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Web hosting from hell: One key tip to prepare for the worst

One of the things I’m most familiar with on the Web is Web hosting companies– choosing them, working with them, yelling at them, comparing their services… After the last week of what could only be described as “the Web hosting experience from hell,” I’m now well-versed in leaving them too. Consider this article my Public Service Announcement on a bad Web hosting company. If you read until the end, you’ll find out which well-known company wins the award for “most terrible large-scale Web hosting company.” If you don’t, you’ll just get my angry rant. Either way, this should be informative.

The beginning: a Web hosting company with promise

In a previous article, I wrote in detail about how to choose a good Web host. This particular Web host (we’ll call them Web Host X) met all the requirements. Affordable pricing, 24/7 phone support, easy-to-use control panel, and a large number of customers. There’s no denying that these guys were, and are, the real deal as far as Web hosting providers go. I started with them in 2004, and, for the most part, used their service problem-free for over 3 1/2 years. All in all, not a bad run.

The demise: how a Web hosting company can ruin a brand, waste your time, and generally suck at life

I wish I could say that the road to inepitude for Web Host X was gradual and noticeable, but it literally came out of the blue and struck with a vengeance.

The short story goes like this: In an effort to improve their service to customers, they planned to migrate many of their paying shared-hosting customers from one server to another. Simple enough, right? Seems like all one would need to do is copy files from one server, upload them to a new one, make sure the domains are pointing to the right place and life is good. Unfortunately, the techs at this company, or at least the ones working on this particular project, were mindless reboot monkeys. Without notice, my site went down and was completely inaccessible for 3 days. During that time I called Web Host X and spoke to several of their support agents, who assured me the problem was being fixed and there was a full team dedicated to its resolution. I also asked why I wasn’t notified in advance of this potentially big undertaking, and was told that I WAS notified via email. I definitely wasn’t…. strike 1. After 3 days, my site started serving a different error– the default 404 error page for the Web hosting company. This told me that the site was back up, but something else wasn’t right. A call to tech support revealed that my files were moved to a new server, but that the domain was still pointing to the old one. 2 days later, and my site is finally back up…. Strike 2. But wait! One of my key content areas is not working at all. Turns out the new server is running a different version of PHP then the old one, and my code is no longer working like it should. In an effort to keep page errors to a minimum, I removed the section from the site. Total days the site was down? 7. Strikes againse the Web host? 3.

Lesson learned: Preparing for a shared Web hosting disaster

My experience with Web Host X is probably as bad as it gets. They dropped the ball bigtime, essentially killing a business and doing irrepairable damage to a brand (would you trust a Web site that was down for a week?). I mean really, what career (other than a weather man) allows you to screw up for a week without bearing any responsibility? It’s ridiculous. But it did allow me to see that I was putting far too much trust in this Web host, and I was also at fault. As a result, I’ve decided to share one key tip so you can avoid my mistake and mitigate a completely disastrous blunder by your Web host.

And the key tip is….

Register your domain with a company other than your Web host. If I had my domain registered with GoDaddy, Register.com, or Network Solutions, I could have signed up with a new Web hosting company, uploaded my files to the server, and then updated the DNS settings for my domain to point to the new host. All of this can be done in less than 24 hours to bring a site back online. Since I registered my domain through Web Host X (it was part of their Web hosting package) I had to go through them to move the domain. They basically had me cornered. And as you might guess, they also suck at managing domains. Some phone calls, an “access code,” and some emails later, I was able to get the domain transferred. Total time spent moving domain: 3 days. As an extra precaution, it definitely doesn’t hurt to investigate a hosting company extensively before investing your time and trust in them. WebHostingSearch.com is one site that offers reviews and comparisons on leading hosting companies and their services, including Linux hosting, Wordpress hosting, and Windows Web hosting. Might as well take the time now to look for bad customer experiences instead of kicking yourself later.

So you’re probably wondering who this company is that wasted countless hours of my time and did their best to kill the brand of one of my websites. The answer? iPowerWeb (www.ipowerweb.com).

Have a terrible Web hosting experience or some ideas on how I could have avoided the aformentioned disaster? Share it below. Every Web host has a testimonial section, so they all sound good. Let’s take this opportunity to start an “anti-testimonial” section. The company with the least amount of poor feedback gains our support as a safe, adequate Web host. Let the reviews begin!

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