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 Mobile - Web - Media  Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007 9:35:26 AM
HostMySite.com Limits ColdFusion, Does Not Tell Customers
Are you considering HostMySite.com as a Web host for your ColdFusion site? If you are, please read the following, because you won't find this information out on the the HostMySite.com Website - in particular, this post refers to their "Builder" package. Two months ago, a new client of mine wanted their site hosted with a 'more established' ISP as opposed to hosting with my current ISP - who is great, very responsive, honest, etc. - but they are small, have less resources, etc. While they aren't 'big,' my host is at a great facility and we have a lot of bandwidth available. I definitely recommend them. HostMySite.com on the other hand... is a company you may want to avoid. The issues I'm going to cover here came up because I ran into a problem when trying to upload a 1.2mb zip file using a very simple file upload script. The upload failed, so I checked my code - no problems there - then I run though some tests and find that smaller files 'do' upload. I found the largest file that would upload was 550k - anything larger, and the server would not respond. No error message... just no response at all. After wasting 30 minutes trying to find the problem, I contacted their support team over chat. My description of the problem was not enough - the staff at HostMySite would not do anything unless I would give him the URL so he could see the issue happen for himself. My question to him was, "How many sites are you placing on each server?" Over the period of 30min that we were on chat, I asked the same question 5 times - finally, asking, "Why will you not tell me how many sites are on that server?" then backing up my request with the following, "This is key information for me as a customer - I need to know how overloaded this server is that you have us on." He replied that it's not their policy - in other words, they do not feel it is important to let their customers know what they are paying for. Here is a direct quote from Julius F., the second support person who responded by email: We are not allowed to disclose how many sites are assigned to each server however I can say we do allocate a set number of sites based on the specifications of the server and each configuration has been time/stress tested before it is deployed as a production server.Interesting wording... they are not "allowed." What are they afraid of? Another thing to point out here... this stress test they do... doesn't mean much when you place the same number of applications and users on a box who are amateur developers. Although, they do have a 'safety measure' in place, which brings us to the second issue with HostMySite.com that you should know about. "All ColdFusion processes must complete in under 50 seconds. If a process takes 50 seconds or longer, the process gets cancelled."
HostMySite.com Support:I wrote back, and explained that what they were doing was enforcing a limitation on my hosting package that I was never told existed. If I would have known this before I signed my client up, I would most likely have selected a different host. While you may not agree with me, I tend to feel that HostMySite.com is misleading customers. I also told them that this is a "feature" of the hosting package, and that they need to list it on the package page: http://www.hostmysite.com/hosting/builder/ - as you can imagine... they probably don't put it there because it will not help with sales. What do you think? Is not telling a customer about a limitation of a service the same thing as lying about what you've sold a customer? Would you be happy if you bought a car, and then find that it could only go 60mph for 50 seconds before the engine would turn off? HostMySite.com - I thought you were going to be a great host, instead, I'm quite disappointed at your lack of openness with customers about the number of sites per server, and the lack of informing customers what you've really sold them. I will not set another client up on your service and will continue to tell others to look elsewhere until your policy changes. What am I going to do? Well, we are past the 30 day money back guarantee and the client already paid for the first year - so it looks like I have to create a hybrid solution for them that uses ASPupload for all the file uploads. Hopefully I can integrate it without having to spend much time in ASP rewriting portions of my application. Thanks HostMySite - I was almost done with this project - now you've added more work AND wasted an afternoon spent discovering your 'features.' How about you? Do you host a site there? Did you know of these issues? Are you experiencing any other problems with HostMySite.com? 
ColdFusion
hosting
HostMySite
Mobile - Web - Media Wednesday, Nov 02, 2005 11:37:51 AM
Spider Bait Still Fooling Google? Unless you've been a Web slinger for a few years, you might have missed out on the term "Spider Bait." Spider Bait can happen a few ways, but the main function is to fill Web pages up with keywords and get search engine 'spiders' to index them. A spider is a program that browses the Web and follows links based on rules and criteria. While crawling, it stores your Web pages and information about your Web pages in the search engine's database for use in the search engine. When this first started happening, back in hmm... 96/97, I had some clients that wanted me to do this. I tried to talk them out of it, but the client wanted it done. Even worse, they wanted me to do it the sneaky way - by setting the text color to the color of the background, and filling the bottom of the site with around 500+ keywords and phrases. Fortunately, the client requested it to be removed after a few months - which was a good move, because the search engines were catching on. Spider Bait was getting out of hand to the point that some seach engines stated that they would stop indexing your site if it was filled with keywords, while some evolved their spiders to ignore such clusters of words. Once these methods were put in place, the effectiveness of Spider Bait began to diminish - and, in some cases, it caused sites to vanish from the search engines. It was an end to the Spider Bait problem, or so it seemed. Just last week, while researching for a new site I'm launching, I was searching Google using the words "music hosting." Since I'm curious about the top listed sites, I visit each one to see if there's anything I can learn from them - why they are at the top - who links to them, etc. The fifth listing, Sectionz.com is what this posting is all about. If you click on the link, you'll be taken to a modern day Spider Bait page. WTF?!? Yes, it's true, Spider Bait will take you to the top of Google, today, in 2005. What makes that page Spider Bait? take a look, or, look at this screenshot:
I'm surpised on a few fronts. First, because this can still work. Second, that it's working on GOOGLE! and Thirdly, I'm surprised that Sectionz.com would be doing this. Actions like this are not good for artists or music fans. If you want to be the best, then be the best, shortcuts will always cut again.
google
hosting
marketing
spider bait
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