did not answer my technical support queries over one of the weekends. Their sales director later admitted their technical support should have done more to help my situation after I decided to move out of their servers. It was a very sad end to my 1.5 years at ServInt.

I don’t really want to reveal more information about this unfortunate incident because I still believe ServInt is one of the best VPS web hosting companies out there. The problem with them and with a lot of companies in the world is their inflexible company policies. Their support staff were trained to do exactly the way they were told to do and sometimes it can be a problem. Once in a while, something bad will happen to your web server. I had a hard disk crash once and they waived one month from my hosting fees so that was compensated. No complaints about that. For other errors, they seem to take their own sweet time to fix them.

For example, I used to get frequent mail server errors and it prevented me from receiving and sending emails from all of my email accounts. I would email the technical support help desk informing them of this problem and ask them to maybe restart the mail service or find a way to fix it. What usually happens is one of their support staff will reply to me asking for one of my email address’ username and password to test if the mail server is really down. I hate it when this happens because I already told them ALL of them do not work so why do they have to ask me to reveal one of my email account information? Another common situation I received was when my MySQL database service goes down. I used to email them to tell them that the database on XYZ.com is down. What do they do? They reply to me asking for the exact database name. They have access to the web servers and if you look at XYZ.com, you should be able to see that there is only one database. Why do they have to waste their time and mine by emailing me to ask for the database name? I am not sure if I am the only person on this planet that feels irritated. Situations like these really tick me off but they keep doing because it’s their company’s policy.

Their company policy wants them to confirm their customer’s queries at the expense of common sense and a pleasant experience for the customer. Simple tasks that can be solved in one step have now been complicated to two or more steps.

Frankly, my new web host seems to have similar problems with their customer service. If you know of a good web host that does not have irritating customer service, please let me know. I believe it is worth paying more to get that extra piece of mind and save some precious time emailing back and forth dealing with inflexible robotic people like that.

The positive thing that came out of this experience is I know do not take security for granted. You never know when someone might hack into your system. Just recently, WordPress.org was hacked they had to release an emergency update because WordPress 2.1.1 was hacked by a hacker. If it can happen to WordPress.org, it can happen to me and you.

Tagged As: good-web-host, hack, servint, web-host, web-hosting

Categories: Blog Updates | No Comments »

I have been using Site5.com for over 1 year. I used to have nothing but good things to say about them but in the past 3-4 days my opinion of their service changed dramatically. I have removed the Site5 link in my footer because I no longer endorse them.

They quietly shutdown my web sites without telling me in advance because they were taking up too much resources. I am using a mid-range plan at their web site that allows me to host an unlimited number of domains. I use Site Uptime to check if Site5’s servers down and they were not down in the past 3-4 days. In fact their servers rarely go down. Therefore I don’t think I can claim anything for the “downtime guarantee” even though my web sites appear “blank” in my browser.

If I did not check my web sites manually by entering the URL into my browser, I would have missed this problem and they would continue to treat me as a fool. Their support took over 12 hours to reply to my query and they told me my scripts are using too many “httpd” request and they want me to fix it. I told them I can fix it but not in a day because I need to upload and run them in the browser and since I cannot even access my web sites, I cannot do update my scripts.

This experience has taught me a good lesson in hosting content sites. Get a VPS web hosting plan! That is the minimum plan you need to get to host a hundreds of domains. It will cost about $45 - $50 per month to get a decent VPS web host. I actually have 3 VPS accounts right now and I was planning to move my web sites from Site5 to my new VPS accounts slowly. I need to move out right now to prevent myself from losing more money from Google AdSense.

Here’s some common sense tips before you get your next web host…

1. Search the internet for “company name + reviews” to check out what other people say about the company.
2. Search the forums of the company name to see if there are any complaints and whether they remove the complaints from the forums.
3. Search the internt for “company name + complaints” to check if a lot of people are complaining about the company.
4. Email the technical support staff and not the sales staff to ask them what is their company policy if your web sites grows larger and takes up more resources than you are supposed to use. Do they simple shutdown your web site without notice or give you an advanced warning? The reason why I ask the technical support is get a feel of how their technical support staff. The sales team’s performance can be misleading because they will try to sell you on their service so they might have very fast response times but that does not mean the technical support will be as fast.
5. Email the sales staff to ask them what happens if you decide to cancel your service AFTER the guarantee period. Do they refund you your remaining credit or do they pocket your money?

When I started my first community site, I used a shared hosting plan till my site got too big for them. I switched a couple of web hosts and added a few web hosts to my personal black list because of the way they handle sites that use up too much of their server resources. They are Lunar Pages, HostRocket, HostGator, Site5, and ResellerZoom. You may be using one or more of these services above. If so, you have been warned because they do not seem to have the decency to tell you that your site is using too much resources BEFORE they shut you down. They only tell you that AFTER they shut you down. That to me is plain rude and lousy customer service.

My personal “gold list” of web hosts are ServInt and MadRooster. These people are different, they’ve got class. They will tell you your sites are growing too big for them politely. Their customer support is fast and helpful unlike the others.

Tagged As: madrooster, servint, site5, vps, web+host, web+hosting

Categories: Blog Updates, Google AdSense, Internet Marketing | 9 Comments »