Right Where Were We

Some of you may have noticed that it’s been very quiet in the world of Chester Lifestyle recently. Very, very quiet in fact. There’s been a good reason for that though. Before I get into full blog post mode again and carry on in a ‘right where were we’ mode let me briefly explain. For those of you out there that are website, teccy gurus, you will understand it when I utter (can you utter when you are writing?), these two words. Website hosting!!! Or should I expand on that by saying, the nightmares of website hosting. To say I have been disappointed with the hosting service recently is a bit of an understatement.

Right Where Were We?

Hopefully, I will get back into the swing of things very soon. Right after this brief (ish) update, I have a rather long, and a rather sad blog post to publish. Although sad, it also gave me the opportunity to write some really good things about this particular individual. Rather than get too carried away now, I’ll let you have a read of it after this post.

In fact, the post has been ready to go for a couple of weeks now. Many of you who read it will know the sad story behind it, but may not know a lot of this individual’s background. Anyway, I’ll stop rabbiting for now.

The Dreaded WH Words – Website Hosting

I read this brief statement recently. And fair do’s it is very apt.

“One of the major problems with hosting providers is that they provide little to no support. Support is usually outsourced to third-party call centers which are either incompetent in solving your issues or don’t care.

Issues like these can actually sabotage your businesses at the worst possible time.“

I’m not 100% sure who wrote it, but I as soon as I read it I thought, I can relate to that. “Little to no support.” Yep, that sounds about right with some hosting. Well it has been for me. Still a few issues to iron out, but I’ve hopefully broken the back of it now.

You won’t realise, but I have several websites on the go. So, I’ve been having to juggle around my websites and find some of them alternative hosting homes.

What has been particularly galling is that the hosting company I had the initial problems with created a damaging situation for all of my websites as a result of an issue with a website other than my Chester Lifestyle website. Again, teccy minded people will understand when I say, shared hosting. Meaning, in essence, a problem with one website = problems with all of your websites on the same server.

Poor Support

That last bit is understandable to a degree, but another galling issue is the poor support at both the Live Chat level and the, escalated, to the so called, senior support. Wow, senior support!! A creative job title for a non creative service. One snippet of an example is when you receive an automated, robot message informing you that there is a problem. The immediate “assistance” to this problem is to temporarily suspend your account, which basically means they crash your websites.

But here’s yet another galling issue. After receiving the automated message which included some very scant technical reasons, they further compound the problem by denying you access to your account so that you can remedy the situation.

A typical exchange would go something like this with Live Chat.

“I’ve received one of your automated emails informing me that there’s a problem with my databases. I know what I can do to put the problem right, but there’s another issue. Your higher level senior support has blocked me access to my databases.” (NB: So, in effect what was happening was, I had a problem with my databases initially caused by another website and I knew how to fix it. But, I couldn’t get access to my databases. Basically that meant, the robot message was actually saying, “we’re telling you about a problem, but we won’t let you fix it!!!“)

Right Where Were We…..Before I Was Rudely Interrupted

When Live Chat agreed that blocking access to my databases wasn’t correct, they suggested emailing the senior support and ask them to allow access to my databases. Great….ish.

“OK, I’ll, do that then as it is only them who can lift the suspension. How long will it take for them to reply and lift the block on my access?” (NB: to remedy the problems they highlighted, which in some part or whole, may have been caused by them anyway!!!).

“It will take any time up to 72 hours for senior support to reply.”

“WHAAAAAT!!!!!”

Rinse and repeat. Mind you, one thing that did speed up the process was putting a review on a reputable review website about the hosting company. As it was a very critical, but honest review, suddenly, the following day, it seemed that every man and his dog from the hosting company wanted to help me. Suddenly, no waiting for 72 hours anymore. Cue apologies and a reprieve from monthly hosting fees and a dedicated ‘senior manager’ to work through the problem. He even called me from the USA with plenty of platitudes and several “Awesomes” thrown in. A satisfactory solution? Nope.

Right Where Were We – Do The Maths

At the start of all this, I had in the region of 70 databases hosted. The problem as per the robot message was that my databases were taking up too much resources (space) on their shared server. Was the problem all down to my websites/databases though? I’m not sure. Did they reduce the size of the shared server for example? I don’t know.

In one email, one of the very keen helpers after my review post offered the information of a problem with their server – a compromising file uploaded. Down to me? I don’t think so.

