After several years of frustration with my previous Hosting Service (Verio.com) I finally reached the last straw last weekend when I could not find a way to backup my website using Verio’s latests control panel.  Thinking that I must be overlooking the option in their sparse control panel,  I contacted their Technical Support to have them point me to the backup option; which is listed in the help file for their control panel.  The technical support person did not know the options on their control panel so I was put on hold while he researched the problem.  After about 5 minutes he came back and told me they do not provide a site backup option.  I was told the only way I could backup my website would be to use FTP to download the entire site file-by-file.  I realized then they are still living in the twentieth century.  I had no choice but to use ftp to download the entire site file-by-file. Using my my Hughesnet connection this took several attempts and over 4 hours to complete!!!

I have now migrated the site to a new hosting service–HostGator.com.  So far they have been fantastic.  The first thing that I discovered while migrating the WordPress database was that Verio was using a very old version of MySQL.  When I tried to import the database which I had downloaded from the Verio website, the newer version of MySQL on the HostGator server coughed up a big hairball.  After about 10 minutes on the phone with a very knowledgable HostGator technician, he pointed out that one of the MySQL keywords used in the SQL dump had been depricated in newer versions of MySQL.  After I fired up my editor and did a search and replace of the obsolete keyword the database imported with no problems.

Thirty minutes later I had a development version of the website running on the HostGator server; which by the way is wind powered.  Bravo HostGator!!

If you are reading this post you are accessing our site from the new server.

Fred

It has been a bad week for our HughesNet Broadband.  Our system has experienced slow response on and off for the past several days.  HughesNet even sent a technician to the house to address the issue.  Once he arrived (two days later) the inital hardware problem had corrected itself, but the system was still experiencing very slow download speeds–approaching dial up speeds.  The technican call Hughesnet and they told him to have me take the issue up with the Hughesnet call center.

The Hughesnet call center is located in one of the mega call centers in India.  What I have learned after spending nearly six hours on the phone is that their only objective is to find some way to get your system to pass a “web responsiveness test” with a time lower than 13 seconds so that they can get you off the phone, close the ticket and move on to the next complaint. They don’t really try to fix your slow speed issues.  In fact I was told by the call center person that speeds below dial up were acceptable because they do not guarantee download speeds!!  One trick they will use is to keep passing you to a new person to help diagnose your problem.  Eventually they will ask you to start making changes to the setup of your browser network setting that force your system to access their site through a “proxy server”.  Once you use the proxy server I have found that magically your system will pass their test.  However, when you reset your settings to the recommended values (no proxy server) things degrade again.  In other words this is just an approach they use to get you out of their hair so they can close the ticket.

The bottom line is I am becoming very dissatisfied with the Hughesnet service and I am particularly dissatisfied with their India based technical support.  The technical support is worthless.  You might as well just wait for the problem to self correct or use dial up!  It is interesting that they never ask one to fill out a customer survey.  I am sure they already know what answer they will get.  Some searching on the web has turned up some class action law suits against Hughesnet.  Perhaps their house of cards will begin to crumble.

I am told that Comcast may be coming to our area soon.  I will switch in a flash.

Well enough ranting for now.

Fred