Lunarpages Support Review
I’ve got a lot of hosting accounts. Some of them are test accounts and some are true paid accounts that I use to test customer service and tech support. One of my test accounts expired yesterday with Lunarpages and I decided that I would like to keep the domain name for future use. One frustrating thing from the get-go was the lack of a forgot password tool at the Lunarpages website. I have no idea why, but they do now have an easy way for your to recover your web hosting password.
Note: Make sure your email address is updated as this is the only way most hosting companies will send renewal notices. I have lost a few domain names to expiration because I changed my email address and forgot to update my info at my hosting company. It is really annoying to visit one of your websites to find it covered in banners and ads with a domain expired notice at the top. Learn from my mistakes, and always make sure your whois email address is accurate as well as your contact information with you web hosting service provider.
I replied to the billing renewal notice that I would like to transfer the domain name and cancel my hosting service. I then requested the transfer through my domain registrar. This the response from Lunarpages support.
“Hello,
We have received a transfer authorization request for your domain, best100deals.com. This request will transfer your domain’s registration away from Lunarpages, to the requesting registrar.
If you would like us to authorize this transfer, please reply with your cpanel username along with the last 4 digits of the credit card on file for you account.
This request is for verification purposes only.
If you have any questions or if you did not initiate this transfer request, please let us know.
Thank you!
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Feel free to contact us if you require further assistance or have any questions, or consult our forums at http://lunarforums.com
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Kind Regards,
Debbie Cloven
Customer Service Representative
support@lunarpages.com“
No big deal, so they need to confirm my identity. I replied with the requested information and then received another response asking for yet more information to verify the transfer. This response came from a new tech support person, squashing my hopes of dealing with one person throughout the sometimes confusing domain transfer process. The response time was good at just under 2 hours but still with no resolution.
“Hello,
To complete account verification for security purposes to confirm you are the account holder, please provide the following:
Your full postal mailing address:
Telephone number:
Thank you.
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Best Regards,
Onika Lewis
support@lunarpages.com”
Now, I don’t know about you but I couldn’t remember if I used my cell phone or home phone, my business address or home address? So I took a wild guess and replied. Nearly 24 hours later I am still waiting and my domain and website has gone into suspended status with the following message.
“Visitors, we are sorry, however, this site is experiencing difficulties at this time. Please return later.
Webmaster, please contact us by email at support@lunarpages.com or via Lunarpages Helpdesk at http://support.lunarpages.com. Thank you for choosing Lunarpages (http://www.lunarpages.com). “
Some Web Hosts come in Pairs
It has come to my attention over the past few years that many popular web hosting companies happen to own or operate second and third hosting companies. It makes sense when you think about, sometimes success can kill a very popular web host when they can’t keep up with the explosive growth. As the growth curve continues, the hosting companies customer support and staff in general become overworked and severely understaffed. I have heard of some big hosting companies that hire 20-30 new employees on a weekly basis to try and keep up with the growth.
As often happens, the “successful” web hosting company is unable to keep up with the growth and the quality of support declines rapidly. After a while, the perceived value of the host drops as the negative buzz grows and festers as customers complain louder and louder. Until suddently, this once popular and very reliable web host has been branded a complete failure. Not because of the hosting package or price itself, but because what was once an acceptable 5 minute hold time for toll-free support has blossomed into a painful hour-plus just to talk to a support rep.
What do you do if your a hosting company that grows too big, too fast and is now branded a dud? Just start a new web hosting company with a fresh domain and a new S Corp filing. While some companies truly start fresh with everything from new staff to new datacenters and fresh hardware to updated support call centers. Most companies just go with the fresh website and try to trick us into thinking this is indeed a new web hosting company.
Who are these hosting companies living lives of duplicity? I know of several, but suspect that there are many more flying under the radar. The most prominent may be the duo of BlueHost and HostMonster. BlueHost was started nearly 18 months before Hostmonster but when you look closely they are virtually the same company. This is not a secret, but something that is very rarely talked about in the open. They have nothing to hide, they simply wanted a second chance at building a better web hosting service.
Another prime example is the web hosting mogul iPowerweb. They are one of the founding fathers of the web hosting industry but have had a couple of second tries. First, was the supposed iPowerweb partner Startlogic. What started as a super-reseller quickly turned into simply another morphing of the ipowerweb company. You could even argue that iPowerweb’s more recent launch of a corporate website ipower.com was a stab at a second try. Now, they have joined forces with Endurance International and have quite the big web hosting family of brands like PowWeb, Dot5Hosting, BizLand, FatCow and more.
