Bloghosts rudely kicked us out, so we're getting settled now, and while some things are still broken, comments are very fast — thanks to TDavid!
As many of you have probably already noticed, things are a little rough around the edges here at Blogcritics.org right now. We were forced by our former host, Bloghosts, to move under ridiculous circumstances, with the owner of that operation going out of his way to burn up any goodwill he might have accumulated over the last eight months. Jace Herring's silliness and refusal to communicate has made things a bit more difficult than they otherwise might have been.…
Article comments
76 - bhw
In fact, your comments seem almost -- though it may not be intentional on your part -- to be discouraging others from using them when you haven't tried using them yourself.
No, TDavid. You're wrong. Witness what I said in my first comment, which you continue to ignore. In this comment, I'm pointing out a potential problem in recruiting BCs to Cyberwurx, in response to Natalie's comment, and then I ask if a specific solution can be implemented.
I think Natalie identified a potentially big problem: moving from MT to WordPress. Not for nothing, but WordPress is incredibly easy to install -- it literally takes less than five minutes. The average user won't have too much trouble with that.
It's the conversion from MT that will keep people from using WordPress, and potentially from coming to Cyberwrx.
Any chance they'll offer to install MT for free, instead? Or as well?
See, I was pointing out a potential deterrent to less technical bloggers who already use MT, and I asked if we could remove that potential deterrent. That means I was trying to help ENCOURAGE people to use Cyberwurx by asking if they would install the blog software with the largest installed base [and that can be notoriously difficult to install] for free, instead of software with a much smaller installed base and that is very simple to install.
I think that's pretty plain to see. Don't you agree?
Then I closed my next comment with, "The hosting deal you guys worked out is *great*, honestly. But the free installation of WordPress isn't much of a value add to MT users."
Where did I discourage people to use the service? I pointed out a legitimate limitation in the hosting deal, and asked if there was any way to alter it FOR EVERYONE. That is, alter the basic agreement, not the case-by-case agreements.
That's a legitimate question, don't you agree?
That was the intention of the post -- to let Natalie or anybody else that's curious and seriously contemplating changing hosting companies (something that I take to be a big step for a webmaster/blogger) know that they are happy to help out at Cyberwurx and that rather than you, me, her speculate, we should contact Cyberwurx directly for the facts and report back our actual experiences and findings to share with others.
Then why didn't you just say that, instead of doing the one-voiced, condescending interrogation of me? My question was: Can Cyberwurx also install MT for free? Why didn't you just say, "They might. Just ask them."? Re-read your post. You were a jackass.
Here's another recent example:
Are your comments here after reading my Yahoo groups response or before?
If it's after ... then I'm even more puzzled by your reaction. I spent a good 20 minutes or so typing up a very careful, detailed response in the Yahoo groups....
More condescension. In other words, I'm too stupid to understand what you wrote in the Yahoo group post, which I have indeed NOT yet read. I check the Yahoo group intermittently, sometimes skipping a day or two per week. I don't get the e-mails redirected to my main account. I don't live-breathe-eat-drink-shoot-shit the Blogcritics Yahoo group, sorry.
So, TDavid, if you take some time off from lecturing, maybe you will actually have time to answer my question:
Will Cyberwurx agree to install MT for free -- instead of or in addition to WordPress -- as a part of the basic Blogcritics hosting plan?
77 - Eric Olsen
I am not sure how this thread go so far off track, but the point is simply that I personally have had a very positive relationship with Cyberwurx -- which could not contrast more with being literally booted off Bloghosts on short notice, little or no communication regarding the situation, and zero support regarding the actual move itself, all of which sounds like it is recurring on a grand scale with them now -- and we are happy to make the recommendation to others to work with Cyberwurx, in particular their new blog special
78 - bhw
I'm sure they're just dandy Eric, and their deal with BC gives a lot of bang for the buck, for sure.
But will they install MT for free as part of their basic BC plan?
79 - Eric Olsen
the simpler and less time-consuming the install, the less they will charge for installation, including down to free - it is truly a case-by-case basis
80 - TDavid
Thanks Eric. I think I only said that a couple times above, but maybe bhw will hear your version better LOL I got your email, mon, thanks!
bhw - I'm not being nice with you about this subject any more, so if you really want to see me be condescending and lecturing and intentionally RUDE like you are being then keep up the whole bad hair day drama and maybe I'll show you some real flames.
