Worst Web Hosting experience? 101
Tim asks: "I have just come through an experience with a web hosting company. Basically, a script on the server was compromised, because of incorrect security settings on the server, and used as a zombie phishing mailer script. My account was suspended for phishing, and through the course of several tickets, it was made clear that I had nothing to do with the phishing. Still throughout the entire ordeal, they refused to give me any of my files, saying that they could not be released now, or ever for 'legal evidence reasons.' So, here I am without a database (I should have backed up!), and without several files I was working on. What is your worst web hosting experience, and how have you dealt with it?"
You control your own experience (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd argue that you're never going to have a good experience if you don't take reasonable care to protect your work. You should never trust an ISP with anything that's important to you. We colo our own stuff, and even though we own our own equipment and trust our ISP, we still assume that the box could at some point in the future become unavailable (stolen, buried under tons of rubble in an earthquake, etc.) Don't blame your hosting service for your own lack of preparation.
Best solution... move! (Score:2, Insightful)
My worst hosting experience was with a small, cheap company whose only real enticement was unlimited bandwidth. They didn't even meter it, you couldn't ask them how much you'd used in a month... anyway, I never got the whole story on why I was having a problem (they couldn't give me details for legal reasons?), but it had something to do with script kiddies attacking another website on the same box. Every Friday afternoon, mail would start getting sluggish, and by Saturday morning the websites would be down. And nobody would do anything about it until Monday, of course. This went on for six months, with only three or four weekends that the websites were up. I lost several customers over it, while the hosting company gave me excuses and then moved me to another server (oh boy! Five days with no email) - and, of course, they moved the script kiddie bait website to the same new server!
I put up with it a lot longer than I should have, and didn't bother to pursue any grievance against the company. Nope. Why? Hell, I don't know. I believed some of the excuses, I guess.
But one day, during a duscussion right here on /. that was remarkably similar to this one, I saw an ad for hosting in someone's sig. And, I'm still with SlashChick (hi Erica!) and her company Simpli.biz and have been with them for almost two years.
So obviously, the solution is to host with someone that knows the stuff and runs a tight ship. There's simply no substitute for competence, no matter what you're paying.
My web hosting nightmare is customers like you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Security is always important, but so is the user experience. I would love to only allow users to select from known good preinstalled scripts. But is that realistic? No.... I would love to run PHP in safe mode by default, but then I get plenty of customers jumping ship because their scripts no longer work.
The point is ignorant users are going to cause problems. Hopefully only to their accounts, but often enough those problems extend to everyone on a shared (read cheap) server.
If you buy cheap hosting, you get cheap hosting. Do not expect a hosting company to bend over backwards for $5
You install a poorly written script...Then your site gets hacked. Popular scripts make popular targets. How hard would it have been to do a google search BEFORE installing? another tip, get the script from the original author or official site. Web scripts are usually patched quickly, but often old versions hang around on mirrors and software search sites.
In this case, how much do you think your little screw up cost the hosting company? Did you ever stop to think that your mistake probably cost the company more $$$ than they will ever see from you?
Hosting company at a MINIMUM pays for:
1. The wasted bandwidth your error caused.
2. The administrators time to stop the problem.
3. The technical support persons time to deal with you.
4. The administrative time it takes to collect the files and cover their asses, in case law enforcement becomes involved.
5. The admin and support time it takes to deal with the numerous complaints that will flood them. Likely they heard from end users pissed off that they got spam/malware that originated from their IP range. They probably also had to answer to their upstream providers, and give them detailed evidence that the problem has been dealt with.
So your little error has cost the hosting company, in an best case scenario, hundreds of dollars by the time you add up the hourly costs for the administrator(s), technical support, the BW, storage and other overhead.
So how much did you pay them for hosting your site? $5 a month? $10 a month? You will probably move on to the next $2.50/month hosting offer you find, long before they recover the cost of your blunder.
Like, I said I deal with this situation regularly, it is not pleasant for anyone involved. It really is a lot easier (and cheaper) for you to install a copy of PHPMYADMIN and backup your database, and download your web site. Than it is for a hosting company to commit resources to holding your hand through every technical blunder you make.
If your data is important it is ultimately your responsibility that the data is taken care of, not your hosting company, not your ISP, not the maker of your PC or of your hard drive. If your data gets lost it is YOUR problem.
Yes, there are slime ball hosting companies (I personally hate them because they tend to make customers pretty paranoid, but at least their shittyness provides me with additional business). But customers need to understand that they have responsibilities and obligations too. Otherwise the hosting experience isn't likely to be a good one for anyone involved.
-Ms2k
Re:My web hosting nightmare is customers like you. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to say this, but it's also rarely the end of the world if a website goes down for even a day or two, let alone an hour, yet people panic because they feel out of control when technology such as a website suddenly "breaks", and that out of control feeling causes people to act like it's the end of the world. That's a natural response, but the fact is, if it _is_ the end of the world if your site goes down, then you should probably be thinking of redundancy at this point. If you can't afford such a level of service, then you're not making enough to cover the required overhead of running your business, meaning your business isn't working out for you.
As a rule, being the support person for a software company myself (lead developer, but answering questions and solving problems is a big part of my job), I try to be courteous to all support staff, and to only call on them when there's a real problem I've verified lies on their end of things. This has usually resulted in me receiving very good customer service. I have had a few bad incidents with one slimey mass-hosting provider, but you live and learn.
Re:Jason Scott's experience. (Score:3, Insightful)