we just had our first case where it seems that hostgator changed the settings for register globals on someone's account, and then it "appears" as if their blog got hacked as a result. I know that register globals is a phrase that is mentioned often when it comes to security settings and hacking, and to the best of my knowledge hostgator recently changed the settings (or will be doing this) on their servers. This concerns me, and I wanted to see if anyone had any more information on this, as we have been recommending hostgator to use with phpLD for a long time, and I want to make sure this recommendation is still a good one.
I run a web hosting company and one of my servers is a LAMP server running CentOs 5. A user of mine has a Joomla installation running to manage his website and he has run into the following problem that I am puzzled by.
When Joomla adds a component or module to itself, or when a user uses the Joomla upload functionality, Joomla will add the new files under the user name "apache". This makes sense as it is the apache service running PHP that is actually creating the files.
However, when he FTP's into the account to modify these files, he doesn't have the appropriate permissions to do so as he doesn't have a root level login, just permissions on his home directory which is the site. Any help would be much appreciated.
Also, does anyone know how to change the owner/group of a directory and all of its sub directories in Linux without changing the actual permissions? I.e. some of the files in the folder have different permissions (0644 as apposed to 0755) than its parent but if I do a top down user/group change on the folder it will change everything in that folder to 0755.
At work, at home, and a couple of associates are with Hostgator on their reseller plans.
My employer's account with Hostgator... in about two years we only ever had one major problem. We wanted to change the primary domain and so the support boys and girls at HG did that for us. We then had a huge problem with propagation, and some of the packages didn't transfer over. That saga took about five days or so to fix but was pleased with the eventual outcome.
We had a mediocre problem about a year back when all of the websites under our reseller had crappy response times for about a week... something about a dictionary attack on the server I think. After that was fixed everything was fine.
A few times Hostgator support helped me out when they didn't have to... many many times they went a little further to help me solve a problem, and a couple of times very promptly helped me fix a problem I'd created which would have got me fired had it not been done fast.
Some people complain about Hostgator response times to support tickets. I simply did not have a problem with that... they always got back to me within 2-6 hours. When I couldn't wait that long (which only happened a handful of times), I submitted a ticket by email, then got on the phone or live chat, and they very helpfully escalated the priority.
I haven't had any memorable problems with my personal reseller account with them the whole time I've been at Hostgator.
Their support is very very good... Brent seems to be the driving force behind the desire to be the best, and the fact that he's very well off yet still goes on to the support forums and is actively involved semi-frequently goes to the ethic of the company as a whole.
They DO go over and above - at least they have for me.
Recently, I was banned from their support forums permanently.. you can read about my side of the story at ryanpaul.ca.
Even after what I think was a unfair ban from their forum, I'm still perfectly happy to keep my business with them, as well as my employer's... and will still be referring people to them. Why? Because their service is undeniably splendid.
I am posting looking for anyone who is or has hosted with hostgator.com.
I am looking to move a site to their service that handles around 150,000 pageviews a month and was hoping I could get some input from actual users of hostgator.com. I want to do the basic shared hosting plan.
I experienced a problem with Hostgator servers where IE6 seems to cause problems and the response from Hostgator was sort of "They don't care and people must upgrade to IE7"
The problem is that on other servers several installations of a particular hosting BILLING system works 100% fine but with two separate installations on separate Hostgator servers the following happens. With IE6
1) Get a BLANK page regardless whether file in public or admin was called and the page only show if you click GO in url bar.
2) Refresh page don't help and page stays blank until click on Go (in other words you can click refresh till you are blue in the face, the page stays blank. You MUST every time click on GO for a page to be displayed - All links or submit buttons gives a blank page)
3) With such blank pages the "View Source" option however give the complete and correct page up to the last </html>
I'm a newbie and trying to figure out which host to use. I'm going to have about 20 different sites all with different names. I think i've narrowed it down to either 1and1 for $9.99/mo(2gis/50gigs) or Hostgator for $9.95(5gigs/75gigs) both with no setup fee.
