Thankyou

[csc2ya]

I've just read the updates/upgrades etc post that Corey made in the announcements section, and since he did say not to post feedback to that post in there, i'm doing it here instead.

*Warning: This post is quite long. I hope that poeple (especially Corey), will take the time to read it though*

My site here is a quote database.

First of all, when I noticed stoli was down last week, I considered moving my site once it came back up. I got all the main site up and running, and just had to move the content once stoli came back online. Due to problems with running the script I use on a windows machine (my main site is hosted on a friends Windows Server 2008 machine on their home connection...it has very good uptime though, and is very quick to load pages), I abandoned that idea.

A bit of my own background....I am in the UK, I am 25, I am interested in computers and modified cars.

I believe Corey is younger than me (not sure where exactly, but I have seen mentions of his age somewhere on here before).

I have tried doing hosting before with a couple of friends in the US. I'm not mentioning the name of our company, although it couldn't do any damage to x10hosting even if I did (it's been dead for ages now). The first attempt was at free hosting. I can't remember how long it lasted, but it failed very quickly.

About a year and a half ago, we tried again, this time doing paid hosting. I started off paying rental charges for a VPS that we used for our main site, and the shared hosting.

We eventually upgraded to a dedicated server as the amount of stuff we were running kept using up the memory on the vps and causing the network connection to drop.

I will mention that even though we had a contract, I never actually got round to signing my copy of it and emailing it back to the owners. That was probably the biggest mistake I made. If I had done it, I probably would have been able to recover what I was owed, but never paid by the other owners.

I also started off paying for a monthly licence for WHMCS (for anyone reading this that doesn't know what that is....it's billing and client management software...x10hosting use it for their paid clients I believe). I eventually purchased an owned WHMCS licence, as it worked out cheaper.

I eventually ran out of money (I was not getting paid despite being told by the other owners that I would be), and the other owners took over the payments for the server. We then had a client order a dedicated server.

I already had one with another host for running shoutcast (internet radio), and a couple of irc (chat) servers, and since I had run out of money at that point, we switched the payment details so the other owners were paying for it, reimaged the operating system, then sent the client the login details for the machine.

A few months later, that machine was cancelled by the host for non-payment. We looked into another well known datacentre, set up a reseller account, and changed our prices for servers to reflect what we would be paying the datacentre to rent the machines.

Another mistake made, we required the person paying us for the server to pay us a bit more, as we were paying more for the new server. I don't know whether it was in our terms and conditions that we could do that, but in my opinion, we should never have required that. We (or rather, they....as I said....I never saw even a penny of this money), got paid....the server host however, did not, and quite rightly didn't even get as far as provisioning the machine.

Eventually, the other owners dissapeared (I later learnt that their internet was cut off as they could not afford the higher payments that their isp was demanding). I started getting support requests that I could not handle by myself. I tried emailing the other owners to attempt to get some assistance in dealing with it, but all the email addresses I had for them were bouncing messages as undeliverable.

I could do nothing but explain to the most persistent clients that i could not do anything.

I then started getting phonecalls from the host we used for the shared hosting machine, as payment was overdue. I could do nothing, so ignored the calls. The machine was eventually taken offline. It was however, not reformatted by the host, so all the data was still on it.

A few weeks later, I noticed that the machine was online again.

It turned out the person who had contacted me for assistance, and on failing to recieve the help he needed, had contacted the host and paid them for hosting. They had put the machine back online to transfer his data off of it onto their shared hosting servers. As expected, our dedicated was taken offline by them again after transferring this clients website.

Despite the fact it took more money from him to sort it out, I am pleased he was able to recover his site. He is still hosted by them now as far as I can tell.

The owners of our company eventually resurfaced, and have now set up another company, again, doing webhosting.

I agreed to help out, but made it clear that I would accept no payment for it, and also would not contribute to payments in any way to prevent me getting burnt again. They were fine with this.

At the present time, that company has no clients. Personally, I am pleased about that, since i've seen what happened several times with the old company.

The reason i've written that essay above?

It's too easy to blame companies when things go wrong.

As i said at the start of this post, I believe Corey is younger than me. I'm just guessing, but I would imagine that he started out in hosting in much the same way that I did.

However, he has done well. X10hosting is still going.

If poeple look through my posts on here, they will see i've complained a few times. However, as they should be, my complaints towards x10hosting are unfounded. I know what's involved in running a hosting company, and believe me...it isn't always easy.

I've been hosted here since about june last year. My site here has always come back online eventually, and I know it will be back online again once the datacentre move is complete.

Thankyou Corey and x10hosting for everything you do, even for free hosting clients like me that aren't paying for our hosting.

I really do appreciate everything you do.

 

[Gouri]

I've just read the updates/upgrades etc post that Corey made in the announcements section, and since he did say not to post feedback to that post in there, i'm doing it here instead.

*Warning: This post is quite long. I hope that poeple (especially Corey), will take the time to read it though*

My site here is a quote database.

First of all, when I noticed stoli was down last week, I considered moving my site once it came back up. I got all the main site up and running, and just had to move the content once stoli came back online. Due to problems with running the script I use on a windows machine (my main site is hosted on a friends Windows Server 2008 machine on their home connection...it has very good uptime though, and is very quick to load pages), I abandoned that idea.

A bit of my own background....I am in the UK, I am 25, I am interested in computers and modified cars.

