My Views | The Gremlins Umbrella Authority

Life – Interpretation, Definition, and Relation.

August 13, 2010 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

As an individual, I hate arrogance – “making undue claims in an overbearing manner”.

The difficulty arises in definition, and interpretation. Arrogance is an overutilized, misinterpreted word, with misunderstood, disrespected social association.

As an individual, taking everything as it comes, one must stand their ground and understand social politics – how life works.

I take self induldged respect in the knowledge that no-one knows, or understands how to approach life, myself included.

I decided to go to university to get a degree. I have always had an interest in business, economics, and associated knowledge areas, yet I do not care about the associated benefits of a degree – for me a degree is simply a bonus – the experience, the learning curve, and the experience (yes I am aware of the repetition) are what a degree stands for.

I know what I want from life. Not many do, and as such I am a step ahead of the game. To be able to understand and appreciate a degree as a novel benefit of life, i feel, is an idealistic, beneficial brilliance.

From the age of 14, I have been in business. My family, I love, and respect more than the world – without them, I’d be nowhere. It is important for one to note however that you have a card, one with which you are dealt, and one which you make the most of. Yes, I am fortunate in that respect but with the right attitude, background is not a point of argument. You do as you can do.

Laziness has been my downfall in many a respect. I say downfall, yet my laziness has not affected, simply delayed my inevitable success/failure. Then again, laziness is open to interpretation. How does one clarify the differences between laziness and struggle? By struggle i refer to a struggle to understand and prioritize… If i had devoted the past 3 years of my life to my online domain and web development business I have a sneaky confidence (notice the utilization of confidence) that I would have created an amazing situation for myself moving on. It is about priorities, and often a priority emphasizes minimal success – yet it never does.

I have whole hearted confidence in my ability, yet a back up clause never hurts anyone.

When i appreciated and understood my limitations and position I went on to year after year say “By the time i am 17 I will make £x,xxx,xxx” – I have yet to meet that self indulged expectation. The point being, at some point, everyone has to appreciate, respect, and understand that you never meet your own expectations.

That is somewhat of a build up – the premise of the post is me trying to express an understanding of my life at this point.

I sit in a variety of social situations thinking: “Shutup”; “You arrogant bastard”; “Grow up”; or simply “Have a bit of respect”. Now I take no moral high ground, I have a full, and reasonable appreciation of the fact that on many an occasion people must perceive my attitude to similar situations in a similar way. I myself understand that I am no saint. I do not practice what I preach, yet i can still state what ideally i would like everyone, myself included, to do.

I have run a blog of some sort for numerous years. When I started out online at 14.. my blog posts were stupid… damn ridiculous… but that is the premise of maturity. Even at 18, 19, I look back and think.. what was I thinking when i wrote that.. I look like a stuck up arrogant little kid. Yet i profess to hate arrogance…

There is one thing to understand and appreciate. That is your own failings. On many an occasion i read an old blog post and hang my own head in shame at my attitude towards things. I could simply delete the infringing posts, and move on with life, yet that is not the way to go.. that demeans learning. I leave everything I ever wrote online such that either I can look back, understand, and appreciate that much more how I have changed, or so you, the reader can do likewise.

I’d like to summarize with an arrogant/confident association. I see myself as an Eminem in life. I love Eminems work – what a fantastic artist. He raps what he thinks/feels.
People sit there and judge him. They state “Why are you so pissed off, upset, and annoyed, you are one of the most successful artists of all time”. It is these people that have completely missed the point in life. Money doesn’t matter. Developing yourself as an intelligent and respectable person does.

Some people need to grow up, and appreciate and respect life. I have made numerous references to idealism – idealism does not occur.
Grow up, appreciate it and appreciate those that get it. Those that don’t, take with a pinch of salt, then look back in ten years when I can assure you they will have not lived a fulfilling life.

Thank you.

The University of Leeds: They keep getting it wrong.

July 14, 2010 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

The University of Leeds is a member of the prestigious Russell Group, and was rated by The Times as Britains 27th best university in the United Kingdom.

Its major successes include winning the ‘Higher Education Students’ Union of the Year’ in 2009. However all is not good within the Universities various management teams.

Back in December of 2009, tens of thousands of undergraduate students prepared themselves physically and mentally for the torment of examination season. The university runs a very efficient, and useful education platform powered by the renowned Blackboard virtual learning environment. This provides lecture notes, and revision materials to all students with a login, from any computer with internet access.

