Web Host Holding My Files For Ransom
Oct 13, 2009
So heres the short story:
1) I had a VPS account at [url](now hosting.com) for 2+ years.
2) My credit card expired so they suspended/disabled my account because they couldn't charge it.
3) I decided that I wanted to find a new host.
4) I asked for my files.
5) They said no because the account is disabled because of non-payment for 40+ days and that I'd need to pay the balance and then reactivate my account at the new pricing structure (which is $30+ more per month).
Is this even legal? Seems like extortion to me, but then again I am not a lawyer.
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Aug 27, 2008
I have been with pc-core.net [url] since April, all was good just few down times here and there once or twice a month didn't really bother me and I wasn't loosing any customers.
Note: I signed up from WHT, on a promotional offer, in case someone is wondering.
However I had a DMCA issue with few of my client about hosting torrent and such which twice the host shut off my server without sending me any DMCA notice and when I sent them email it was always an excuse DMCA and then when I asked why I haven't been notified they blame on the Datacenter who didn't send them so they couldn't send me, I can understand that so the first time I spoke to a guy named Cody Salter on MSN and got it fixed and he told me next time I would be notified and such, so the 2nd time happened again for the same same content which I removed earlier, again server went offline this time for almost 1.4 days, so I spoke to Cody again, same promise and I thought I let him slide without any kind of confrontation.
So this happened again 2 days ago this time over a different file the "datacenter" as they claimed shut me down and is asking for a $50 ransom or they wont let me access my content, of course I have few clients remaining and all their contents are now under the ransom either I pay PC-Core $50 or they keep my server offline for a fault that was on them and their host not me.
So I need some advice from some people what should I do? I tried sending them emails and now its on the $50 Ransom, its I pay this ransom to get my customers their stuff out of a dead server or I abandon my customers. I haven't spoken to Cody Salter as I haven't seen him online today the whole day. The ransom plan mainly came from the support email from a guy named Nathan O.
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Dec 3, 2008
How can I determine the minimum specs for a server that will hold several VPS? Dividing the resources by the total number of VPS machines, is this any good? (Processor, Ram, ...etc)
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Jan 3, 2009
I signed up with La(m)nehost not a short while back, I now wanted to make use of the guarantee since i'm not happy with there service.
I issued a ticket the 27th december 2008, requesting my money back since I wasn't happy with there services and they offer a 60back not-happy-money-back guarantee.
Till this very day it seems as Lanehost is REFUSING to respond to the ticket! I asked about the issue on the chat and just got a lame answer "you should log a ticket"...
What can I do against this? I paid around 150dollar for a year (stupid enough).
I was about to start my own hosting company, and this just sets me back alot.
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Apr 22, 2008
I had two servers with wiresix, for the most part support was OK (not the best, but not really bad) and Ryan was responsive to AIM and emails. At one point I no longer needed my dedicated server with them as I had moved everything over to my Colo server. I submitted a ticket to cancel the server (i gave 45 days) and request confirmation from them which I never got. AS the time got closer for that server to go away I started getting longer and longer response times to IM and support. Because of this I felt the need to cancel my colo box and get it shipped to a DC by me as not to be left stranded by a host that didnt care.
I submitted another cancellation request (about 6 weeks in advanced) and again got no response. About this time the dedicated server was supposed to go offline. I got invoiced and charged for it so I opened another ticket asking for a refund for a server that had been canceled. No responses, on anything. Now it comes time for the colo box to be taken offline...
I requested it be taken offline and shipped out a little bit earlier then the actual date. I provided shipping information. I also noted they can use the payment that should have been refunded to cover the shipping costs. This was the first of April. I am borrowing a server from a coworker for my customer who is supposed to be on the colo server. No big deal right, borrow a server for a few days and then move the customer back to the new server...Right?
Wrong. As of this date Ryan still has all my servers online, in the rack and will not even respond to my tickets or AIM. I cant even get in touch with him (or the rest of wiresix) to allow a friend of mine to goto the datacenter and pick up the server. The refund? Who knows... At this point I am convinced Ryan is angered that I am leaving and is hold my colocated server and my payment hostage. I have no other explanation.