Acquisitions are no stranger to the web hosting industry. A long chain of acquisitions was what brought the hosting mogul Interland into the spotlight. They chose a dangerous and tricky path of growth by web hosting acquisitions that nearly collapsed when the dot-com bubble burst. While they are without question a very big web hosting company, many would argue that bigger is not always better.
Some other well-known web hosting pairs are Jumpline.com and DigitalSpace.net, MidPhase and AN Hosting, LYPHA and IMhosted, OMNIS and WebHostingPad, the now dead FeaturePrice relaunched as IX Web Hosting by co-founder. Do you know of other web hosting companies operating more than one website? Share them with us in the comments.
iPowerweb and vDeck Hosting
iPowerweb has been around for a very long time. They were the first hosting company to offer one simple hosting plan for one low price. Many even believe that iPowerweb was the first hosting company to charge less than $10 per month for hosting. During their first year online they started using the vDeck control panel instead of the popular cPanel system. I’m not sure if they set out to create a better control panel or if their intent was to make it harder for customers to transfer away. vDeck has evolved since those early days and is now a fairly stable control panel controlling nearly one million domains.
One of the pitfalls for customers who are using and like the vDeck system is the scarcity of other hosts using it. Because the vDeck system is proprietary, only iPowerweb or iPowerweb affiliated hosting companies are using the vDeck control panel. Which means if you get fed up with the questionable support and long hold-times at iPowerweb, you have only 3 other choices in hosting providers. The only other vDeck hosting companies that I am aware of are Startlogic.com, Dot5hosting.com and BlueFishHosting.com. All three of these hosting companies are known to be very closely affiliated to iPowerweb.
The same argument could be made for users who are happy with the cPanel or PLESK control panels. But the fact is, when you get used to doing things a certain way - it is very hard to change. Every hosting company and every control panel has it’s own little quirks. The key is to make sure you like it before you sign up for the long haul. Most hosting companies give you a 30 day window to poke around and get used to things. If you’re not happy with the control panel or support, simply cancel your acount and get a refund.
Web Hosting for Non Profits
In the fight for web hosting prowess many hosting companies have gotten smart and offer free hosting accounts to non-profits. Some ask for nothing in exchange for the free hosting accounts, while others insist on a text-link or banner ad to be displayed advertising the host’s price and features. If you run a non-profit group and need to get a free web hosting account, you don’t have to look very far. A simple google search for non-profit web hosting returns thousands of results.
Non-profits can be a wide and varied group encompassing anything from concert venues to public schools. Some hosting companies are a bit picky about which non-profits they choose to be involved with. While ther are still more hosting companies that don’t publicly advertise that they even offer free accounts or deep discounts for non-profit groups. Sometimes all you have to do is call the sales number on the website and simply ask for a free hosting account. It may take a few days to get it setup but most hosting company owners will jump at the opportunity.
For example, the Lunarpages sales team was approached enough times by schools that they finally created a special hosting package designed just for schools. I have even heard of free accounts provided for every member of a high school web design class. Now, most smaller hosting companies can’t afford to give away 30 hosting accounts. But, for the larger web hosting providers it may not be a problem at all. If you find a host you like that doesn’t advertise non-profit hosting, just ask for one. If your non-profit is legit, you’ll have free web hosting in no time at all.
If your non-profit website is crucial to the success and funding of your non-profit, you may want to consider actually paying for web hosting. A basic web hosting account will only cost around $120 per year. IF your non-profit site gets a lot of traffic you may want to even consider a VDS hosting account or dedicated server.
Go Daddy Review
When it comes to domain names there is no single company with more name recognition than GoDaddy.com. From their controversial super bowl ads to their cheap domain names, Go Daddy has proven to be the one to beat. Go Daddy was the first registrar to sell domain names for less than ten dollars. But, since their first days in business they have proven to be a nimble company always saying yes when the customer asks for something. There is always a price tag but Go Daddy is always the quickest to fulfill the customer’s needs.
For instance, when Go Daddy customers asked for an easy website building tool - Go Daddy answered with the Website Tonight product. Website Tonight offered users a way to get a simple one or two page website published in a matter of minutes. When SSL certificates were first offered at a reasonable price, Go Daddy was the first to simplify the confusing and frustrating process of purchasing an SSL certificate for ecommerce websites.
Today Go Daddy is one of the largest domain name registrars in the World. There is some debate about who really is the biggest, but many experts believe Go Daddy is the winner hands down. With their size and stature, they have not been exempt from growing pains and major speed bumps. But, through it all Go Daddy has weathered the storm and kept the bulk of its customers happy.
The big difference with Go Daddy is its enourmous US-based operations center located in Arizona. While most web companies have outsourced their call center services overseas, Go Daddy listened to the customer and kept things local. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have an english speaking support person pick up on the other end of the line. Watch out though, their in-house training pushes every employee to be a salesman!