After Christmas, this service went down – it was unaccessible. For over a week, just days before the start of examinations, university students simply could not access revision material. Students -as the generalized stereotype goes- are extremely lazy. It is fair to say that we do not need extra motivation not to work. As such what proceeded to happen was somewhat amusing, and quite incredible.
One first year student proceeded to make a Facebook group with the novel name ‘If this group gets 1,000 members, I will punch the head of the VLE’. Within 24 hours the group had received not 1,000, but over 3,000 members. The majority were Leeds students but a fair few were students from other universities posting their sentiments, and support for the Leeds students who simply could not revise.

The group met an untimely end when the following link was sent to the groups creator: General University Disciplinary Regulations.

Highlighted was the statement:

“2.8 Conduct (wherever occurring) (see footnote 4) likely to bring the University into disrepute.”

It was demanded that the student delete the group or face expulsion from the University. Of course not wanting to lose his place at the University he proceeded to delete each of the 3,000 members one by one (as required by Facebook) to delete the group. I have been informed that this occured because the ‘Yorkshire Post’ newspaper apparently contacted the university for comment on the situation. If this is correct it seems apparent that the universities shortcomings are considered news worthy subjects.

This catch all statement that the university has placed on a website is seemingly in place as a scare tactic to deter the timid. Each and every student has a right to free speech, as does each and every human being. It is understandable were the sentiments defamatory, but they were not. Leeds University lets it students down, and bullies them.

The second shortcoming I shall be documenting is more of a personal one. I take this opportunity to make point that my actions were not acceptable in any way, shape, or form, however under all circumstances I have tried my level best to stand by my actions, and take responsibility.

One afternoon/evening in January of 2010, after completing our examinations, a few of the people with whom I live decided to play a game of Centurion. A few short hours/drunk students later, and a large amount of damage had been caused to the flat within which we resided. At 9pm a sub-warden (with whom we had previously lived) proceeded to arrive. She entered the flat and understandably was dismayed by the damage. We proceeded to leave the flat and continue on our night out. This was all we heard for a few days.

The next we heard was in the form of a series of letters/documents documenting what we had done. Harrassing the sub-warden in question, and smoking marijuana were among the blatant fallacies contained within the sub-wardens poorly written, gramatically disgraceful scrawlings. The only reasoning anyone has been able to attach to these libellous statements was our previous dispute with the sub-warden in question. This took the form of her bullying one of our good friends, and fellow flat mate. When we stood up for our friend, she appreciated our lack of respect for people of such character and left our flat. It would seem her actions were mallicious in every respect.

Towards the end of March we were called to university disciplinary. Having had a lot of our time wasted debating the statements made about our conduct, we now had to sit in front of a five man panel and explain why we did what we did, as well as why we did things that we did not do. In principle this could have been an efficient resolution – we could have sat down, explained the truth, apologized for our actions, and gone on with our lives. Instead we were forced to wait for an hour whilst they read the details of the ‘case’ (I imagine on the universities payroll). Then we sat and explained our case. One member of the panel was from the student union, a member who was meant to be able to relate, support, and help the students. Understandably he was seemingly not interested, his facial expression said that he had better things to do with his time. We likewise did, yet we had to state our case and we were not going to pass up the opportunity.

We waited a number of weeks for the resolution to the disciplinary. It came in the form of another letter. It explained how in addition to the costs of the damage we caused, we were being fined a further £250 each. Statements on the resolution letter included support for the sub-warden in question from her best friend, and her sexual partner. Impartial and fair… NOT.

At this point I had lost interest in this. I had agreed to pay for all the damage which I had caused. I obviously refused to pay the additional fine – it was based around things I did not do, and being a student I did not, and still do not have the money. As it was coming up to examination period again, I filed the letter away, forgot about it, and began preparing for my exams. It is important to note that the university does have an appeals process, however I had come to the end of my tether. I did not have the time, and I needed to work. As such an appeal was not filed.

On the 4th April, I recieved an email with a bill from the universities finance team. It contained the fine, and a further £20 fine for not paying the initial fine in a timely manner. I queried this fine, it was removed. I was informed to resolve the situation before the 4th May to avoid another fine. I sent an email around to six members of the universities staff in various departments. In one month, one of them replied – Clare Shortall. The most interesting part was in her response to me questioning where the fine would go. I was concerned that five people were being paid significant amounts of money to spend an hour reading about, and an hour passing judgements on three students based on fallacies. The response stated:

“The University does not profit from such fines. They go to the Alumni Fund, which gives scholarships and support to students experiencing hardship.”

At this point things get somewhat interesting. One of my friends who was defending himself with me has since dropped out of university. As a sufferer of depression the events that unfolded, the forceful scare tactics of the university, and the lack of respect for the students from whom they are trying to take money caused him to go into a spiral of depression, and leave the university. The fines which are meant to “support to students experiencing hardship.” have in fact caused hardship. The other two persons (myself being one) have had silly amounts of our time wasted, and have had trouble sleeping, working, well… living since this debarcle begun.