Does anyone have experience whem either??or other recommendations.
See folks I want to run a forum and I have decided to either use Hostgator or 1and1 hosting. Which was is better if I want to host a forum with members no more of 1000 or so? What is there MySqL Database limit?
I signed up for their hosting on Sunday morning and completed payment for the first month using hostgators online payment system and paypal.
The payment was accepted and confirmed. An email was sent some time later confirming the account had been set up.
The email specified a user ID for cpanel as well as nameservers which I used to point two of my domains at the new hostgator account.
I used cpanel and FTP to set up the add-on domain, create some email accounts and upload content for the two domains (the same content as on the old servers which should now be shown k-free.co.uk and offshoreharry.com).
All appeared to work fine with no problems. I could use outlook to access email and the web sites were available on the new server (the old server was down).
A day and a half later, I WAS HORRIFIED TO SEE
- the emails accounts could not be accessed - the cpanel user did not work - Hostgator did not email me or attempt to contact me in any way to tell me there was an issue. (they had my valid mobile phone number - there are no unidentified calls in the period concerned). - the web sites that had been pointed at hoistgator were showing a suspended message and spammy hostgator context ads. My non-spam mostly non-ads content had been uploaded to the hostgator account.
One of those domains is freeware software on a site with ZERO ADS that has never been moneterised and sometimes gets 100's of uniques a day.
HOSTGATOR WAS STEALING TRAFFIC FROM MY ad free unmonetized site and showing a nasty spammy ad page.
Not only was I rather angry but also amazed that any company would ever do this. Just think how you would feel if all your sites - pages were hijacked and showing some of the nasty ad pages.
My opinion: Do NOT EVEN CONSIDER using HOSTGATOR.
Checking my yahoo email, there was no email from hostgator saying my account had been suspended (if I hadn't checked it they would have continued stealing the traffic until I noticed).
The only email from hostgator was a request for a copy of my passport or utility bill! I am left wondering if they are really a front for an identity theft scam? I am rather unhappy that they have even my name - address - tel no - paypal email.
I obviously immediately changed the nameservers on the two domains back to the old servers. But since nameserver changes take upto 72 hours to fully propogator, hostgator could still be stealing some of my traffic now. The two sites contain nothing that any T+C I have ever seen would have any reason whatsoever to see as a problem. The two sites are k-free.co.uk and offshoreharry.com for anyone here who wishes to verify this claim.
Hostgator COULD be showing my content instead of their spammy ads - I uploaded it.
Hostgator was mentioned by a few on here and I thought them to be a big company who have a reputation to protect. Are you guys really comfortable with a company who behaves like this. Will they suddenly suspend your sites tomorrow and steal your traffic until you happen to notice?
I have requested to them that they provide access TO MY PERSONAL AND BUSINESS EMAILS on the email accounts I set up. I would also like any log data that was collected. I will report back here what the response to that (politely worded) request is. Giving me access to any email and log data that they have effectively kidnapped-stolen hardly makes amends for the wrong they have already done. Like any other victim of a common thief I may just have to accept that I lost something and will not see it again.
Additionally, search engine robots may have visited the sites and got 404s, any users who dropped by will certainly not be back, the damage caused is ongoing and difficult to fully quantify.
Hostgator did not email me or attempt to contact me (they had my valid mobile phone number). They did not tell me why the account was suspended and the trafic STOLEN. I have had web sites for 4-5 years and have never been involved in anything remotely dubious on the web. You can judge for yourself if there is any reason for them to do this [sites offshoreharry.com, k-free.co.uk]. I had sent at most 10 emails whilst testing the 3 or 4 email accounts I was creating.
Obviously I will never use hostgator or any related company.
My opinion: Do NOT EVEN CONSIDER using HOSTGATOR ... EVER.
