I haven’t posted since Thursday, namely because I’ve been busy with offline stuff. A toddler whose newest favorite word is “No”, visiting family and extended family in the southern portion of the state, attempting to help a NEO blogger with a blog resurrection, and working.
The thing that’s really bothering me is the part about helping that blogger. I’ll link to her site when it’s back up and running, but right now I’m pretty pissed about how her site went down and why she’s been out of commission. She was with a bad hosting company, one with which I’ve had experience, and they screwed her over, big time. I won’t point fingers, but I _will_ stress how important it is to use a reputable hosting company that comes recommended by others who have used the service for a while.
A few years back, before I started blogging, I was with a different hosting company. They’d provided pretty good service for a while, but in 2002 they started slipping. The first nail in the coffin was when they offered improvements for new customers, but they didn’t provide the same improvements for existing customers. After some “forceful” language I was able to finagle a few of those improvements, but at a slightly higher cost. That should have been the point where I parted company with this business, but I stayed and continued to recommend friends and colleagues to this business. A year passed.
During the winter holiday break, I found the straw that broke the camel’s back. It turned out that the improvements that had supposedly been made had _never actually been made at all._ When I complained, I was fed lies and my service was interrupted. I then began to look for a new host. I asked for my URLs to be taken out of their galleries, and after three months of repeated requests, they were finally removed from only one version of the website. The whole thing was pretty ugly.
Like I said, I’m not going to point fingers… at the bad guys. Why should I give them a link? I _will_ point a finger toward the “good guys”, my current hosting provider. I use [Dreamhost](http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?tinabel) (In the interest of full disclosure, the [Dreamhost](http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?tinabel) link _is_ an affiliate link), but there are other good ones out there as well. The most important thing to remember is to take a look at reputable weblogs and websites–those that have been around for a long time. Use a contact link and ask who they use for hosting. This doesn’t apply to typepad or blogger type blogs–only to those that have their own URL (like distractedmind.com). Don’t go with the lowest price–it can be more expensive in the end in terms of support calls, downtime (time that your website is inaccessible), and loss of ad revenue or readership.
I realize that this is a little “ranty” but I’m sick of watching people getting screwed over by discount hosting companies that don’t know how to do business. Please don’t just think in terms of dollar signs. Most of the time that two dollar a month host delivers two dollars worth of service every month. You pay more for a latte. Find those exceptions, like [Dreamhost](http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?tinabel), or [Media Temple](http://www.mediatemple.net/), or [Liquid Web](http://www.liquidweb.com), all reputable hosts that have some pretty big clients. Please, for the love of god, research.
_This rant brought to you by righteous anger and too much coffee._