Choosing a Domain Name
There are thousands of new domain names registered every day. The most common thing I hear from first time website owners is that their domain name is already taken. Nonsense, I say. With a bit of creativity and keyword research I can usually help them choose a better domain name than the one they had originally wanted. The biggest choice you have to make is whether you want a .com address or not. .NET and .ORG domains are still plentiful but new domain extensions are approved every year like .tv, .mobi, .info and .us.
One of the things I like to do first is to research the keywords or the potential search terms that you think people will use to find your website online. You can get a good idea on direction by simply doing Google searches and seeing what keyword phrases your competitors are using. Instead of thinking of a clever name and then advertising and marketing so people will find you. I think it is wiser to find out what the customer is already searching for and build a website geared to those search terms.
Many website owners are walking past the pot of gold by insisting on using their clever domain name instead of a clear and concise keyword based domain (ie: widge4u.com instead of handmadewidgets.com). We can use my fishing buddy for an example. He builds his own hand tied marabou jigs for fishing and has sold hundreds of them to his fishing buddies. When he approached me about a website, he wanted to register his name BobAndreeson.com for his fishing jig website. I later talked him into registering something like handtiedmaraboujigs.com instead.
You sacrifice a little in the length of the domain name. But, I believe the keyword phrases are far more important in getting traffic to your site. For example, if I’m searching Google for a hand-tied marabou jig, I wouldn’t search for “Bob Andreeson”.
Website Monitoring Services
One of the worst feelings in the world is to go to your website to find that your website is down. With shared hosting this can happen quite frequently and all too often you will not be told why or when it even happened. Many times it is caused by “security updates” or “fixes” on your server. This can be very frustrating and can ruin your day, especially if you depend on your website to pay the bills like I do.
There are many website monitoring services out there to help you keep an eye on your sites uptime and load times. Some monitoring services are better than others, but they are all better than nothing. Free website monitoring services usually offer a simple ping service that checks to see if your site is online. The frequency is usually around one hour for free site monitoring accounts. To get multiple sites or more frequent checks you usually have to upgrade to a paid website monitoring service.
Here is an example of a paid website monitoring service called Atwatch. I signed up for their paid monitoring service and they sent me weekly status reports like the one above to show me what was really going on with my website. Notice the graph shows that on certain days the connect time was much slower than average. Although the site was never down there were a few performance problems that could be addressed. I have since cancelled my Atwatch account because I found it to be too expensive ($500/year).
Currently I am using a company called SiteUptime for my website monitoring service. They offer free accounts for basic checkups on one domain. But, I chose to upgrade to their Premium Plan so I could get more frequent checks on my 3 most important websites. The cost for 3 websites is only $48/year with SiteUptime. Which is a lot easier to swallow than the $500/year I was paying.
One common mistake that people make. They send their alert notices to the email address which is hosted on the domain being monitored. This can be a big problem since most alerts are sent via email, and if your site is down your email probably is too. Be sure to use a gmail account or an email account hosted on a different server. You can also choose to recieve text alert notices to your cell phone with some paid monitoring services.
Remember, any monitoring service is better than nothing at all. Signup for the free monitoring service from SiteUptime.com and see what you think of their service. So far, I have been very pleased with their services.
Switching Web Hosting Companies
At some point in time most people become fed up with their current hosting provider and set out to move to a new hosting company. Many people do not realize how much work is involved with moving a website from one web host to another. Since I just finished moving a few dozen websites I thought I would blog about the proper steps to make things go as smoothly as possible with a website transfer. If you’ll follow these steps you will avoid some of the most common pitfalls.
The first and most important step is to backup all of your website files to your local computer or laptop. Be sure to backup image files as well as any html and php files. If your site has a mySQL database you can dump the DB as well, either in ZIP format or as a .sql file. If you have created several email addresses it is a good idea to write them all down, including the passwords for POP3 so recreating them will go smoothly.
The next step is to choose a new web hosting company. If you haven’t already selected your new host be sure to find one with a similar control panel to what you have been used to. This will minimize the learning curve and help speed things along. If you don’t mind learning how to use a new hosting control panel then the field is wide open.
Once you have selected your new web hosting provider, I like to login to the control panel and create the email accounts first. A common mistake is to forget this step until you have switched DNS and start wondering why you are no longer recieving emails. This can be disastrous if your emails are mission-critical to your site or web business. Try to keep the same passwords if you have several employees using POP email accounts. Otherwise, you will waste half a day setting up everyones Outlook accounts for them.