HostGator is the worst hosting company ever. They took my website down in November 2006 without notice because they claimed my site used 11% of the CPU. The support department told me they would send me a .tar file of my site and a mysql export within one week which I told them was unacceptale because the site has paid advertisers (not Google Adsense) and I already had another dedicated server with PEER1 to move the site in question to immediately. After several hours of tying up their phone support, they finally relinquished and put the .tar file in an ftp for me to download. I told them cancel my account immediately and do not bill my credit card again.
OK, I had my site back up in several hours, and thought I was done with them for good, but they have continued to bill my credit card $29.95 per month since the incedent. I have called support and they said I needed to log into CPanel and cancel my account from there, however, they locked me out of Cpanel. I told them I was going to do a chargeback on the fraudulent billing and their representative stated they would file a judgment against me with the credit bureaus if I reversed the charges.
Here we are, now in April 2007 and they are still continuing to bill me for an account they cancelled and I have no recourse at this point but to do a chargeback through Bank of America for the 5 months they have billed me since I have not been on their service.
I have an impeccable credit rating and it is the absolute most dispicable act I've ever seen from an internet company since AOL pulled the same trick on me back in 1995.
I urge anybody reading this to never have any dealings with HostGator or you will seriously regret it.
I decided to try hostgator , so please advice me Which package is the best for newbie to buy in hostgator? I am interested in cheap price and best server uptime.
Sometime ago I was openly discussing which hosting company would be great to start a reseller account with, now, I was seriously thinking about going with Hostgator based on user reviews, but then went with my gut and signed up with MediaTemple to test them out.
However, based on reviews I've read around the web, I couldn't discount Hostgator, so... whenever a client asked which hosting company they should use, I told them that we use Mediatemple, but they could take a look at Hostgator if they feel MT is too pricey.
Big. Effin. Mistake.
It all started out smoothly. Clients paid. Got the passes. Setup emails, FTP's, etc. Done.
3 Months down, nearing the end of the projects, suddenly everything went tits up.
We couldn't log in, couldn't access the ftp, nothing. We emailed them, they sent us passwords to login (which did not work), and even suggested that we pay again to help reset their system (client paid again, still didn't work).
Now, get this: After emails from one of clients, they (HG) said that it may have to do with the fact that he was based in Asia (Hong Kong), which was causing problems with the system, including payments, and because the domain had a .asia extension.
HUH?!?! Say what?!
Our client couldn't be bothered, so he signed up with somebody else, and luckily enough, because his domain was with Namecheap, we were able to easily remedy the problem.
Last I heard, he said he was going to try to get a refund from HG, but he wasn't holding out much hope.
That wasn't the end of it though.
One of our clients, this one a personal friend of mine, whom I also gave the same advice (HG or MT), went with HG - and guess what? The exact same thing happened!
HG was, this time, saying something about problems to their password systems, and so they gave us links to reset the systems and re-enter our passwords. My friend tried, and still nothing. HG can't claim any .asia excuse on this one, because the domain is a .com, or credit card issues - as my friend paid in full for the entire year (and the CC is a US-issued one too). Eventually, we just gave up, and I've offered to let my friend sit his site on my MT server for the meantime.
Shady. Real Shady.
Anyhow, if any of you are thinking of hooking up with HG, especially if you're from outside the US, be wary.
Now, regarding Mediatemple? For all their bad press, their customer service (and their control panel setup) is spotless. I've had a few instances of downtime, but nothing insane. I think I'll be sticking with them until the need arises for an upgrade to AWS or Mosso.
Ive had a reseller account with HostGator for just over a year and I pay my $25 every month at the right time. Ive never been late.
I have the "Aluminum" reseller account - Everything unlimited including mysql databases..
The service until this week was insane - their the best.
But then Tuesday and Wednesday my site was down in particular my forums
After a ticket to the support department they fixed it (3 hours) and said all was working fine.
I was happy..
