Here's the link that will give me "credit" if/when you sign up with Bluehost.
WARNING!! This information is only of interest to those who have, or are shopping for, a domain. It seems worth sharing my experience so others can benefit.
This "report" was started in November, 2004. It's now early 2007. I have had even more experiences than I ever dreamed. When I started this chronicle, I was thinking that everything was solved. I'd gone through lousy domain hosts and had located a very good one. I figured I'd share what I'd experienced with anyone who would look in on this site.
If you'd like to skip to the stuff that interest you, here's a shortcut listing:
The first domain hosting company I used for dulcimers.com, was Concentric. They were great but their prices were just too high. At first they were local but then they went big time and moved to California. Their prices kept going up but not their services. By the end, I was paying about $50 a month for one dial-up connection and 100 mb of storage space. But at least with Concentric everything worked perfectly. They had a great CGI "library" and lots of knowledgeable support.
In October 2003, I found a company called iPowerweb that would give me five times more space and only charge $7 a month. Since they didn't provide dial-up, I found a $7 a month dial-up service called joimail.com. I moved to iPowerweb. It took quite a bit to get the site to work as it had at Concentric, but I figured that with that kind of cost saving, I had to do it.
A CGI library of scripts was non-existent, so I paid a small amount to have a script written to let my workshop leaders register to do classes on line. But with the help of programmers, I got things working.
That was October. If things had continued that way, I'd have been content to stay indefinitely. In fact, iPowerweb added hosting space to their offer, and by the end I was able to use 1 gig of space for one site.
But by the following year, the service I received from iPowerweb had deteriorated and was totally unsatisfactory.
Their "Control Panel," where you control the inner workings of your website, ceased to work for me. When I asked them for help I was told that they had no idea if it would ever be fixed. I was unable to email to AOL and several other email services. AOL had blacklisted all messages sent domains hosted on iPowerweb.
Blacklisting means that you can't sent a messages to the company that has your ISP on their list. Since AOL shares their blacklist, pretty soon about 1/2 of my messages wouldn't go through. (I have been told that the problems were created because iPowerweb accepted "spammers.") iPowerweb's support department said that iPowerweb had been "in negotiations" with AOL for about a month without progress. AOL wouldn't budge because they'd warned iPowerweb repeatedly about abuse of spamming but iPowerweb had ignored the complaints.
November 6 2004, I decided to move my whole website from iPowerweb.
dulcimers.com is HUGE! and moving it is a major job especially since I use a dialup connection.
The new company hosting company I selected was called Infinology. Optimistically I paid for a year's service (with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee). It took me two full days to get my website transferred. I finished moving it on a Tuesday.
Right from the beginning I had problems with Infinology. Things I should be able to do on their "Control Panel" didn't work. And I found their service department used support people located in a foreign country who couldn't understand English very well. I kept trying to get everything to work correctly, but since they couldn't give me any help, I was really having problems. Then Tuesday morning (the morning I'd move to them) their control panel went down completely and stayed down!! Other problems plagued the domain. Example: When folks sent emails to me, half the time they'd get an error messge back saying the address didn't exist. Infinology's customer service area said, "The sender should send the message again, and it 'probably' will work." It was a total mess!
I decided to move again before wasting any more time with Infinology. At least got my money back, but they informed me the 30-day trial period is the only time they'll refund any money. (Note: Most companies, including iPowerweb and Concentric, pro-rate the remaining service months, if you decide to move at any time.)
So November 10, 2004, I found yet ANOTHER company. It's called Bluehost. This one has a super Control Panel that's easy to use. AND the folks are located in the state of Washington in the U.S. of A.!! Their support department has been quick to respond, but most of the answers are in their Knowledgebase area. Everything went smoothly! I had everything running smoothly by Friday, November 12th.
I have the assurance of Bluehost that if I ever decide to move again, they'll prorate the return of any remaining payments. I've paid for two years' service and I have every reason to feel that this service will work well for me.
Oh, yes, and Bluehost lets me host up to FIVE domains from one area for the one $6.95 monthly price, so I have created a business/sales domain called dulcimers.biz and have moved the site I host for the Flint Banjo Club to its own domain: flintbanjoclub.com (I found a domain registration company that will handle your domain purchase for only $9.) (Eventually I used up the five domains.)
The Bluehost control panel works like a dream -- very intuitive. They even have a "Live Demo" area so you can try it out beforehand. http://www.bluehost.com/tell_me_more.html
I hope nothing happens to tarnish my opinion of Bluehost. Right now I'm really pleased! And I'm paying merely $6.95 a month (paid for two years), for 2 gigabytes of storage space!! I can have up to five domains in that space. (If I'd stayed at Concentric, I'd be paying $70 a month for 1 gig and one domain!!)
I'll try to keep this report updated with my experience.
January 6, 2005
I'm still very satisfied with BlueHost. If you are thinking about signing up with them, please write to me.
September 13, 2005
My domain problems have calmed down. My site has been working fine. Another area which relates to this which has caused some problems has been my need for dial-up access. Yup, I'm still using dial-up. Since we are away from home so much (in the U.P. and in Florida), it wouldn't make much sense to have cable or other high-speed which would be linked to our home address. I was with Joi for several years and found them to be a good and very inexpensive dial-up service, but they were purchased by Earthlink which meant that when my prepaid period expires, I'll be paying $22 a month. I planned to move to PeoplePC but I subscribed and I had all sorts of problems including two hours on hold while trying to get to tech support. (I found that any "tech service" after the initial period would have an hourly fee.) I therefore asked for an immediate refund.
I subscribed to another inexpensive service which is promising. It's called isp.com. I was able to sign up easily. I love the dialer which is stream-lined but unique. It's located in the U.S.(which is very important to me), and the price is less than $9 monthly!