81 - bhw
I asked if the basic plan for BCs could be altered to offer MT installation for free.
The answer appears to be: No.
And yet nobody is willing to actually say it. A one-word answer was all I was looking for, and instead I got a fucking lecture.
82 - Eric Olsen
the answer is maybe
83 - bhw
Who will be asking them if the basic plan can be changed?
84 - Natalie Davis
I asked Cyberwurx and they said they would do MY installations for free if you have the MT license. However, if you, like me, got your MT via Bloghosts, you are probably out of luck. I just wrote Jace at Bloghosts asking if a license went along with my MT installation. No response yet.
85 - Natalie Davis
Dang, that should read "MT installations," not "MY installations."
86 - TDavid
Thanks Natalie - I'm glad you brought up the MT licensing issues. This is another vital issue with Movable Type, which is beyond the technical issues that I described above :(
Maybe Movable Type would provide you with this license directly? Any chance of emailing somebody over there?
Please let me know if MT provides licenses to customers in this situation. I don't personally use MT or I'd check into it myself.
87 - TDavid
See bhw - it's not a yes or no, black or white issue!
It's "maybe"
It's what I said, Eric said, and now Natalie has confirmed.
Please add that to your lecture notes.
(flame setting on low at the moment)
88 - TDavid
Good news! I did some checking and it looks like if you are a personal user (no more than three authors) of Movable Type you can get a free, unsupported version:
89 - Phillip Winn
BHW, it appears that the only people capable of giving you the yes/no answer you desire about free MT installation are CyberWurx themselves. The good news is that so far people who have asked have been told "Yes," like Natalie.
The bad news is, they won't answer until you ask them. ;-)
P.S. It occurs to me that I should actually look into moving my own blog over, even though I wasn't on Bloghosts (wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole).
90 - bhw
Thanks, Phillip. I need a new host, too. I'm just hoping to keep my current one until January, when I should have time to do the switch.
91 - Mac Diva
I'm curious. Are people who have paid for a year in advance, or bought in for, say, six months, a month or two before the blog host fails, really getting their money back when these ventures go belly up?
Also, my understanding is that people hacking hosting sites and causing irreparable damage is the main reason owners of the companies give up. If there is no solution, won't the same thing happen to newer hosts, too?
92 - TDavid
Professional hosting companies get malicious hackers attacking them and scanning ports, etc quite frequently. It's a part of the job just like dealing with static electricity for people who work with computers. Part of the hosting business is effectively dealing with the underbelly of the web.
Hosting companies also have to deal with spam at even more ridiculous levels than we all do -- and in addition to that, also some clients who they host who decide to ignore the rules and start spamming others themselves.
Not to mention people putting up illegal content or using the servers for illegal activity ... frankly, I don't envy the job of any hosting company out there.
Now, as for buying hosting for some yearly deal ... I personally wouldn't recommend someone to do that for a variety of reasons.
Let's just take Blogcritics as an example. This website's bandwith has flucuated considerably the last couple months with the excellent election coverage and it did even more so when the Janet Jackson boof fiasco happened back in Jan/February. All of you folks who generously participate have helped traffic grow and the bandwith that was originally projected to be used has exceeded expectations.
Most of those pay for a year in advance special deals I've seen don't cover spikes in bandwith situations like this :( It's all extra expenses and extra costs and usually at a significant penalty. I know of one such site who charges in excess of $100 per gig!
So it's best for these reasons to pay month to month and reassess one's hosting needs as traffic / promotion / opportunities / websites change: month to month to month.
Maybe one needs to upgrade plans, maybe add some additional bandwith, etc. These pay a year in advance deals are usually priced very low for a reason: the server is often overcrowded and tweaked to provide very little ability for spikes in traffic or additional growth.
Paying for a yearly deal may seem like a really good deal -- and it could be for say a presence website: a one-page corporate or small business website for giving directions to a website, but these deals are not recommended for active webmasters, bloggers, etc. Pretty much anybody who wants to have anything more than a couple pages on the web and any significant amount of traffic.
At least from my experience and those I know who have switched away from plans like these, that's what I'm drawing this commentary on.
