Tag: website disasters

User Error!

I’ve been occupied 100% with a host change between sister co.s with a wordpress site and theme I built for my dad.
I got the domain in my little fist, I got it registered at the new host as the primary domain,I got everything set up just so…except for one little thing:the url was still showing up with the username the host gives out-this is the default url-it allows a new signer upper to load their new webspace without a domain name. The site was loading as username.hostcompany.com instead of stonestreetpress.com.I thought it was because I had to be able to transfer domain registration to Tucows from Godaddy. Something I can’t do for 60 days because the domain was just transferred to me from another GoDaddy account holder.

Whew! I wrote a lot of emails to tech support,spoke with them via chat and on the phone and none of them could tell me why this was happening. One of their tech support even sunk so low as to point the domain using a frameset redirect! If you are ever given the option to do this, never use it. Of course do it if you don’t care if your site loads in quirksmode, is search engine optimised or search engine friendly or if paths to images will be broken.
It was thanks to a user in the host forum that this issue was resolved.
He suggested that I check the way WP was configured. Aha. When I installed WP it grabbed the default url because the real domain hadn’t yet been listed in the new account. A simple change to stonestreetpress.com and the problem went away.

Just like that.

My error, my oversight.

I am just so glad to have this fixed. I can now go back to what I am actually good at,whatever that might be. Just kidding.

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.

Website still down

I could swear I edited this post.There’s a hex on me or something.My own site has been acting twitchy these past few days…maybe the joke is on me?Maybe powweb and purehost are related? Maybe even the same company?
There’s irony here. I praise powweb but bash purehost a lot.
Here are some coincidences:
Both sites had a scheduled maintanence on the exact same day, Jan 8th.
Both use the same software for control panel.
Both use the exact same verbiage on their sites almost word for word.
Both offer Shopsite and Sitebuilder.
Ok so wasting time being paranoid isn’t helping.But still it would be funny if they turned out to be the same company!

The Website I was having trouble with came back online today around 1pm.
Albeit with some serious issues:
In order to have pretty permalinks on IIS I have to use the IIS admin console
to set my custom error page to use wp-404-handler.php. After the server went offline(that’s what they said caused the redirect to go flooey on me) they managed to fix it but disabled my use of the IIS admin console so I can’t set my custom error page anymore.Goodbye pretty links hello ugly. I had included a lot of manually entered links using dom and h2 id’s to direct site visitors to the exact place on a page I wanted them to go to.Yep,all with pretty urls.So I had to take those out and now I am figuring what to put in in their place.This blows because I was really happy with they way the home page used to look and thought I was done. I’m just doing a quick fix and tossing in some photos where all those links used to be as a compromise.

Just Another Purehost Disaster

Again with the Purehost bashing? But is it bashing if the horror keeps coming?
Ok, so if you do something mysterious with the IIS Administration console, something that causes your browser to say mean things like the server is redirecting in a way that can never complete, and you go back and set everything back to the way it was before you got all crazy and clicked the wrong thing…does it not stand to reason that the error would have been corrected in Purehost’s stated timeframe of 2 hours? How about 8 hours? What about 10?
No? What about after you waited on hold for 20 minutes to talk to tech support and the guy said it would likely be fixed in 2 hours? No, not even then? So you call back tech support after another nice long wait on hold but have to explain to them where the IIS Administration console even is because they don’t usually do anything with it because they’re used to Unix sanity.The guy can’t fix it and tries to suggest it’s my WordPress installation even though I told him thing didn’t act funky until I went into IIS.
I’m supposed to get a callback tomorrow about this mess because, you guessed it, they have no idea what is wrong and they can’t fix the darned thing,probably because they haven’t the 1st idea what went wrong.Really that IIS console has gotten me in such hot water.Why did I even touch it when clearly I had no idea what a bad thing could happen? Because I have always been able to fix my fumbles in the past.And obviously I had no idea it would have an outcome this dire.
The site in question has been off line since 5 o:clock yesterday afternoon. Sweet.
Well I’m done.Going to bed.