To conclude the details of the second story I am simply going to include a quote from one of my emails.

“I imagine that said fines will go to the University under the heading of ‘administrative charges’, this I find down right ridiculous. Run as a business it is plainly obvious to me that this is corporate profit maximization by manipulating the students under your jurisdiction.”

In addition to this when I put forward the idea of all future, justified disciplinary fines going to charity, it was seemingly completely ignored.

I spent some time trying to justify to myself as to why the University would be working as it is.
Being very up to date with my current affairs, and noting the University’s dire need of money (as shown in the links below), everything seemingly fits into place. The staff are unhappy, the students are unhappy, and the universities master plan to fix these problems involve stealing money from students, and cutting jobs.

Leeds lecturers vote to strike
University Funding Cuts Crisis
Top Universities want higher fees

The rules and regulations to which I have been linked on numerous occasions got me thinking. Are they legal? I cannot post a definitive answer to this question – I am not a lawyer. Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to whether my legal research is in fact correct.

Prior to posting this I contacted the student advice center to clarify where I stood in relation to expressing my views on the situation. I was pointed to the following:

“At present the two main regulations that would apply are the general disciplinary procedure:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/aaandr/disp_reg.htm

2.8 Conduct (wherever occurring) (see footnote 4) likely to bring the University into disrepute.

And the computer misuse procedure:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/aaandr/ucs_reg.htm

(in annex 1) The creation or transmission of defamatory material or material that is libellous of any persons or company’s reputation, products or services”

My comments may bring the university into disrepute. This is however justified disrepute. Things need to be changed, and things need to be sorted.
None of my comments are defamatory. Everything stated above is based on fact, unless otherwise specified.

On the 7th July 2010, I received a letter informing me that should a payment of £290 not be paid promptly, I would not be allowed to re-register for second year at the university. As such I am attempting to contact various members of the universities top level staff. Should an amicable resolution not be reached, this public complaint will be sent to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, as well as various local journalists.

Comments with regards to this are more than welcome.

Thank you.

Vodafone: Bad Business

December 14, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: Advice,My Views,Reviews,Scammers | Comments (0)

It has been a while since I have posted anything of merit. I will try my hardest to start producing some more informative content.

Independent of where you originate from, you will have more than likely heard of Vodafone: the mobile phone carrier originally set up within the UK in the eighties.
Over the years they have gone from strength to strength, last tax year earning a post tax profit in excess of £3 billion. Running businesses within 20 different countries, and employing 79,000 worldwide gives off a general aura of a well run business. Wrong.

Now I appreciate wholly that I am a tiny fish in the grand scheme of things, however a sample of ‘me’ suggested that 100% of Vodafone customers were extremely disappointed. Stats do not lie !

I have been a Vodafone contract customer for the past 18 months. Prior to that, I had previous contracts with them. My family all have mobile contracts, and the majority of them are with Vodafone. We give them a few thousand quid a year, so logically they would want our custom right? Nope.

Having lost my phone, I decided to get a new contract. My previous contract expired in 3 months, so compared to what it could have been, it was a minimal financial loss.
Thus, knowing I could not cancel my contract I went into Vodafone to change my contract to a lower tariff. I.E Rather than spend £35 a month on a phone I did not have, simply spend £15: a saving of £20 monthly for 3 months.
After ‘a period of time which made the effort not worth it’ the woman told me I could only reduce my contract by £5 a month. I stated that with previous contracts we had reduced the contract in one lump, but she was having none of it. Essentially Vodafone wanted to make £30 extra out of me over a 3 month period by making ‘me saving money’ excessively complicated.

What Vodafone in fact did is make me decide that I did not in fact want to take out another contract with them. On the assumption I would have taken out a £30 monthly contract for 18 months, they lost a whopping £510 for having no business sense. Further to this, I have informed all family members to stay away from Vodafone when getting a new contract. We can multiply that number by 5, and state that Vodafone will essentially lose £2,500 bi-anually (minimum), and it is all their fault.

I am ridiculously stubborn, and business acumen influenced. Vodafone have ticked every box for me as a company NEVER to deal with.

Is there a stigma associated with adult webmasters?

September 8, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (4)

As a domain name investor, I am more than happy to invest in anything I deem potentially profitable.

It just so happens that a year or two ago I was offered some adult domain names.
Basically, I had previously purchased some names from a seller. A few months after this initial purchase, I was contacted by him. His wife had found out that he owned these domains, and given him a lowdown.. sell them, or… well… who knows.