I have attached an image file (with some information whited out) with the tickets and the last response times intact. Please I urge everyone DO NOT USE WIRESIX. If you do, do not ever cancel or you will never see your hardware.
At this point, I do not think I have any other choice but to contact my lawyer or the Atlanta Police department for the theft of my hardware.
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Sep 4, 2008
I signed up for 3rd Rock Hosting's smallest plan and pre-paid a year because it was inexpensive and after EpicVPS's server magically deleted everything I had no reason to use a bigger host as my data was gone and my most recent backup was too old to do me much good.
The account got set up immediately, however there were problems such as my bandwidth allocation and number of email accounts and such were half of what they were quoted to be on the webpage. Ok, got a ticket in and got that sorted out no problem.
Then, something happened to 3rd Rocks upstream host and the site was down for two days about two weeks into hosting. They've had this problem before and I knew about it and decided to chance it. Bad decision I guess.
A week ago or so I got an email telling me to change my DNS as they moved to a new server. What? New name servers? Ok. I use my own DNS but updated the A records to the new IP's. This is where the trouble began, once everything resolved I could access my panel but none of my pages load! It just loads a blank screen and even view source doesn't show any of my php pages. I logged into the account via FTP and sure enough my files/data are there.. just nothing loads.
Not having to want to deal with this headache I politely asked my account be canceled and the 30 day refund honored. I was greeted by Mark asking if I changed my nameservers and when I told him I had modified my nameservers to reflect the new IP's he offered me two free months.
I stated that with the trouble I've had in the last 30 days; going past the 30 day trial would give me no 'out' if more trouble occurred. Mark stated he'd give me a refund 'ASAP'. This was Sept 1st. There's been no refund and I've shot off two more questions in the support ticket without answers. My 30 day 'guarantee' ends in just a few more days so I'm trying to get this done before hand of course.
I'm -> <- this close to filing a paypal complaint and escalating it. Being incommunicado with me for 2 days while you scrounge up $20 bucks is baffling.
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Aug 23, 2008
how bad is it for a host to delete a file and not tell you that they deleted it?
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Jul 16, 2008
I would like to transfer a folder which contain 500 files from FTP server to another FTP server
Is' hard formeto Donwload and upload normally Is there any script which do this for me? some thing like what rapidshare.com do?
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Mar 3, 2008
I'm in the process of switching to a new host for my websites. My old host is Servage and my new host is Dreamhost.
I'm looking for a way to directly transfer all my files from Servage to Dreamhost (i.e. don't transfer them via my PC).
Whilst Dreamhost offers a whole suite of access to their servers, Servage only offers FTP (no SFTP, no SCP, no SSH, no RSYNC). Servage also don't give any ability to create a tar.gz of my files (I tried to use a Perl script to execute a shell command to tar my files, but it didn't work )
So currently the only way I can see to get the files across to Dreamhost is to use the ftp command (via SSH on Dreamhost), but this command is severely limiting because mget can't transfer directories - it can only transfer files in a directory.
Can anyone see an easy way for me to get all files across to my new host?
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Jul 14, 2008
how to upload files to a webhost.
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Mar 3, 2008
I have my domain name and have downloaded Smart FTP to drag and drop the files of my project to the domain's public_html file. But it seems you have to have .html files instead of .aspx files or is this really the case? I did the Smart FTP tutorial but haven't been able to change the page currently displayed under my domain name.
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Feb 18, 2007
I've been asking a fair few question lately here on WHT. You've all been a great help so far. I just ordered two new servers from www.northstorm.net. I want to take all my video files from my previous host, and transfer them over to my new host. There's roughly 100 files which is a total of about 8GB. I have a php script which can copy the files manually, one by one, but that's the last resort as I'm not very keen on that idea.
I have root access to both servers so I can pretty much do what I want with them. What's the best way to grab the entire contants of a ftp folder and transfer it over? I need to copy the files from my old host to one of my new servers, and then copy the files between my two new dedicated servers.
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Jul 18, 2009
Hi guys, I've been having problems trying to edit my php.ini file which I think I've now fixed.