And no, I doubt there are many refunds issued for these special yearly plans; this is really a buyer-beware situation :(
93 - TDavid
er - directions to a physical location, not directions to a website, that was.
(must use preview, must use preview)
94 - Natalie Davis
Back to licensing -- if one downloads the barebones version of MT (up to version 3.121 now), it comes with a standard personal license. That should do the trick with Cyberwurx. I have an email in to the company now to verify this.
And btw, FYI: I have heard nothing back from Bloghosts yet (though, in fairness, it has been very helpful to me in the past) and received a response to previous correspondence almost immediately from Cyberwurx. Something to consider...
95 - Mac Diva
Good response, TDavid. I think you should blog it. There are always new people coming into the blogosphere. I hate to see them lose their content and/or money within months.
96 - Nick
Apologies that this is turning into the "Bloghosts Bitch Forum," but there's precious little information out there for us bloghosts customers.
Bloghosts has my domain as well (dumb, I know - I was a newbie at the time) and as I'm not listed anywhere with the registrar, I can't transfer the domain and no one at bloghosts is answering emails. Is my only option to give up my domain until it expires? Anybody know?
Doesn't help that the server my site's on must be down - it's been 24 hours and I'm still dead. From what I can tell, about 80% of bloghosts sites are still up. The rest of us . . . not so much.
*sigh*
97 - Natalie Davis
Well, I did it. Within 24 hours, my Cyberwurx account will be up and running and with any luck, my blog will be on the move. So far, I must say that Cyberwurx -- as is Chris, the company rep with whom I've been chatting -- is very helpful and accommodating. I am getting my MT installed free of charge *and* the BC discount *and* responsive customer service. Can't beat that. Thanks TDavid and Eric and Phillip for steering me Cyberwurx's way.
98 - bhw
A very hard deal to beat, indeed, Natalie!
99 - sporty
As much as I don't want to turn this into a bitch forum for bh either, you're not the only one who's noticed Jace's sudden change in personality. Over the last few months I noticed he was a bit more standoffish than usual. Cut to this week where there's a server down (with several bloggers I know on that server) and he's not responded to anyone's emails. Funny how he hides behind a fake phone number. Someone mentioned taking legal action. I'm not legal action happy, but right now, I'm so mad with the way he's treated the whole situation, I might consider it.
100 - Eric Olsen
bitch away guys, we're happy to provide the forum - and we definitely recommend Cyberwurx without reservation
101 - Phillip Winn
Indeed, I'm not surprised at the problems with Bloghosts. While our former relationship with that ISP seemed fine for a while, it ended abruptly and, um, acrimoniously, let's say. I know people who had nothing but happiness and roses in their relationship with that ISP, but I personally encountered what I think was butt-head behavior from Jace, even on accounts unreleated to Blogcritics. Apparently, he holds grudges or something.
Anyway, it seems that bloghosts has shut down access to their ns3 and ns4 servers, which means that a certain percentage of customers no long have DNS resolution. Fortunately, I had long ago made note of the numeric IP, so I've been able to get into the control panel and export things, but people not on the http://phoenix.bloghosts.com:2082/ server may not be so lucky. And come to think of it, I'm using the word "lucky" to describe a situation in which a site went down with no notice and is still not up, which gives you and idea of what low standards Bloghosts has inspired in me.
I know someone trying to get control of their DNS record from bloghosts, so let's hope that Jace does the right thing there. I also know someone who signed up and pre-paid a year's service about two weeks ago, we'll see what happens with that, too.
In contrast, I've been wondering if the excellent treatment we've been getting from CyberWurx was due to our high-profile status, or if they are really as responsive as TDavid keeps saying, and I must say that I'm really, really impressed so far.
I was manually installing MT for another site and noticed that a few crucial Perl libraries were missing. I sent off an email and got a response in eight minutes (!) stating that the first one was done, the second was in process, and were there any more I needed. All this for the cheapest account they sell, $3.75 with the Blogcritics discount.
Amazing.
102 - sporty
I can see why he holds grudges. Apparently, after some digging from a friend of mine (also using bh), Jace is a 21 year old kid. So he's either really scared right now because of the rioting on his front door, so to speak, or he's just that clueless on proper business ethics.
