Search Results for: wiredtree

Searching for the truth, or… something

June 23, 2009 by kathi

When my dogs are doing nothing cute or productive, nothing newsworthy is happening in my hometown(s), and my muse is AWOL, I can always turn to my search terms stats to see what questions I should have answered here!

Rally sign holders: I think I did actually answer this question for at least some of my searchers! Rally obedience signs: the illustrated version! is my most popular post to date. I guess I should try giving actual information with helpful pictures a little more often, huh? The irony is that not only am I not a dog training expert, I’m just barely getting started in rally obedience. Hey, but I have great practice signs!

I know my answer is disappointing to those who need indoor sign holders. I am currently trying to find the best price on small cones (think soccer or rugby cones) which can work well indoors, and you will need cones anyway to set up your spirals and serpentines.

And if you were looking for rally signs as in protest signs… sorry!

vps vs laptop: I didn’t really understand this one, unless VPS stands for something other than virtual private server. You wouldn’t generally compare a virtual private server and a personal laptop computer, so I’m still mystified. Sorry, guess I couldn’t answer the question after all. But I will take the opportunity to plug my most excellent VPS provider WiredTree, and state my preference for Apple and Sony laptops, and that still keeps me on topic, sort of.

Why do so many restaurants serve tilapia: Beats the heck out of me. I won’t eat it, and I explained why a while back. But even the word “tilapia” makes me laugh, so that’s a benefit for me.

(NaBloPoMo | June ’09: 23 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 150 of 274)

Applause where it’s deserved

June 17, 2009 by kathi

During the time I was moving my business and personal domains to WiredTree, I mentioned several times how impressed I was with their excellent customer service and technical support. I moved the business domain first, and Monday was the one-month anniversary of the move. Everything has gone quite well this month, with only minor move-related issues that were taken care of almost as soon as I hit “Enter” on the support ticket request.

I was still surprised and pleased to receive a follow-up email from WiredTree customer service manager Joe Doss, checking to make sure that all was in fact going well, reminding me of the different support options, and inviting my general feedback.

I continue to be totally impressed with WiredTree, am very happy to have a great hosting company like this local to me in Chicago, and am feeling very good about my decision to have both my business and personal VPSs there.

I want to say a good word for my former web host, Web.com. I ended up there by way of HostPro being sold to Interland being sold to Web.com. You can see that could have been a recipe for disaster, although honestly I never had the issues with Interland that some of the bad reviews during that time would have predicted. In fact, my overall experience was quite good, with local American 24/7 tech support, available by either ticket or phone, throughout all of the moves. I did not leave because I was dissatisfied with customer service or tech support. Rather, the ownership changes had ultimately resulted in a move away from VPS support, and my aging server was not able to be updated to 21st century standards.

I had a rather frustrating experience while cancelling, though. I cancelled on my billing day and the customer service person who handled the call would not cancel the charge for the coming month. When the automated follow-up email arrived, I expressed my displeasure that the charge was not waived since the cancellation was made on the billing day by a long-time customer who had never missed a payment. Within less than 24 hours, I had a call and an email stating they would reverse the charge. When the credit did not show up online, a customer support supervisor took responsibility for walking the credit through the system and making sure it went through properly. All ended well. I would be happy to continue to recommend them to anyone who needs shared personal or commerce hosting.

So that’s my good customer service story for two companies. Just wish I had more of them!

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 17 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 144 of 274)

VPS move: done, finally!

June 5, 2009 by kathi

I am happy to report that while moving this blog gave me a few bad moments, WordPress did not actually kick my ass. The blog now even has its very own Rottweiler-themed subdomain!

The old URL links and forwards to this one, and I’ve updated the RSS feed and (hopefully) all of the directories and networking sites where we have listings.

Since the old servers were still running PHP 4 and one was still running Apache 1.3, and this one is running PHP 5 and Apache 2.2, I expect there are still a few things out there that will need fixing once we find them.

But for now, everything seems like it is going pretty well. Yay, me! Yay, WiredTree!

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 5 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 132 of 274)

VPS move: almost done, finally!

June 4, 2009 by kathi

Yes, I know, it’s taking me long enough considering I started back on Memorial Day weekend.

There was a flurry of activity at work which took up much of my time during the week following the holiday. Plus I was almost paralyzed into inaction by reading about some of the bad experiences that some people had while migrating their sites to new servers, mostly involving PHP scripts and MySQL databases: various guestbook programs (three sites featuring guestbooks, two of which feature rather large guestbooks going back quite some time, whose owners would want to die, or want me to die, should they be lost to time), various gallery programs (two of these, one MySQL-based and one with a flat-file database), and of course, WordPress.

I have come to believe that at least a few of the unhappy people did not read any instructions or tutorials, or else read the bad tutorials (my God, are there a lot of crappy tutorials out there or what), as everything I had responsibility for is now happily residing on the new server. The old Gallery 1 gave me a bad hour of fixing paths and links to graphics programs on the server, but Gallery 2 and the guestbooks went over willingly and required only some extremely simple edits of the various config files.

I’m still singing the praises of WiredTree technical support. I didn’t have too many questions that fell into their area, because I do not think technical support is supposed to take care of my personal panic attack after reading all those bad experience stories. The one big question I had (activating PHP 4 for just one or two domains) was very important and was answered practically before I could blink.

Tomorrow I move this wonderful WordPress blog. I have a feeling that WordPress is about to kick my ass, so think good thoughts for me!

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 4 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 131 of 274)

Good stuff, bad stuff

May 16, 2009 by kathi

Good stuff: Switching over DNS for the domains on the new VPS went well. I remain impressed with WiredTree. I may not have mentioned yesterday that they are local to me. Downtown Chicago location, local tech support, not outsourced. Life is good.

Next week I will be moving most of the personal domains, and strangely enough, that is going to probably be more complicated than moving the company domain. The personal domains have things like guestbooks (I know, I know. I don’t do guestbooks for my own domains, but some people still want and like them. Not me personally, but I don’t judge) and photo galleries. I have this blog and a couple of others. So there are quite a few MySQL databases to move. The company website doesn’t currently include a blog or forum, so there was no MySQL to deal with yesterday or today. I don’t think I’m going to have an issue with PHP versions (maybe on one domain) but you never know.

Bad stuff: Spammers finally found this blog. It was sporadic up until the last couple of weeks, but since then it’s been a daily occurrence. No real comments here in a day or so, but the spam from jagoff spammers from foreign countries continues. Screw you all, foreign spammers, and yay for Akismet, without which the issues of keeping up with spam killing would be much more onerous.

More bad stuff: Some of the jagoffs who live in this neighborhood truly make me sick. I really do like some of my neighbors. I won’t say I actively wish harm upon the others. There is that Clarence Darrow quote I’ve always liked, though:

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

There ya go!

(NaBloPoMo | May ‘09: 16 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 112 of 274)