The next morning I get an email from them saying - My site has grown to large for my reseller account (5Gbs/50Gbs) and that its causing abuse on their server! The joke is my site is tiny compared to what some of you have
600 Visitors a day +- 30 ppl on the forums at all time 11 gbs bandwith
They said the forum is "crunching" their CPU...
So without warning they moved my site to a dedicated server and said:
Your site zoopedup.com has been determined to be causing high loads on the server and the cause of recent downtime. It is not suitable for a shared hosting environment and will need a dedicated or semi dedicated hosting solution. We sell semi dedicated servers for a month which come with 500 gigs bandwidth and 25 gigs disk space.
Instead of just suspending your site we have moved it to a dedicated server giving you one week to decide what you want to do. You can move it to a new host or put it on a semi dedicated / dedicated server with us. It is your decision to make but we will not be able to host it in a shared environment any longer and at the end of the one-week it will be terminated off the dedicated server.
WHAT!! I have already paid for the month of April for the hosting. But they will just terminate my site in one week?
Also if 30 concurrent mysql db connections makes their server lag - how would I use my "unlimited" mysql dbs they promise in my reseller acc's info.. ?
Is it just me or am I being treated unfairly...?
Now today my site is slow, lags and times out etc.. im loosing visitors.. my banner manager is broken because of their unwarned server move - I have advertisers breathing down my neck asking why their ads arent online.. etc
Im looking for a hosting package (no reseller) that can host my site and watch it grow with NO problems - Has 2b Linux.. I got about 20-25$ to spend per month
any ideas/feedback
I dont understand how my site can be to big for a reseller acc...
Salutations from sunny Athens. Ok, here goes. I have a problem with my forum, It just got temporarily suspended due to high server loads. I just cannot understand why the loads are so high, can someone have a look at the log and help me plz?... The site is anime.gr. Its a internet forum, based on vBulletin.
They have sent me, OUT OF THE BLUE AND AFTER THEY CLOSED ME DOWN, a notice with that log, telling me I had the option of either upgrading to one of their dedicated servers or moving to another host. Nothing more, no warning, no time for me to asses what caused the server load spike, nothing. I cannot even have access to Cpanel so that I can take a backup for the site. I am losing money every minute from this, I am pissed, and I am trying to find out what happened. I will certainly change hosts (and probably move to a VPS service).
So I finally have a site that is getting a lot of traffic. Yeah for me. That is when the problems start.
05/29/06 - I get a call from HostGator stating that my site keeps crashing their server and that I need to move to a semi-dedicated. I had a choice of upgrading or they were going to move my site to a 7-day temp server. That is totally fine with me so I say okay and upgrade.
05/29/06 - I receive a welcome email for my new semi-dedicated server and I think all is good. Next, I receive an email stating that they needed my account login and pass so they can transfer the files. I respond with the login details. So I assume that the transfer has been made and everything is okay.
05/30/06 - Everything is cool. Site is running smooth.
05/31/06 - My site gets suspended at around 1pm. No warning we are going to take your site down, no 7-day move to a temp server (like they said they would), just a big SITE SUSPENDED page. I call wondering what the heck happened.
Call 1 - HG: It appears that you have two accounts and the site that was using the most cpu power is on the "Baby" plan. Me: Huh? I thought that was transferred over to the semi-dedicated. HG: No transfer ever took place. I am then told that I have to fill out a bunch of forms in order to have the transfer happen. Fine, so I do that.
Call 2 - No response received from the transfer form submission so I call to see what is up. I am then told that a transfer DID take place. Then why is my site not up? Please allow 1 hour for updating is their response. Fine.
Call 3 - (one hour later) ME: Why is my site not up? HG: The site needs to be transferred. ME: HUH?!?! (I am furious at this point, but I keep my cool.) Okay so WHEN will it be transferred?? HG: I will have it done IN ONE HOUR the manager said!
Call 4 - (several hours later(I had college)) ME: Why is my site not up? HG: The transfer is taking longer than expected (only a 3 gig site) so it will be, yes, ANOTHER HOUR!!! I am pulling my hair out by now.
