So, I’m thinking that the original Somewhere Else’s (which there were two of) were a bit of a taster. Some hint to what’s to come. And considering that there’s been a gap of a Whole Year since the last time I did one, I’m thinking the previous ones have now lost their tastes. That is if they ever had one to start off with. So here we go: New Site. New Year. New Somewhere Else.
Anyway, I thought I’d use this article to bemoan web hosts. Y’see having just moved this site from it’s old hosts at Freeola, and then to it’s new ones at Streamline, I think I’ve quite had enough of them. Therefore as of now, FerretCrossing is staying here for the foreseeable future. It’s too much hassle.
For a start there’s the business of actually working out what the hell your supposed to be doing. No Offence, Freeola and Streamline, but both your websites hide the exact instructions of actually how your supposed to do anything quite well. In an ideal world it should say ‘To Transfer Domain Name out, click X, type Y, wait Z’. In an Ideal World. But unfortunately the wording on them makes it seem like ‘Click X, we’ll do the rest’, only after careful searching do you find part Y and Z of the instructions.
After all that’s sorted, and you’ve paid up a medium wad of cash (£80 and rising, folks) you’ve got to work out how to activate your account. Streamline claim, after you’ve paid them their money, that account activation is instant. Ok, no qualms there, it was after I finally worked out how to transfer the domain name. It also says they’re supposed email you your details. Well that’s where the merry system breaks down. Whenever someone or something says they’ll email you, nine times out of ten they won’t. I’m still waiting for that email now, as it happens. I’ll let you guess how I finally got on the server and gave Rob the details to start up the site. That should confuse you for a bit (unless you’re a streamline customer, in which case, good for you)
Support is just as bad. This new site is based on that wonderful timesaving thingumy PHP, which is in turn based on MySQL. Again in an ideal world it would end there and then. But we also have Forums and a Wikipedia to work as well, both requiring different versions. Now, on the official Streamline Blurb just says SQL version 4. Great. Thing is, we need at least Version 4.6 (or something like that) for all the star studded features to work. No problem there, they have a pre-sales service, lets just send them an email. Two weeks later, no response. As I write this (which was just as we got the damn thing working) I still have no idea whether it works or not on our new server. I can see this becoming a rapidly repeating trend unfortunately.
I suppose the important thing is the site works, though, and that I’m no longer the only poor mug who can edit it, so my workload has decreased a helluva lot. Which reminds me, I have stuff to do.
-JitteryJoe
At Wits End
September 2006
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