The whole reason I wanted to do this was because I've just moved to Media Temple from another hosting company and I'm having a couple of problems with the switchover.
Basically I use a CMS system to add properties which appear on the main website. I also upload PDFs and images. On the old hosting company, the PDFs and images went into folders called dnDir/pdf and dnDir/images but on Media Temple, they are going in to a folder called tmp. I really want them to go to the same place as they used to.
Is this an issue with php.ini that I need to rectify? If so, could you point me in the right direction?
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Mar 18, 2009
I have a file that will probably be a few megabytes in size that will be downloaded 100's of thousands if not millions of times.
Where would be a good place to store this file?
Are there any big file hosting companies out there you've used or can at least recommend for this sort of thing?
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May 2, 2009
When you buy a website you have to transfer it's files to your host.how can i do that?
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Mar 3, 2009
I am a mobile site developer so tht i need a shared linux host for uploading contents like java applicaations,.jar files,.mp3 files etc any one please help me to find a suitable host with monthly paying suuport
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Mar 21, 2007
I have some 100's of MB's to move and I'm definitely not doing it by transferring it via my PC / FTP.
I seen all the tutorials on how to move your MySQL databases, but what about full folders etc, how do I move those (putty?)?
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Mar 4, 2009
I asked my host to migrate my account from a PHP4 to a PHP5 server which they did without question.
During the transfer they have lost a folder containing every product image my site sells, over 1000 different items.
I know I'm foolish not to have backed it up, but I didn't, I have all the photos but not after they're all been renamed and resized.
Basically, so far today - 24hrs, I have only had 2 orders when I normally get 60-70 a day.
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Sep 28, 2009
I use a linex hosting service from streamline.net
I occasionally get a problem where data gets wiped (not good!).
It's a Perl scripted website with a flat file system.
Once this happened when I tried to manually edit some data txt files on the ftp, my changes would not save, instead it wrote a 0 bytes file. I tried to upload a new file instead but still the same (it wouldn't upload them but brought up no errors and appeared to upload fine, except still a 0 byte file was there). About fifteen minutes later I was able to save/edit/upload files properly again.
I believe a similar thing happened when a member submit a post. It didn't write the post and it wiped the files related to it (that also get opened and written to in the process of submitting a post, namely their member data file and the category data file).
I back up my website 4 times a day (even tho I don't have many members yet) because I'm paranoid about this happening now. I'm scared to promote the website because I don't feel that it's stable enough to cope.
Is this a known issue with hosting? anything I can do or suggest to my hosting company for them to ensure that this doesn't happen in the future?
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Jan 16, 2007
I'm putting together a site about an old radio station.
I've got loadsa old recordings I wanna put up for people to stream/download.
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Nov 6, 2008
I signed up for hosting with IX Web Hosting in April of 2007. There have been two occasions that they provided the perfect example of Terrible Customer Service. So much so, my last pony ride with IX Web Hosting was my last. I decided to call it quits and move my account to Host Gator.
I keep my most important sites on a dedicated server at Servint.net. If you are interested in a dedicated server or VPS, I highly recommend Servint. You will not beat the level of service and professionalism this company offers. But thatâs another post in itself.
The point is, I had some SEO tests I wanted to perform and I was looking for a hosting company that would allow me to host 10 different domains in the same account on different ip addresses. IX Web Hosting had the plan I was looking for. So in April of 2007, I signed up for a hosting account.
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the server performance at IX Hosting. I experienced very little if any downtime from server issues. They donât offer a standard cpanel interface like most web hosts. It appears to be a proprietary / in house control panel.
It was pretty straight forward and with a little time I was up to speed.
Then on June 5, 2008, I got the following email from a System Administrator at IX Web Hosting.
---------------------------
Hello,
My name is Anthony, and I am a system administrator at IXWebhosting. Iâm here to ensure a reliable and fast hosting / e-mail environment. This is the reason why I ask you to get in touch with us.
We have received numerous complaints from third-parties about spam originating from your website. As you may know, spam is an on-going problem for all internet users, hence all companies have very strict rules against spam. I am here to ensure that neither you nor any other customer is facing any downsides which could be the result of these spam regulations.