But back onto the databases. A robot email tells me there is a resource problem with them, so I knew I could:

(a) Delete any old ones no longer required.

(b) Delete those that will now be transferred over to a new hosting company.

But wait, I can’t get access to my databases for me to do the necessary.

When I did get beyond the robot email and engage with a real person, there was always a mention of one particular database (on a different website other than this one), that had over 217,000 rows of information on one of the tables. But before I addressed this table, I reduced my original 70 odd or so databases by means explained in a/ and b/ above. Over a period of time, I reduced the 70 down to 8 (now down to 6 and hopefully down to 4 after tonight) and got rid of about 14 million rows of information included in all the database tables in total in the process.

So, in comparison, the table with 217,000 rows seemed small when you consider the clear out I had undertaken. I recorded all the work I was doing with the starting position of 70 databases on a, soon to be, large spreadsheet. At their request, I kept them informed by sending them updates with the spreadsheet attached. But, lo and behold, after all this work, you guessed it. The dreaded robot email again. And access to my databases again blocked as a consequence. As I said above, rinse and repeat.

What About The 217,000 Row Database Table?

As well as reducing the number of databases and the number of overall rows, I went through the 217,000 row database and deleted so many rows that at the last time I looked, was now down to 28,000. So why was my account suspended again (for the same reason as before – excess database resource usage) by way of another robot email? I have no idea. The 217k rows on the database was the only specific database ever mentioned when I could actually engage with a real person.

So, again, why was my account (and access to my databases) suspended? During one of the many heated exchanges I had with them, I suggested what I thought was probably the real reason for the website crashes/accounts suspension. It was something that crossed my mind and it was sort of confirmed by another review. (NB: Out of more than 1,400 reviews on the review website, a whopping 49% of reviewers gave them the lowest rating of one star. I only gave them one star as the review website didn’t allow you to give a zero. Are all 49% wrong? Doubtful).

The possible real reason for them crashing my websites? Wonga!! In all of the robot emails and in several of the exchanges, it was suggested that I upgrade my account. Now, there is a surprise. Pay us more money and your problems will go away.

One reviewer I read about took the quick fix, easy solution and upgraded his account immediately. And guess what, soon after, his new account was now also having more problems and the suggested remedy? Correct, upgrade again. Cue the sound of a penny dropping at the customer’s end.

Out Of The Frying Pan

Wow, it seems so long ago since I started this post with all the intentions of it being a “right where were we” update. But I seem to have got a bit carried away. That’s not like me……much!!!

So, moving forward, I have taken up a new arrangement with another hosting company. And bit by bit I’ve been moving some of my other websites over. I planned it so I would leave Chester Lifestyle as one of the last. But before I did move it over I wanted to make sure that everything would transfer over OK. With that in mind, I set up my Chester Lifestyle website on my new hosting as a temporary website connected to a temporary domain. The important thing though was, bingo!! It worked.

Now, one of the reasons I decided to try the move out on a test folder under a test domain was because there were some teething problems with moving websites files and folders across from old hosting to new. Nothing major but nevertheless, there were errors. And, to me, it was strange that all I was doing was transferring the files and folders from a working website housed at host company A, to host company B. Redirect the domain to company B and job’s a good ‘un as they say.

Just before I completed the final steps of moving Chester Lifestyle, I emailed my account manager at company B with the few bullet points of what I needed to do just to make doubly sure. They replied with a confirmation that was all that was needed and that the website will work fine as the exact same files were working OK on their server in a test folder attached to a test domain.

Great stuff. All good then. My new hosting were going to provide a far better service than company A. Wrong!!! Talk about out of the frying pan and all that. To say they’re not very good is a massive understatement. Do you ever get so frustrated with some organisation’s support staff, or anybody else for that matter, when they only seem to give you an answer that they want to give you?

And when they promise to call you back and don’t. On at least 3 occasions they told me that had tried to call me. No missed calls, no voicemails and only one number of mine on their system. Looking at some of the reviews this is not uncommon. Saying they rung you when in fact they hadn’t.

Here’s an analogy. I ask “what time is it?” They reply, “it’s raining.” As they have created a bit of a situation let’s say, they have taken to not responding to my support emails. Frustrating isn’t in it.

Anyway, onwards and upwards and all that. In line with the title of the post, right where were we. Let’s get back on track hey. Rant over!!!

Chester Lifestyle Blog Posts

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