I believe Corey is younger than me (not sure where exactly, but I have seen mentions of his age somewhere on here before).

I have tried doing hosting before with a couple of friends in the US. I'm not mentioning the name of our company, although it couldn't do any damage to x10hosting even if I did (it's been dead for ages now). The first attempt was at free hosting. I can't remember how long it lasted, but it failed very quickly.

About a year and a half ago, we tried again, this time doing paid hosting. I started off paying rental charges for a VPS that we used for our main site, and the shared hosting.

We eventually upgraded to a dedicated server as the amount of stuff we were running kept using up the memory on the vps and causing the network connection to drop.

I will mention that even though we had a contract, I never actually got round to signing my copy of it and emailing it back to the owners. That was probably the biggest mistake I made. If I had done it, I probably would have been able to recover what I was owed, but never paid by the other owners.

I also started off paying for a monthly licence for WHMCS (for anyone reading this that doesn't know what that is....it's billing and client management software...x10hosting use it for their paid clients I believe). I eventually purchased an owned WHMCS licence, as it worked out cheaper.

I eventually ran out of money (I was not getting paid despite being told by the other owners that I would be), and the other owners took over the payments for the server. We then had a client order a dedicated server.

I already had one with another host for running shoutcast (internet radio), and a couple of irc (chat) servers, and since I had run out of money at that point, we switched the payment details so the other owners were paying for it, reimaged the operating system, then sent the client the login details for the machine.

A few months later, that machine was cancelled by the host for non-payment. We looked into another well known datacentre, set up a reseller account, and changed our prices for servers to reflect what we would be paying the datacentre to rent the machines.

Another mistake made, we required the person paying us for the server to pay us a bit more, as we were paying more for the new server. I don't know whether it was in our terms and conditions that we could do that, but in my opinion, we should never have required that. We (or rather, they....as I said....I never saw even a penny of this money), got paid....the server host however, did not, and quite rightly didn't even get as far as provisioning the machine.

Eventually, the other owners dissapeared (I later learnt that their internet was cut off as they could not afford the higher payments that their isp was demanding). I started getting support requests that I could not handle by myself. I tried emailing the other owners to attempt to get some assistance in dealing with it, but all the email addresses I had for them were bouncing messages as undeliverable.

I could do nothing but explain to the most persistent clients that i could not do anything.

I then started getting phonecalls from the host we used for the shared hosting machine, as payment was overdue. I could do nothing, so ignored the calls. The machine was eventually taken offline. It was however, not reformatted by the host, so all the data was still on it.

A few weeks later, I noticed that the machine was online again.

It turned out the person who had contacted me for assistance, and on failing to recieve the help he needed, had contacted the host and paid them for hosting. They had put the machine back online to transfer his data off of it onto their shared hosting servers. As expected, our dedicated was taken offline by them again after transferring this clients website.

Despite the fact it took more money from him to sort it out, I am pleased he was able to recover his site. He is still hosted by them now as far as I can tell.

The owners of our company eventually resurfaced, and have now set up another company, again, doing webhosting.

I agreed to help out, but made it clear that I would accept no payment for it, and also would not contribute to payments in any way to prevent me getting burnt again. They were fine with this.

At the present time, that company has no clients. Personally, I am pleased about that, since i've seen what happened several times with the old company.

The reason i've written that essay above?

It's too easy to blame companies when things go wrong.

As i said at the start of this post, I believe Corey is younger than me. I'm just guessing, but I would imagine that he started out in hosting in much the same way that I did.

However, he has done well. X10hosting is still going.

If poeple look through my posts on here, they will see i've complained a few times. However, as they should be, my complaints towards x10hosting are unfounded. I know what's involved in running a hosting company, and believe me...it isn't always easy.

I've been hosted here since about june last year. My site here has always come back online eventually, and I know it will be back online again once the datacentre move is complete.

Thankyou Corey and x10hosting for everything you do, even for free hosting clients like me that aren't paying for our hosting.

I really do appreciate everything you do.

Wow, It is huge, But I read entire post.

we are glad that you understood the work is going in the back to make the things right.

thanks for explaining it.

 

[carl6969]

I believe it would be beneficial to make this post as well as Corey's post about the current happenings both sticky, at least until all of this work is done. Some folks have an idea about what is going on behind the scenes and are patient, even sympathetic. Many or not. Perhaps reading about how hosting in general works, and some specific information about x10 will increase both understanding and patience among the user population.

 

[Corey]

I think for most people they would have to really try out running their own hosting service to understand what goes on behind the scenes. It's not as simple as paying some place for a server and putting accounts on it, I personally spend at least 100 hours a week on x10 nevermind all the other staff and community advocates that help out. There is a lot of work that goes into it and everyone is working very hard to complete the changes. Unfortunately there are always the "I want it now" people who do not want to take the time to understand how things work. We'll probably lose some of them during this transition but I'm okay with that .

The people that have previously or currently run a hosting company are generally the most understanding.

 

[leafypiggy]

What Corey said. Not good times with Neal and Luke (am I allowed to mention those names?)

Thanks so much for writing this, as Corey said. Not many people actually understand why we get so frustrated when users start complaining about things that we can't change, or that they think we're doing wrong, when in reality, we're trying to better the hosting that we supply.

Thanks a bunch, makes us all feel appreciated.