We ask you to immediately cease and desist any such activities. If you are unaware of this activity, please contact me or any of my colleagues via this ticket, phone or live-chat so that we can find the reason for the spam activity together and fix the issue instead of the symptom. Viruses and things of that nature may be installed on your computer and will cause the spamming. We recommend that you run an anti-virus program. If you currently do not possess an anti-virus program, you may download a free version. Please just follow the link below to find Googleâs best links for free anti-virus software:
google.com/search?q=free+anti-virus+software [url]
In order to ensure your hosting and mail environment is working flawlessly, we ask you to get in touch with us within the next 72 hours. I highly appreciate your time.
Best Regards,
Anthony Washington
System Administrator
IXWebhosting
-----------------------------------
They identified the domain as bestadtracking.com. This is a domain I own but have never promoted. Not only had I not sent spam through IX Web Hosting, I averaged less than 200 sent email a month on all the domains on my account. So on June 6, 2008 I responded to IX Web Hosting with the following two messages.
-----------------------------------
Hi Anthony,
I can assure you I am not sending spam from this domain or any others. Iâm a little surprised that this domain is in question? I set it up over a year ago and havenât ever promoted it. I donât send any type of email over this domain. I have no reason to. It gets no traffic or inquiries.
Are you sure there isnât some type of mistake? Otherwise, there are a couple of php style contact forms on that site. Could a hacker use that sort of thing to send spam? How can we track this down?
Thanks,
Brent Crouch
615-389-XXXX
-----------------------------------
Here is the second email I sent on the same day.
-----------------------------------
Hi Anthony,
I am using AVG on my computer and the scan completed finding no viruses. Besides that, I am using Outlook to manage the mail on several of my domains. I donât even have a send account setup for bestadtracking.com on my computer. As I stated in the previous reply, I have no reason to since this domain is not promoted.
Can you give me the IP address of where the spam originates? Iâd like to compare that to my IP address here at home and office.
Thanks,
Brent Crouch
-----------------------------------
I had no information to track the issue any further. The lack of response from IX Web Hosting left me to believe the issue had been resolved or there had been a mistake. Then 4 days later on June 10, 2008 I got this message.
-----------------------------------
Brent
We tried to reach you today in order to resolve this issue, but unfortunately it has been well over 72 hours since this ticket was placed. We must sadly suspend your services, please do not hesitate to call us at 1-800-385-0450 any time, day or night.
Best Regards
Ian
-----------------------------------
Amazing! They give me no information to solve this problem. On top of that, they donât respond to my ticket in 4 days and because I didnât answer the phone when they called they suspended not only the domain in question but every domain listed in my account.
I called in and spoke to a tech support guy who allowed me to remove the domain in question and in return, he restored my other domains. He also left a message to have the tech support manager call me the following day.
The manager I spoke to apologized for the way the ticket was handled and the lack of information that was given. He said he would follow up with the employees that were responsible for the ticket and make sure it never happened again. He was helpful in looking at the server logs and determining how someone had loaded a spam bot onto my site.
Apology accepted. Stuff happens. I considered it water under the bridge and not a big deal. Not so muchâ¦..
After my first run in with IX Web Hosting, I wrote the whole incident off as a fluke. The manager I spoke to seemed very sincere and assured me that wasnât proper protocol and wouldnât happen again. I was trucking right along until I got this email from them on October 26, 2008.
-----------------------------------
Dear Brent Crouch,
We have received notification of phishing material in your account. Phishing files are usually placed through some type of exploit of out dated code, weak file and folder permissions. Packaged shopping carts and photo galleries are usual sources as hackers find exploits and developers fix them almost daily, so unless you constantly update the software or completely secure it things like this can happen.
You must agree to remove this content and update any software that has resulted in security holes. To protect your account from further action you must agree to our request for compliance. Please respond to this message stating your intent to do so. You may either log into your control panel with us, and access this ticket via the 24/7 help desk, or provide this ticket number to our Live Chat or phone representatives. Failure to respond to this message within 72 hours will result in the suspension of the affected domain with us until such a time as this matter is resolved.
