So three hours went by and I did not receive an account setup email from iPower as I was promised.

Paul S.: You will get  it within next 30 minutes.

So I tried to contact them again and did not receive any form of an answer this time.  Only a bunch of diplomatic non-answers and evasions.  I might as well have been talking with an amino acid or a peptide.

Jason R.: Thank you for contacting IPOWER Live Chat. How can I help you?
Brett Bumeter: Hi Jason, I contacted support about 3 hours ago, following up on a request from yesterday.
Jason R.: Hi
Brett Bumeter: I registered a domain on Thursday and never received the account setup email
Brett Bumeter: There’s a ticket number *** Nubmer Hidden forPrivacy***
Jason R.: I’ll be happy to assist you.
Jason R.: Let me check it
Brett Bumeter: When I checked earlier today they told me I should receive an email in 30 minutes. That was about 3 hours ago
Jason R.: Thank you for holding. I appreciate your patience.
Jason R.: We have checked your account and your account is in the process of setup and as soon as it is done we will send the welcome email with all the correct login details to manage your domain
Jason R.: Till then we need you co-operation.
Brett Bumeter: My customer is waiting as well. Any reason why its taken a day longer than promised?
Brett Bumeter: I have multiple accounts with iPower and need to understand your reliability
Jason R.: We do apologize for the inconvenience faced by you.Please be assured we are doing everything we can to solve the problem/resume your services.
Brett Bumeter: So Paul S at iPower told me 30 minutes earlier today. Can you give me a time frame or is that impossible and Paul S was just making something up earlier?
Jason R.: The issue will be solved at the earliest and be rest assured of the same.
Brett Bumeter: So when do I need to ask for my money back? 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 4? At what point do you recognize that this is unacceptable?
Jason R.: Please be sure you will get the welcome email with all the correct login details from our billing department as soon as possible from now
Jason R.: Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Brett Bumeter: Thanks I guess, you tried but you did not give me any information.
Jason R.: Thanks for your co-operation for this time.

Stuck With Ipower on this One

So now I’m stuck waiting and I can only complain about Ipower. I can’t get a refund as they are qued up to purchase the domain registration that I need. If I back out now, I will not own it at all. I have to wait for them to bungle through things. Now its possible that they are going through some problem resulting from another party as well, but they have not indicated that nor anything, so I’m left to look at things as if they are to blame.

I’ve ordered many domains through iPower over the last year.  They give very good rates, but there are times when the cheap price is almost not worth it.

Case in point

I registered a domain with them on Thursday.  They billed my credit card, sent me an email receipt, and I received my automated Whois protection email with sign up details.

Typically, when things go right, I’d also receive an account setup activation at about the same time via email.

Every now and then they take a couple hours, but when it works right you should be able to buy a registration and have the account setup within a couple hours.

Note, I’m registering with them and going to direct the domain at my virtual server.

Their email receipt indicates that the account setup should be received within 24 hours.

At 26 hours, I had nothing so I replied to the email and was given a ticket number an hour later.  (mental head slap!)

That was Friday, today is Saturday and I still have no account setup.  It had been almost 48 hours now, so I went to the iPower site and went through the tech support instant chat and had this conversation:

Paul S.: Thank you for contacting IPOWER Live Chat. How can I help you?
Brett Bumeter: I registered a domain with iPower 2 days ago , I received the receipt but the account has not been setup yet. I contacted iPower yesterday (after 26 hours) and only got an automated ticket number ***numberdeleted for this blog***
Paul S.: I’ll be happy to assist you.
Paul S.: May I place you on hold while I check your incident ?
Brett Bumeter: sure
Paul S.: Thanks

Short pause while I apply some skin care products to my face, play with my daughter and pet dogs.  The pause was only a couple minutes long and by iPower standards it doesn’t get any better than that.  I’ve had to wait on chat hold multiple times in the past, sometimes for more than 30 minutes at a time.  I was prepared for a longer wait and pleasantly surprised with a short wait.

Paul S.: Brett,  we are sorry for the inconvenience faced by you , you will get the account setup letter at the earliest. I will appreciate your patience until then.
Brett Bumeter: When is that? Its already a day late.
Paul S.: You will get  it within next 30 minutes.
Brett Bumeter: Excellent, Thanks Paul

So now I’m waiting for the email, I sure hope it comes in 30 minutes at the earliest.  I would point out that its very important to document your conversations with your host and make sure you lock down deadlines and time frames whenever possible.

