Author: mccormicky

Powweb and Purehost.com are sister companies

I had many clues that this was the case but it was confirmed when I emailed Powweb support about domain name transfers and received an email from Powweb stating Purehost is it’s sister concern.
After all my bitching about how badly IIS Windows Server 2003 worked on Purehost’s configuration
in regards of ease of use and actually working and not just breaking everthing I tried to get done, this is a big laugh. Namely because Powweb accounts had worked so well and so easily and never broke that I recommended them to folks who asked me who was a good host to use.
So here are the pros and cons of Powweb.

Pros:
Unix server-
Everything works (until the server melted a few days ago)-
Great uptime-
fast-
really cheap! Only 68 dollars a year-
very well attended user forums,pretty much any question you might have about how things work on Powweb are answerable there-
Cons:
sister co. to Purehost (this is just spite at this point)-

To at least say one good thing about Purehost’s Unix platform hosting,I did manage an account on it’s Unix platform and things worked very well and were easy to use, although as far as I can remember there wasn’t a user forum.
But Purehost costs a lot more, 200 bucks a year and the reasons for this price spike I can’t figure out because Powweb offers 75 free databases,costs a 3rd what Purehost costs and has a user forum.
Purehost presents itself as business account hosting which seems to me means they just say they are a solution for business account hosting! They do not actually provide more options to their business account customers than does the much cheaper plan at Powweb.
If I was someone looking for new hosting I would never pick Purehost. And I can’t any longer with a clear conscience recommend Powweb,either.Of late their customer service has gone down to practically zip.They were really good when I signed up one year ago but now don’t answer their phones,livechat or answer emails in a competent manner.
There you have it.

It was Hell and I never want to do it again.

Here’s a fun scenario:
Say you spend hours and hours on a custom theme,try to repair damaged SEO, sign up for Google Analytics for your client, create a Paypal shopping cart ( add to cart buttons,but for over 50 products-that’s work) sign up for a FeedBurner account as well. Get all your ducks in a row, finally only to have your host reset the shared server in such a way that you cannot any longer have use of the IIS admin console-without which all your links break and you must rethink navigation and put in place ugly urls. Because at least those work.

Then because you have had it anyway with IIS you take it upon yourself to buy an account with the host you personally use but they’re having server problems. In fact, they just finished a new server set up just when you signed up and the kinks weren’t quite worked out.

So what usually took one day took 4, all the while you were stressing because the domain name registrar was being an **shole. For some reason taking it very personally that you wanted to manage the domain from now on and not knowing if he was going to cooperate.

So I had 2 accounts.
One wouldn’t load any pages without a 500 error.
The other wouldn’t let me set up permalinks the way I wanted.
Both hosts wouldn’t answer their phones.
Both hosts were having server issues.
Probably why they couldn’t answer their phones.
And the domain name was in the hands of a jerk.

Continue reading It was Hell and I never want to do it again.

What burns my britches.

I’m a freelance web designer who prides herself on the fact that I care about web standards as well as design. There are lots of people who go on and on about the fact that that’s just a load of hog-wash (they probably don’t believe in Global Warming,either). So they load up Microsoft Frontpage 5.0 and churn out tons of td laden, boxy pages and people pay good money for them.
Oh, what’s she ragging about,now?
We are now in 2008, shouldn’t your site look like it was made in at the very least 2006?
But the way a site looks is actually the least important thing.
To me the most important aspect of being web standards compliant is that the site will render properly in a variety of browsers. It’s reassuring to know that what a visitor sees using Opera is close to the same as a visitor using IE.
There’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on over writing code as water tight as a duck’s ass. I waver because there has to be a line drawn somewhere and for me it’s all those hacks.
Hide from IE 5 mac for crying out loud. Are there people using IE 5 on macs?
I tend to get cross eyed also thinking I should set up a seperate style sheet for print, then for media hand held devices,then for Braille. Braille? You got me there.
If someone can set up a site that someone can read in Braille, pay them 2500 bucks!
They’ve earned it.
Continue reading What burns my britches.

Kicking against the pricks

Why must everything be such a hassle?
Hassle One: My new account with Powweb is totally bolloxed. I was twiddling my dainty thumbs for 2 days waiting for some mess to clear up with how CGI gets enabled for new accounts so that I could get going setting up my dad’s new site just to find out a minute ago that it was enabled improperly.For the record,when a new user signs up a new account with powweb the 1st thing they ought to do is click a little button that enables CGI. Why it isn’t the first thing bang in your face upon activating your new account-I have no idea. It ought to be right there as soon as you login like:

Hello username, would you like to enable CGI on your account so that you might be able to get stuff to work?

Sigh, but that would be too easy. I had to find this out in their community forums…It isn’t top of the list in the knowledgebase,either. It’s also not an easy button to find from the control panel. Whatever.

Hassle Two:The administrator of the domain I need pointed to another nameserver is being…difficult.
I clearly stated what I needed him to do and he wrote me 2x today telling me to “get it together” and send him the info. Which I already had. I gave up getting it transferred to me and just asked him to point it for me. But now that Powweb has decided to poop out I sure hope the domain doesn’t end up pointing toward a website that isn’t set up at all.I have to be able to install WP in order to set things up and I can’t do that until Powweb “gets it together”.Yikes.
So by tomorrow am that website better be working because I am going to have to act super fast to make it ready…if the guy ever does the DNS stuff for me, maybe he’d rather just keep the catty emails coming.