Michael
-----------------------------------
The email gave me no indication of which domain had been hacked. When I wrote to live help and gave them the ticket number, I spent 10 minutes waiting only to be told they didnât know which of my domains had been effected. They recommended I reply to the online support ticket.
Here is the email I sent them in response on October 27, 2008.
-----------------------------------
I replied to live help and they could not find any information. So far you havenât told me which domain is a problem.
Please give me the info I need to correct this problem and Iâll take care of it.
Brent Crouch
615-389-XXXX
-----------------------------------
Eight hours later, I was able to find the problem by viewing all the files on my domains and looking for the files that had been recently changed. It turned out my brentcrouch.com domain had been hacked and setup with all sorts of eBay and bank phising pages. The site operates on a Wordpress platform which is widely used and is a big target for hackers.
[url]
I wrote back to IX Web Hosting for a second time on October 27, 2008.
-----------------------------------
I found the problem on my brentcrouch.com domain. I updated the wordpress software to the latest and cleaned up the problem. The only exception is the brentcrouch.com/forum directory. I am unable to delete this directory as the hacker has removed my access. Please delete the directory.
Thanks,
Brent Crouch
-----------------------------------
The following day, here is the email I got back from IX Web Hosting.
-----------------------------------
Brent:
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Per your request we have removed:
/brentcrouch.com/forum - deleted
We will be closing this ticket at this time. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us. We will be happy to assist.
Please note that this is the second time this problem occurred. Unfortunately, I have to bring to your attention that as per our terms of service a third instance will result in immediate account termination without notice. No backups will be provided. If you have any questions about how to avoid this from happening again our support team will be glad to advise.
Respectfully
Frankie
Support Tech Representative
-----------------------------------
When I seen that response, I was pissed! I run my own server at Servint.net. Iâve hosting accounts at several other hosting companies. Iâve never had a site hacked except from IX Web Hosting.
In 4 months, Iâve had two sites hacked. In both instances, IX Hosting was zero help in locating the source of the problem. In the first incident, they didnât even reply to my ticket for 4 days. In the latest incident, they couldnât even tell me what domain was hacked.
Then they send me an email telling me if it happens again not only will they suspend my account, theyâll deny me access to my files! Huh?
Thatâs not a risk Iâm willing to take. With the high costs of obtaining customerâs in this business, Iâm a little surprised they donât do a better job of trying to retain them. In my opinion, this policy is unacceptable and makes IX Web Hosting one of the worst hosts Iâve ever dealt with.
I just signed up for a hosting account with Host Gator and have already moved all my domains over. So far, so good.
Whatâs your experience with IX Web Hosting?
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Feb 8, 2007
I've got a client who wants to host audio files... Here are the sizes:
50 x 75MBs
300 x 10MBs
400 x 5MBs
That totals 8750MBs or 8.75GBs... If he gets hundreds of visitors, it could end up being 1000's of GBBs or bandwidth.
I don't know what to look for to support so much bandwidth... Do you buy bandwidth? Are their special companies out their that host it for you?
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Jan 2, 2008
I couldn't keep my mouth shut (technically fingers). A customer wanted to upgrade servers and he needed a way to move the data across. Since I don't allow hard drives to be swapped, they have to do it manually all by themselves. I generally allow up-to 4 days for them to transfer data and make DNS changes, etc. But this time, I offered help! I agreed to move the data (darn me) and it just came out of me, involuntarily.
God knows what just happened... but in a positive way, customer is extremely happy!
So...
Both servers are on cPanel - with root access (duh)
200 odd files which total to 25 GB
1 database about 100 MB in size (no biggie)
I was planning on using one of my Windows 2003 servers (via remote desktop) to download the 25 GB and upload the 25 GB, but that sounds like a waste of resources and time.
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Apr 11, 2008
I'm configuring a website for a client who has moved their web hosting to downtownhost, but is keeping their email hosting with their current provider. They do not want to configure an MX entry on DTH to autoforward email back to their current provider because they don't want their email to pass through DTH.
In order to do this, do I keep the nameserver entries on the current provider the same, and configure an http redirect to point to DTH? Or is there something else I should configure on the current provider?