Call 5 - (one more hour) Me: Why is my site not up? HG: We needed to change the dns settings (I think this is what he said). Me: Okay how long will that take... you guessed it ONE HOUR!!!!!! OMG.
Call 6 - It has only been 30 min. so we will see if this really takes an hour or not. I am sure I will be calling them though.
Here is where I may have caused an issue:
In the initial email asking for my account login details I responded with the login details AND I also asked (in the same email) to see a CPU usage log. They treated this as a support issue so the login details for the transfer never made it to the transfer department!? Their response to this was that they thought I wasn't sure if I was going to go with a semi-dedicated plan... well I ALREADY PAID FOR IT. So why would I not be sure if I wanted to upgrade when I already paid for it?? Only they know.
All in all, my site has been down almost all day and I have lost a lot of money and visitors too I am sure. I used to think that HostGator was awesome, but after all of this I am starting to think less. I am still going to give them the benefit of a doubt and stay with them, but if you ever need to go from a Baby account to a Semi-Dedicated be sure to STAY ON THEM AND MAKE SURE IT GETS DONE!
After reading NUMEROUS fantastic reviews I know this is not the norm of HostGator, but it happened to me!
My head hurts now.
Sorry I just had to vent somewhere as this has really upset me.
Was actually wondering what you guys recommend as far HostGator Reselling opportunity vs HostRocket re-selling opportunity. I came prepared for this questions, so here are my goals:
Goals: Long Term - I've biz established already and would like to add hosting as unlimited bonuses and even start a hosting business slowly as my own forums start to pick intensity
The 24-month option of HostRocket seems irresistable with unlimited bandwidth and 1tb of space (as their chat), kind of skeptical as it isn't in writing, but it seems they have a better offter at first then Hostgator, but they don't provide a billing system like: whmautopilot. PL nameservers are also $2/month with HostRocket, but Hostgator reseller options has them included.
Am I missing something guys? Tried my best to describe this, let's see!
I conducted a couple of questions for each host and this is what was said, it seems HG is abit shy on giving out details, where bluehost didn't mind telling:
Please wait for a HostGator operator to respond.
Welcome to HostGator Live Chat! You are now chatting with 'Jefferson S.'
Jefferson S.: Welcome to HostGator, how may I assist you?
Stuart: evening Jefferson
Stuart: could you tell me how many shared accounts use the same ip address
Jefferson S.: no, i don't have that information
Stuart: couldn't you find out?
Jefferson S.: no, I can not see how many accounts are on a server and we do not give that information out
Stuart: ok its just a performance related question i thought you could answer and to many accounts on the same ip isn't good really as you must know... for your information Bluehost have 500accounts per server and a couple of hundred that use the same ip.
Jefferson S.: we fill our servers 80% capacity
Stuart: ok thank you for your help Jefferson
Jefferson S.: You're welcome!
AND HERE'S MY QUESTIONS WITH BLUEHOST
Ann A. [5:48:14 PM]: Thank you for contacting the Sales Team. Please give me a moment while I review your question.
stuart [5:48:14 PM]: could you tell me if you have any uptime stats and do you own your servers or lease?
Ann A. [5:48:52 PM]: Hi! We average 99.9% network uptime. You can google bluehost uptime, there's several sites that monitor uptime for different hosts. We manage our own servers, which are located in Orem, Utah, USA
stuart [5:49:47 PM]: how would you say you are as a company compared to hostgator?
stuart [5:50:59 PM]: thinking of an answer lol
Ann A. [5:53:23 PM]: Our hosting packages are pretty similar. The way we run our scripts is more secure. Bluehost's scripts run using user:user based permissions, which means your scripts and files are as secure as Linux itself. HostGator runs scripts as nobody:nobody, making the individual script security not as secure.
Ann A. [5:53:46 PM]: We also offer free backup restores, which I think hostgator charges for.