103 - Phillip Winn
Yeah, he's young. That's no excuse for poor behavior, of course, but it might go a long way toward explaining why he's throwing in the towel. We'll probably never know the details, and they don't really matter, but it's a shame how he's been treating most people so far.
Hopefully he'll do the right thing.
104 - sporty
I know you guys are touting cyberwurx. Hopefully they're good for you guys. My fiance and I are going with liquid web, the host that Dooce uses. She's said that they've been really good to her. So far, they've been super professional. cpanel to cpanel transfer. So there's another option for bh customers. I agree with you though Phillip. I hope he does the right thing. Btw, thanks for the link. We were able to get on that server using the phoenix link and get several bloggers' files off there. This is just a total nightmare.
105 - Phillip Winn
Yep, we're touting CyberWurx, but I've also been reasonably happy with phpwebhosting.com. They've had Image::Magick problems on some (but not all) of their servers, and they don't provide CPanel, but the service has been rock-solid stable, and it's only $9.95/month.
I'll probably switch to CyberWurx myself because of the lower price, but it is worth nothing that Bloghosts.com has been an unusually bad ISP in a sea of quite decent ISPs, in my opinion.
106 - Eric Olsen
I have the impression that Bloghosts was trying to be all things to all people and when that didn't work, just gave up. There is certainly a lesson there - best of luck to all remaining victims
107 - Nick
I, too, got into cpanel through my numeric ip and exported everything I could think of, but I'm still without my .com domain.
Of course, godaddy can't do anything for me without bh approval and I don't think that's gonna happen . . . so .org, here I come.
This really pisses me off.
108 - sporty
Nick, Submit the request anyway. That's what my fiance is doing. It doesn't hurt to try. Maybe if there's enough people who state their case, godaddy will release the urls.
109 - Nick
Just talked to a godaddy tech on the phone, and he said that if you fax their domain change form to them with ID and printouts of receipt emails from bloghosts showing you pay for and own the domain, they may be able to do the transfer.
On the other hand, the bloghosts website has been updated with "please be patient" information, so maybe there's hope . . .
110 - sporty
Well, at least he's giving people a response somehow. Doesn't help that people emailed him on this issue last week with no response at all. Not to mention, the server issue. I'd like to send him a flaming bag of poo.
111 - Eric Olsen
metaphorically you have
112 - sporty
I have a whole plate of brownies at home with his name on them... tomorrow morning. :o)
113 - Ms. Pants
Bloghosts girl here as well. I wouldn't have known I was losing my host probably until I'd lost it. Sporto up there pointed me towards the site where the "Eff y'all" message is. I don't understand how hard it would have been to send out an email. A simple, courtesy email. You know, to those of us who don't have to go to the site because we don't have problems. Grrr.
(Had I known he was a 21 year old kid running it, I don't think I'd have signed up with him.)
114 - Natalie Davis
I am trying to be patient, but this is frightening. I'm with Cyberwurx now and trying to transfer things over, but while I can get into my BH CPanel and have FTP'ed all my files onto my hard drive, I can't access my old site/MT interface and have no clue as to how I can import/export the files into my MT upgrade at Cyberwurx. That means YEARS of postings are stranded... I can't access my templates... and Jace apparently is ignoring my emailed pleas for assistance. This really hurts. I am supposed to be on my way to Boston for a business trip and I'm beating my brains out trying to get my site -- the purpose for the trip -- back in business. Lots of tears being shed today and likely long into the night. This is NO way to conduct business. It's a shame Jace had to learn this by harming a lot of innocent people.
115 - Chuck Pelto
TO: All Fellow Bloghost Victims
RE: Something Is Rotten...
...in the state of South Carolina.
I had two blogs offered up by Bloghosts. Registered with them a year ago. Not out that much money. But I notice that the blogs are both functional, but I can neither access the controls nor post comments.
But, SOMEBODY is posting comments. Rude, vulgar and advertising ones.
Jace is allowing spammers to post comments and affix trackbacks.
I wonder why.
Also, if anyone who was burned by Bloghosts lives in South Carolina, I'd recommend you volunteer to be spearhead of a class action suite. I'm sure that there are some people who have lost control of business related domain names and they'd like to get them back. It would be best if someone living in SC was able to do the prep-up for such an activity.
Regards,
Chuck(le)