Category: Personal Blog

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.

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.