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May 21, 2009
I'm wondering if you can tell me something about your experience with a host/server in a different country or overseas.
My webpage will be mostly frequented by Australians.
What do you think is the advantage and the disadvantage of having a host in your own country and having one overseas?
I'm thinking about stability, traffic speed, peak hours in different time zones, customer service, ....
What are your experiences?
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Aug 3, 2008
I was with Blue Host and their support and service was pretty bad. Servers going down all the time, and chat support was terrible. Then I moved to Host Monster and received the same kind of service/support. I later then figured out that Blue Host and Host Monster is runned by the same people. For example, I opened up a tech support ticket with Host Monster and then they replied signing their signature with Blue Host. So I got the same service: terrible tech support and servers kept going down. Now I'm looking for a new web hosting. I a few people here gave Host Gator some good reviews. I hope Host Gator is not run be the same people that runs Blue Host and Host Monster.
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Jul 8, 2008
Does anyone have a preference for Host Excellence compared to Blue Host?
Do you think their basic offers are the same?
This is for just a couple of simple domains and sites to be hosted.
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May 27, 2008
with this being my first website goddady's website tonight or there blog site plan seem pretty good as I do not know how to build a professional looking website nor do I have a knowledge of HTML. Are there other hosts that offer better services such as these?
Also I would want to register with 1&1 as to register privately is free but with godaddy it costs around $15 and I've heard of godaddy stealing persons domains when they haven't even expired yet i.e. familyAlbum.com?
Is it allowed for instance to register my domain name with 1&1 and host my site with godaddy?
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Jun 16, 2008
If you had to chose either Host Gator or Hawk Host which would you go with and why? Don't bring any other hosts into consideration just compare these two. This would be for a standard website, forum, and a few downloads if it makes a difference...nothing too fancy.
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Dec 12, 2007
I have just made a personal website using photoshop, html, css and php. My site contains an index page, a gallery page with 8 photos, a contact page with a form and an extra page with some quotes. I am planning to use a paid host for the first time. Based on feedbacks from some of my sitepoint friends, I decided to go in for shared hosting. I thought of using Hostdogs.com as they have the option of a monthly billing cycle. I thought that I have the option of changing my host after a month if I am not happy with them. I have also read a lot about Hostgator.com. A lot of sitepoint members seem hooked to it.
1. Can anyone give an opinion as to which host I should go in for? Hostdogs also give a free domain. Is there any reason I should go in for Hostgator instead of Hostdogs?
2. One more question, I have heard that once I have a site running, I can earn money through the advertisements placed on it? How do I place advertisements on my site?
3. One last and very important question is whether it is right to go in for shared hosting at this point of time. I just read this
Quote:
When you look for a suitable host, be sure to check out the amount of bandwidth that will be available to your site. Even a site that doesn't require a great deal of data transfer per month could run slowly if you're hosted on a shared server; particularly if you are on the same server as a more popular or bandwidth-intensive site.
The more sites hosted on a server, the more likely they are to compete with each other for available resources, including bandwidth. This is why you may notice a reduction in server response times during busy periods, or during a sudden peak in traffic at a busier site on a server that you share.
This made me wonder whether I should go in for shared hosting. But then mine is a personal home page which may not have so much of traffic.
4. What does the paragraph below mean? How does one handle ones registration manually?
Self-Management (no cost)
Select this option if you prefer to handle your registration manually.Your web host can establish service with any Top-Level Domain (TLD), international or domestic.
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Dec 31, 2007
I will be setting up a site which uses ASP.NET 1.1. I know versions 3.0/3.5 are available, but they are not yet V2.0 compliant. Anyway thst is not the issue - just context.
Would like your advice as to whether it would be better to host this site with a company who looks as though they are specialising in ASP; such as DiscountASP, or Softsyhosting, or go with a general Windows hoster such as Steadfast, Fluidhosting, or 3Essentials?
I know nothing about ASP, so I don't know whether it is not at all neccessary to have a host specifically knowledgable about it, as I am unlikely to ever have problems with it, OR; I will most certainly have to address ASP issues sometime, so it would be essential to have support who really knows ASP.
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