UPDATE

I published this around 1:30 PM, a few minutes after the chat conversation with iPower.  Its now 2 hours later and I have not received the promised account setup email from iPower.  Past experience has taught me that all their emails tend to go out in batches.  The tech support crew can’t seem to be able to go in and find an actual message and personally deliver it directly to me.

IPower is running a July 4th special that is definitely worth trying.

They are offering their Pro Hosting Plan which normally runs for $7.95 per month for only $4.95 per month. Plus if you register a domain when you get the plan, you get free registration for life!(probably of the hosting plan)

So for about $60 a year, you get a serious hosting plan, capable of hosting 6 domains in 1.  You get  300 GB of storage and up to 2500 email accounts.  You also get 3000 GB of transfer.

The deal expires at 12PM on July 6th so don’t miss out.  We’re giving you advanced notice so that you can get the good deal and go enjoy your holiday!

Someone recently asked me how to establish a MySQL connection for a CPanel account with Inmotion Hosting.

Here is the php code to establish the MySQL connection

Hope that helps, I found it difficult to find any documenation examples for this myself the first time around.

The key seems to be in utilizing a concatenation of your cpanel login id with your dB login id separated by an underscore.

Then repeat that concatenation example with your cpanel login id and your DB name.

Don’t use the concatenation with the passwords though.  You only need the db password for the call.

I’m still trying to figure out how to make the call remotely, but you can use this on php files that you upload into your hosted site via php.

It has no walls with any partner,

sometimes you get them on a bad day and they just can’t picture problem. Maybe you just got the luck of the draw and pick the one tech support person that didn’t know what they were doing, or maybe they didn’t understand your problem or you or the way that you described it, maybe they weren’t able to re-create the problems that you’re describing to them and they can’t truly troubleshoot until they see it. Regardless, you’re probably going to run into situations someday some time someplace with a host company where they can’t solve your problems.

How fast do you jump ship and change hosting companies?

That raises the question of how fast do you jump ship and change hosting companies? to give them a second try, do you call that later, future and talk to them through a chat or look through their forums, do you perform a Google search on them and see if other people that a similar problem that went unanswered, or since hosting is so cheap you just decide to pack up your website luggage and hit the road.

There are more hosting fish in the sea after all.

I was doing a little bit of light research looking at OneWebHosting.com. To read a review about a person that it had problems getting their e-mail to function correctly through this hosting service. Big contacted OneWebHosting.com and did not get their problems fixed to their satisfaction, so they jump ship and went to a new hosting company.

Now in this review the person mentions that their hosting plan was up within the month when they had this problem, and based on the write up is a little difficult to tell if they had e-mail problems for months and months and months and they just finally lost their patience with the host, or if this problem popped up right at the end of their hosting plan they decided to change anyway.

OneWebHosting.com does not maintain a presence on the Better Business Bureau website and it looks like they’re trying to make efforts to satisfy their customers as far as I can tell by looking on the websites. I dug further back and I found a person that highly recommended them back in 2002. The thing is hosting companies do change over time especially when they churned through people and tech support, not to mention servers and systems and their own providers. So that raises a good question, how fast should you jump ship?

I don’t have the answer that question, jumping ship is a great deal of work especially if you have multiple websites and or databases. Changing registration information around in a number of other things can be extremely annoying even with the best web hosting firm, it’s often very difficult to get the information that you need to make the transfer completely, especially as hosting companies typically are losing money with you as you’re on your way out the door, and providing you could support on the way out the door is financially not in their short-term interests. For the long term it probably is in their interest to help you get out the door so that you don’t write up a big long nasty review about them and about how the hosting company let the door hit you on the rear end on the way out!

Then there are also those situations where you never quite get your foot in the door before you turn around and run back out. Sometimes the door can still catch you on the back side in those scenarios too. Its never good when a hosting company makes a bad first impression, but sometimes it might be better to work with them to get things fixed and develop a more personal relationship.

If you want to make sure that your business is successful or help make the transition from a brick and mortar business online, then you must build a solid foundation with your website and pick a reliable host.

Our sponsors at VillaDirect.com offer Orlando vacation home packages and they know the lesson of utilizing a good hosting service.  If you want to successfully operate online, you to need to find a good host. 

We all benefit from sharing our experiences.  Check out some of our Hosting Company reviews, or share your own, both the good, the bad and the mixed.  We can help each other identify the good hosts from the bad, the right host for one type of job versus the right host for another type of job.

The Top 10 Warning Signs of Blogging Addiction might give you some insights into this question.

Here’s Items 3 and 8, you’ll have to drop by the site to see the rest of the list. 

