First of all, apologies for the lack of updates over the past couple weeks. I don’t have much excuse for the past week (other than maybe playing Gears of War 2 with my cousin), but this week was a different story completely. It was a string of hosting problems starting with a mysterious apache type error while trying to access the admin section of this site a couple days ago and ALL active index pages (.html and .php) being replaced with a “If you are seeing this message, some website files were deleted. Please reupload your site. If you need any assistance, please submit a trouble ticket.” page instead. Excuse this rant about my current web hosting, but I feel I must get this out there.
If you are considering investing in any part of U.S. NetworX web hosting (The X must make them XTREME), I would strongly advise that you keep looking. I’ve had the same host (well, technically) for quite a few years now and there were indeed better days. These were days when the site was called Integra Host, a smaller personal type of web hosting. Good prices and great support (the few times I did need it, far less than after the switch) were had by many. Then a couple years ago, the company got bought out by the corporation there today. Horrible support and lack of upgrades (some of which they get to and don’t even notify) riddle this shell of what used to be. The only thing I can be grateful for is the uptime, which is almost perfect lately.
Take for example the index page problem I mentioned above. I submitted a support ticket last night and when I got a reply today the guy assured me these files were user created and had nothing to do with the system. Sure, when I first encountered the problem I thought it the work of a hacker at first because similar things have happened to my pages before, but this quickly changed. Generally speaking though for hacker work you’ll usually find some malicous code within the php or mysql or some sort of callsign for the hacker, both of which I found none after plowing through both the files and database. After further review of the problem with a fellow admin of the group, we both concluded that it seems suspicously the work of the host itself. He noticed a different Apache version number as well, which I had missed. Shady, no? If this is the case, don’t you think the host should be a bit responsible, right?
I’ve been a trooper for putting up with previous troubles from this host, but I’m seriously considering switching hosts when this subscription period ends (which sucks, because I just renewed back in November). Anyways, if anyone can shed some more light on that index page problem please let me know. It’s still a bit of a mystery to me. You know where to contact me. I’ve replaced a few of them, but still a couple more to go. Another weird thing was the fact that it only happened to the pages in use by the domains/subdomains, a few other ones (for example, different themes for this site) were untouched.
End rant.
That’s about all I have right now other than the fact that it’s been crazy cold here lately (6 degrees as of this posting) with wind chills in the negatives. It’s lasted a few days, but the good news is that it’s actually suppose to get up to double digits again tomorrow.
I guess there really IS light at the end of the tunnel…
– DGM-payne