End of December 2005
So how do I feel a year later? Am happy or is honeymoon stage over?
I'm actually more impressed than at first! As an example, the other day there was a problem and my site was snail slow. I called Bluehost.
As usual, I got through to service immediately and got an "English speaking" service guy. He said they were working on the problem and he would call me back when they had it figured out.
'Ya, right'.. I thought!
But a couple of hours later he phoned back saying there'd been an assault on their server and he thought the problem had been solved. His answer wasn't really important. The fact that he called me back to inform me shows the dedication to service that you get with Bluehost.
My newest problems - Do I go back to school?
In November, I was notified that a person wishing to place an ad to my dulcimers.biz site couldn't get into the site (which was created by a script available on Bluehost). There was definitely a problem since I couldn't get into it either. But because the program was a distribution by Noah's it had absolutely no support so I had no where to go. I worked on it blindly through most of November, but feared that if I went any further I might mess things up more, and at least folks could buy from the site. So I waited until after Christmas.
After Christmas, I tried again. I ended up losing it all so my shopping for a new program for classified ads began. Reinstall seemed risky.
Folks in the meanwhile had frequently mentioned missing the area. I sure didn't want to let those who had used it down.
It didn't take me long to realize that I could end up in the same position again. I needed more programming knowledge to be able to assure that I could keep it going, but learning a new language so I could work with a script was overwhelming. The language for these scripts is called php and uses a MySQL database - I was lost. I had taught myself basic html (which is used for websites), but this is more involved. And most any programs I found cost $99- $1,000 and even then I wasn't sure I could keep them going since the cheaper ones seem to be foreign made which make service difficult. Most charged extra if you needed help.
So I headed to eBay and eventually I found a cheap script that looked like it would work. I bought it for very little then paid an extra fee to have it installed. New Years Day I was all excited. The seller advised me that it was installed. I just had to tailor it to fit dulcimers.biz with appropriate categories.
So I worked a good 10 hours on it that day. But nothing would work! Nothing! The seller basically told me if I wasn't so dumb I could figure it out. And there seemed to be a language barrier because we just couldn't communicate. I don't know if this person is located in this country, but her/his first language definitely isn't English.
I was at a loss. Then I discovered a site, Scriptlance.com, where you can hire someone to build or install a script. Obviously the prices range depending on the project. I hoped my eBay script was still salvageable. Click here to see my listing: my scriptlance listing.
I explained the problem in my listing and got several bids up to $500!!
But one guy answered and said he'd do it at a reasonable amount. He is super nice. He seemed to understand my frustration. He said he'll be there for me if anything else comes up. He ended up re-writing the entire program and reinstalling EVERYTHING. That's what is up now. (See the new classified section.) He has assured me that if it needs any additional tweaking, he'll work with me.
This guy knows his stuff. He's friendly and very knowledgeable.
In the meantime, I'm determined to learn MySQL and php.
So now I have a new service/person I'd recommend. His name is Robert and he has a business called Codehelpers.com
John better watch out. This guy is my new tech hero.
March 28, 2006
Bluehost just sent out an announcement of improvements in service. As of April 3rd, 2006 Bluehost is offering 24/7 support for all of our users.
So here's what BlueHost now offers
May 14, 2007
It's been a while since I've contributed to this "report" of my domain experiences.
Ovet the past year my website has been the victim of four phishing schemes over the past year. I have finallytracked the problem down to a pMachine blog script which was given out "free" by pMachine. They stopped supporting it but since I had it on my site, I continued to use it. Apparently there was a weakness in the script. I believe somehow folks found my script and entered (probably as a member for which no approval was needed.) They could up-load their photo to my site. Well, apparently they found a way to upload a phishing scheme script. Once unpacked, it allowed those hackers to get in and use my website space. They tried to use my site to collect "Bank of America" customers' data (account numbers, etc.) I did everything I could to delete and clean it out, but it kept coming back. Finally I today, I got rid of the script completely. Whew!
Bluehost helped me, but in the end, I was the one who figured out the problem area and got it off my site.
I'm still sold on Bluehost. I would highly recommend. Today I talked at length to one of their tech service reps. They are never too busy.
For internet connection, I've now gone to "Speednet LLC". It's a wireless provider available in this part of Michigan (but check their website because they're growing by leaps and bounds.) I'm now downloading at 3Mbs, a tremendous improvement over dial-up. The cost is $34.95 monthly plus a $7 modem. We've just added internet phone service for $29.95. So for a little over $70 a month, we have fast internet AND phone (unlimited local and long distant.) The unique thing about this service is that you can the internet service on hold, if you're gone for a long period (like when we go to Florida for six months out of the year.) Our AT&T phone service was over $60 monthly and I was paying about $9 for dial-up through isp.com. It looks like about the same cost, but that was for dial-up. I now have FAST wireless. AND we have unlimited long-distance and local phone service. It's great to be able to call anytime of the day!!
September 9, 2007
I should have mentioned that buying your domain is also important. I use Home Business Domains but always have a hard time "finding" them. If you use this link, it should get you to the website. I know there are other good domain sellers. (I've heard good things about Go Daddy. My recommendation is that you do not buy your domain from the company that hosts your website. It's too easy for them to set you up so they own the site and you are stuck with them.
REFERRAL PROGRAMS
Let me know if you are interested in signing up for Speednet LLC's dial-up service. If you give me credit for directing you to them (Sharon & John Skaryd, I will receive a "finder's fee".)
And I have signed up for Bluehost's "affiliate" program. For domain hosting there's none better. I am more content all the time with my decision to have them host my site.
Here's the link that will give me "credit" if/when you sign up with Bluehost.