They’ve Done It To Me Again!
Things have been a bit quiet lately… in other words, nothing has really got so far up my nose that I felt compelled to have a gripe about it… which is good I suppose!
But then… all good things must come to an end…
The only GOOD thing I can say about it, is that THIS time I DID get an email and a phone call to tell me it had happened… so it didn’t take three days to fix like last time!
For the second time, Hostgator decided to suspend one of my web sites because of “abuse”.
Now that means they lock you out of everything (so how are you supposed to “fix” it???) and put a “site suspended” notice up on the home page… which does wonders for your online reputation - NOT!
And as far as “helping” you to track down exactly what the problem is that CAUSED the so-called “abuse”? None forthcoming. No suggestions, even though I specifically asked!
It was ONLY because I HAVE been web publishing for over a decade that I even had an inkling of where to start looking (after they unlocked my cPanel so I could look at the log files and download a BACKUP to MOVE my site to another host!)
But any “normal” person with a web site would NEVER have been able to determine that some low-life was hitting my server with a request every second, for a file which did not exist, which caused the excessive load on my server - hence its suspension!
This mini DOS (denial of service) attack was easily foiled by simply blocking this scumbag’s IP address in the htaccess file.
But that’s not the point! The lack of “service” in tracking down the issue from a major hosting provider is the problem here!
All they seemed concerned about doing was upgrading me to a more expensive server which could handle this increased “traffic” - laughable!
If it had been you - without the knowledge - how long would your web site have been off the air? How would you have fixed it without the “support” of your hosting provider’s “support” team?
And yet another reason why, despite their highly profitable affiliate program, I will NEVER recommend Hostgator to anybody!
Too Cynical @ May 12, 2008
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Thanks Stephen,
I’ll cross Hostgator of my list of possible web hosting services. I’ve also heard bad stuff about Godaddy. I’m with JaguarPC at the moment, and they seem to be ok.