Ann A. [5:54:08 PM]: They also use cpanel, which is what we use. I'm not certain what their cpu and process limits are,
stuart [5:54:31 PM]: excellent answer thats what I call good customer service! even though you had to ask a collegue lol [5:54:53 PM]: how many people share the same ip?
Ann A. [5:55:43 PM]: On average we have 500 accounts per server. Each server has multiple ips, let me see if I can find a more exact number. one moment please.
stuart [5:55:55 PM]: thank you
Ann A. [6:01:35 PM]: Thank you for waiting. There's probably a couple hundred that share the same ip address.
stuart [6:03:16 PM]: thank you Ann for answering the questions ohnestly..hostgator wouldn't tell me theirs they just said they fill their servers 80%
I'm with Dreamhost right now.. got in on a cheap deal years ago. I've been too lazy to keep myself at the best host, but my friend keeps telling me to move over to Host Gator?
Should I? I'm just on one of the shared hosting plans. I run a Wordpress blog I find to be extremely slow on Dreamhost. Maybe I customized it too much or maybe they just totally oversell CPU resources. Do you think it would be wise to move over and expect an improvement?
I have joined Hostgator as my server for my new V bulletin forum and they have uploaded the content needed for my V bulletin forum but I need to write the scripts. I have been trying to figure out what I have to input for the scripts but nothing works.
I was under the impression as advertised on there forum that they set this up for you for free but they have said to me I will have to pay £35.00 extra for them to sort the scripts for me.
Im currently hosted at hostgator and so far they are great.
I have a medium size vbulletin forum. 7500 threads, 111,500 post, 12,000 users and about 2,000 active users... most of the time I have 30 to 50 members online and 150 guests (200 users at the time).
Hostgator has never fail to me. but I was wondering what would be the limit of my shared account? how many users at the same time can take my account?
I dont use a lot of BW (80gb per month) and 1gb disk space.. I plan to expand more but I dont know if I gonna need a vps or something...
I've had a few sites with HostGator. I build sites and sell them sometimes. Anyway, the one I have with them now is a adult tube site, so I do not want to post a link to it here. If a mod posts here I will pm them the site URL. I'm eight days into this website, but I have used them a lot the past year.
Off to the review....
- setup was quick as usual. I signed up, paid and had my details in my email within five minutes.
- speed is quick both HTTP and FTP. I will do around 100k unique visitors this billing period as I purchased some advertising and it never slows down
- support is excellent via live chat and ticket support. They can usually solve your problems. I have never used the phone support. tickets get a reply within a half hour
- i had acted on around nine dmca complaints notices they had forward to me and heard back from them within a minute or two when I told them I was removing the content...so fast
- you cannot beat the prices for what you get
This is about the only unlimited hosting provider I can trust
It takes a lot to piss me off, and HostGator's done it. I opened an account with HostGator on behalf of a client of mine. Then the client decided he wanted to consolidate a few other web sites to the same server, so I opened a reseller account on HostGator and asked them to move the original account into the reseller account.
My client got billed for both the original (empty) account and the reseller account. HostGator's sales account is refusing to refund my client the money for the original account saying that I neglected to fill out a "cancellation request" form. But, and perhaps this was silly of me, I assumed that when you move a hosting account into a reseller account, they'd close the original account. Or at least TELL you that you had to fill out a "cancellation request" form.
They're referring to some paragraph in my original "contract" with them that mentions this cancellation request form. So, they may be technically right, but it seems to me that asking for an account to be moved into a reseller account would constitute a cancellation request.
Now, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, and that I should have gone back to my original agreement with HostGator and noticed that I was obliged to fill out this cancellation request. Even so, I'm planning on canceling another account I have with them over this I'm so pissed. So by not refunding a lousy $14.95, they're losing a customer for life. Somehow that doesn't sound smart. And I'm so tired of dealing with stupid people or companies. I just won't do it. There are too many other web hosts out there for me to put up with this kind of attitude.