After your email accounts have been created, you are ready to upload the site files. Make sure you set the directory to the correct name as many hosting companies have different defaults (ie: public_html/, httpdocs, var/www/html/, etc.). This can cause a lot of problems if you upload all the files to the wrong directory. If your site has a database you will need to recreate the Tables and Users. If you dumped your database correctly you will have the structure and data intact. If your moving a blog there may be other steps necessary, sometimes you have to re-install the blog software.
After your email accounts are created, site files are uploaded and mySQL databases recreated you are ready to test. Most hosts will give you a test URL when you signup, if you have a dedicated IP address you can type that into a browser to test the functions of your website. Make sure that all the files are uploaded and all the links are working. Sometimes you may have to set permissions on certain directories to get things working right. Get it right, because once you switch DNS all of your mistakes will be amplified and public for all to see.
Once you are convinced that you have covered all the bases, you are ready to switch the DNS over to point to your new host. Once you switch the DNS it can take up to 48 hours for the changes to propogate across the internet. A recent site I transferred took 3 whole days, while less than 12 hours is the norm. If possible I like to move to a new host at least 30 days before my old account is expired. This gives you a little wiggle room if something goes wrong.
If you missed a step and broke your website badly you can simply switch the DNS back to the old host for a few days while you get things fixed. If you got lucky and everything works then it is likely that nobody even knows you have switched web hosting companies. It should be seemless even to your employees if their email accounts were setup properly.
The last step is to contact your web host and cancel your old hosting account. If you have any remaining days on your hosting plan, you can usually get some of your money refunded to your credit card. Don’t count on it though.
Dedicated IP
Many times when you sign up for web hosting you don’t know what features you need until it’s too late. For instance, I was helping my Aunt build a website to sell her homemade aprons and handicrafts. She had purchased web hosting before talking to me and later discovered that her host did not offer dedicated ips. Many shared hosting companies make you share one ip address with hundreds of other customers.
My Aunt wanted to build an ecommerce website where she could sell her aprons online. One of the key components to an ecommerce website is an SSL certificate which allows you to securely accept credit card payments. But, in order to have an SSL certificate you must first have a dedicated ip address. There are many other benefits to having your website on a dedicated ip address but for ecommerce websites a dedicated ip is a must have.
I found out the hard way that in a shared hosting environment other customers sharing your server/ip can affect your web site in a negative way. One day I couldn’t figure out why my site was suddenly having email problems. After weeks of trouble tickets and bounced email I found out that a spammer was sharing my ip address and had gotten the ip banned or blacklisted. You can see if your ip has been blacklisted here, many people don’t even realize it has happened.
A blacklisted IP can also cause problems with your website’s search engine rankings. I have friends that could never get their site indexed by Google and later found that their ip address had been blacklisted for years. Many times the blacklist happens long before you come along with your new web site. On the flip-side, a dedicated ip that is clean can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings.
Dedicated servers often come with multiple dedicated ips. Some webmasters like to have each website they own on a dedicated ip address. Many shared hosting companies can offer you a dedicated ip for a small fee. Another way to get a dedicated ip is through a VDS web hosting account like Jumpline offers. VDS hosting is a little more expensive than shared hosting but gives you quite a bit more freedom and features. Either way, a dedicated ip address is always a good idea in my opinion.
PLESK Control Panel Software
Every web hosting service comes with some type of control panel software to make managing the account easier. Some hosting companies have chosen to build their own control panel software from scratch like iPowerweb and the vDeck panel. But, most hosting companies use one of the big 3 control panel software solutions PLESK, cPanel or Helm. I have used all of them and really don’t have a favorite. That’s right, they are all very good at what they do. It really comes down to personal preference or simply going with what you know. Learning a new control panel does take time as there is a bit of a learning curve.
Lately I have been using PLESK on my new dedicated server. The more I dig in and discover features I didn’t even know were there, the more I like it. One of the latest discoveries is the custom firewall settings on the server level. PLESK makes it easy to keep port-scanners and hackers from poking around. I can even block pings from unrecognized IP addresses. Security becomes more important as your site grows in popularity.
PLESK is really set up nicely for reseller hosting. You can get a 100 user license for pretty cheap and I can see it working well for the smaller resellers like web designers and virtually anyone with less than 100 clients to support. You can create clients on the server as well as managing everything at the domain name level. I setup a client for my Father who runs a few sites for his art gallery business. That way I can keep his domains seperate from mine and still give him the server access that he needs. I’m not a hosting reseller but I still find the tools useful for managing lots of domains and websites.
cPanel is probably a bit more widely used than PLESK, especially in regards to shared hosting, but for now I am very pleased with PLESK 8.3 on my dedicated server.
