Daily Archive for October 6th, 2006

I couldn’t stop it …

Published
by
Steve
on October 6, 2006
in Web
. 0 Comments

It happened. OnlineNIC is a bunch of turds. And so is ipowerweb, for the most part. I didn’t think OnlineNIC was going to change the nameservers until it got approval from ipowerweb. Ipowerweb wasn’t going to approve it until I sent them the last four digits of my credit card on file. I didn’t sent them the digits, because I was having second thoughts about Dreamhost. So, I thought the name servers would stay as is until I did something.

Nope, I got an email from OnlineNIC this afternoon saying the requested change to the nameservers has been made. I mean, I did ask them repeated to change them, giving authorization out the wazoo each time. I didn’t think they’d do it because of the ipowerweb approval thing. Then they went and did it. Nutso.
So, after all that. I guess I’ll ride out Dreamhost for a week. If, by next Friday nothing has changed and the servers are up and down and as non-reliable as they were this week - I’m going to jump ship. And, probably go back to iPowerweb. Things have been off and on a little today, but things are getting more responsive as the day wears on. Hopefully I can catch them before my renewal period lapses and they delete all my files (which I have backed up, anyway).

Maybe not …

Published
by
Steve
on October 6, 2006
in Web
. 0 Comments

So, I signed up with Dreamhost on this seemingly awesome deal they had. (I paid $90 for two years of hosting – with 200 GB of web space, unlimited databases, 2 TB bandwidth, etc.)

Unfortunately, I have had nothing but problems along with hundreds of other folks! I was so psyched about the deal, I even told quite a few people about it. I hope none of them tried to take advantage of it because Dreamhost kinda sucks right now. No, actually, they’ve kinda had problems for a long, long time. Dreamhost has and has been having problems I’ve never experienced with ipowerweb. Not even close. The dreamhoststatus.com blog is a nicety, but they give updates saying things are fixed when they are definitely not.

So, I am going to try and just keep my hosting and renew with ipowerweb. Which will make life easier because I already have everything set up!

It’s too bad, really. Dreamhost was recommended by some respectable people. And, from what I can see in their site management tools, it’s a powerful tool – better in a lot of ways than vdeck and cpanel that I’ve used. But, the availability of my site and the reliability of the servers and their datacenter leave a LOT to be desired. They do offer a nice referral/rewards program, so I’m guessing that’s why some recommend them.

Now that I look deeper and deeper, their problems are not ones that just popped up this week, they’re problems they’ve had for months and apparently are incapable or unable or unwilling to accurately fix. I’ve read a few places that they are now overselling their servers, and while that might not be the cause of their problems, it probably doesn’t help anything.

Ah, well, it was a hasty decision. And, the saying “you get what you pay for” definitely applies when it comes to web hosting. The deal with Dreamhost is too good to be true. I never learn more than when I learn from my mistakes. I’ve put a lot of time this week into tranferring stuff to Dreamhost. Transferring hosting is something I haven’t done before, so I’ve learned what a big chore it is. Domain registrars are a whole different story. I won’t even go into that one. The only good thing with the registrar is they’ve dragged their feet long enough to let me realize that I don’t want to change nameservers after all! I want them pointed exactly there they are (for now).