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8. You ask the new car salesman if the car is Widget ready.

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3. You’ve requested that all companies who automatically withdraw funds from your online bank account to send your receipts to the Comment section of your blog.

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If your website, blog or database supporting either your website or blog crashes, you will definitely have your work cut out for you, but there is no point in soiling your tranquility diapers.  Take a deep breath, assuming the air is still clear and open up your back up plan book.

OK, you did come up with a back up plan right?

Your Back Up plan should have several things covered including the following items:

1. An Alternate Hosting Solution in case your Host took a dump
2. A soft copy backup of all your web pages
3. A back up of yoru database kept both online and offline
4. A back up of all of your image files
5. Don’t forget a copy of your robot.txt files and .htaccess files
6. backups of your email accounts
7. Lists of important passwords including user id and password to your Pointing service in case you need to point to a new domain
8. Copies of all plugins and recent upgrades ready for a rapid ftp upload and installation
9. Plus, it never hurts to have an email copy of all of your content.  Here is a nice low tech method for backing up your blog content as you create it.

Your average blogger may initially start out with cheap and easy when it comes to hosting.  Over time they will develop a sense of practical and affordable and eventually they may go pro or establish a business website that needs professional services.

Q9 Networks Inc of Canada would be an example of a company that provides the latter.  Their service offerings start out at $1,250 per month plus a one time setup fee of the same amount.

For that money you get a RAID enabled high availability server with the following highlights:

• Dell PowerEdge server
• Real-time hardware monitoring and onsite sparing to ensure 7 x 24 rapid repair
• Choice of Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, Windows NT 4.0 Server or LINUX

If you are offering for example an elegant and classy website catering to the sales or lease of high end Tuscany Villas to potential customers from all around the world, then you probably want to confer the same level of quality and reliability in your website and server as you are providing in the actual products itself.

I was surfing through Blog Explosion this evening.  Blog Explosion is a service that enables people to view multiple blogs in a random rotation, but according to preselected categories that you pick.  Its a great way to view an eclectic selection of blogs.

If you have a personal or blog related business blog it can also be a great place to advertise.

I came across a business blog for CD Host n Design.  I was somewhat surprised at first to see their business blog offering up their services, but this is Blog Explosion.

They were offering services to bloggers primarily of design, templates and hosting of course.  They were not trying to market home furniture, all though I think I have seen a decent home furniture sight there once before. 

Point is that its an excellent place to get a message across to receptive readers.

GoNomad.com is a travel site.  On their blog they offer an interesting article, almost a case study on selecting a hosting company.  At a high level they are suggesting that small businesses should avoid the cheaper is better sales pitches that many hosting companies provide and instead look to the hosts capabilities and determine how those fit your goals as a company and the amount of money you have already spent or intend to budget for the creation, maintenance and marketing of your website.

Make the right choice and you will be happy and successful of course and off enjoying cruises regularly in the Carribean.  Choose poorly and your site will rarely function, you will likely be surprised with unexpected charges, and get a comfortable headset for your phone, because you will spend a great deal of time on hold!

They break down in their article a case study of what it would take to run a hosting company.  From a business and equipment perspective their case study seems solid.  The intangible item in the equation is the experience of the team that will keep the equipment running.

For domainers, registering domains is a big business.  The average domainer owns thousands of domain registrations.  They will typically establish their own web registration reseller account to get the best deal.

For your casual blogger or even for some domain flippers, that level of work is a bit of over kill.  If you have the spare time, you will save a buck or two on registrations and every buck counts.

I have found that its just as easy to go with a high level domain hosting service that provides simple straight forward domain registration and renewals for a flat fee.

I almost always use IPower for registering domains.  I do not like their services when it comes to hosting.  I have had far too many very negative experiences with their tech support.  But when it comes to domain registrations they are not too bad.

Domain Registration Cost

Up Front Registration

It costs $6.50 per year to register a domain through IPower.  Every now and then they will provide an incentive deal and that price will drop in half for the first year.

Renewals and Multi Year Registration

If you want to renew a registration or register for say, 5 years, the price is the same.  $6.50 per year.

High Level Registrar

IPower utilizes Tucows for the actual registration, so if you do want to cut out the middle man, go straight to Tucows and set up your own reseller account.

Simplicity and not too Many gimics

One of the things that is good about IPower is that they do not try and dupe you into accidentally clicking the wrong button and signing up for a premium and more costly service.  If you attempt to navigate GoDaddy chasing after the elusive $1.99 registration fee, watchout for all those check boxes.

You probably won’t know what you get until you pay for it!