Now I dont have much interest in the adult industry, or adult domains, however these were some reasonably popular adult keywords in various cctlds. I jumped on the reasonably low prices. In hindsight I am curious as to whether his scenario was a selling ploy, none the less I felt I had gotten a good deal.

I have since attempted to sell these domains numerous times, never with any success. Eventually I gave up, and took a $200 offer I had received on ‘blowjobs.us’. To my dismay the buyer put it straight on SEDO, and fetched over a grand. This increased my motivation for selling the other domains, however even a Rick Latona auction could not get any bids on these domains.

Now I appreciate that cctlds, are less valuable than faeces nowadays: I sold 5 LLL.us I had bought for $70 each 3 years ago for $1 each on ebay recently ! However one of the names in the .com extension sold for mid $xx,xxx. You’d thus think that the .us would be worth $500? Apparently not.

So, essentially I am in a position where I own 5 or so domains I cannot sell, in a questionable niche which I have little interest in. Furthermore I have no idea as to how to develop them. What to do?

I looked into adult content on popular adult forum GFY.com. The cost of content was extortionate ! No wonder porn is such a profitable business. 10 sets of images cost more than the domains themselves cost (OK That is an exaggeration, none the less it IS expensive). The little motivation I had was diminishing.

Fortunately for me, I stumbled upon a seller who was licensing a large volume of content for a pretty cheap price. It now seemed worthwhile to spend a little cash for a potentially good return. 100GB of downloading later (YES, 100GB ! : (very high definition images) ), and I was in a position to begin development.

This whole exercise has been worthwhile in that it lead me to develop a script to automatically resize images. I managed to convert 2.15GB of images down to 85MB with this script. I could easily make my money back selling the script.
Armed with this, I decided on my development ‘plan of attack’, and have since put it into action.

FAST FORWARD

So, now my various adult websites are online. Anyone can access them, yet no-one can definitively say ‘That website is owned by ‘The Gremlins Umbrella Authority”. Why is that the case? Well simply put, as mentioned numerous times, the adult industry is questionable, and somewhat immoral from my perspective, however my websites are not illegal. On that basis, money is money, and I will gladly accept it, yet I dont really want to be actively associated with it.

If you park a domain name on an adult landing page, you would not go onto the streets and tell your mates that you were in the porn industry (or would you?). Likewise I know what I want to be known for.. a network of great, user, and family friendly websites. In simple there is a stigma associated with the adult industry, and I have no interest in associating myself with that stigma.

Would you?

The Support Game: Moniker

September 2, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

With this round of ‘The Support Game’ I felt somewhat bad. I contacted Moniker, who are by far and away the best domain registrar on the web.
My call was instantly picked up by Don Lyons, who is in fact already my account manager. I apologize for wasting your time as a fake customer, but hopefully what I have to say will get you many a customer in return.

‘Why should I use Moniker over Godaddy for example?’

Dons response involved praise for Godaddy for what they do. He stated that they are the worlds biggest registrar, and thus they must be doing something right. He pointed out that Godaddy are a webhost also whereas Moniker simply focus on domain name management. He stated that Godaddy caters to small businesses, and college students whereas moniker is a ’boutique registrar’.

Now I don’t know about you, but a company that can sell itself praising competitors must know what they are doing.

Don then went on to a 5 minute or so explanation of exactly what Moniker offered. Such was the response that after hearing it, I could not think of any hard questions to ask. I felt like saying.. Wow you are awesome, and hanging up… but.. well.. I couldn’t do that.

Paraphrased, Moniker is slightly more expensive, but has never lost a domain name. Their portfolio manager can handle upwards of 5,000 domains on a single page, and dns changes etc can be registered in bulk in a matter of seconds. Furthermore they are owned by Oversee.net, and thus support, and service is streamlined for Snapnames, Domain Sponsor, and Moniker.

I questioned Dons statement with regards to ‘never losing a domain name’, referencing this post, and was informed that Oversee resolved this by paying out of their own pocket to buy the domain back, and returned it to the owner. This has not been verified, but if so is seriously impressive.

Regarding support, I was curious as to whether Godaddys statements about support were correct. Don was completely honest stating that ‘Moniker is not a hospital’, whereas, as a host Godaddy needs 24/7 support, Moniker does not. None-the-less he stated he is almost always reachable by phone, and has a blackberry for when he is on the move. He also praised the Moniker web based support, and the staff.

My only disagreement is that the web based support is slow, and uninformative at best. Phone, and you’ll always get the answer you want.

Without even asking Don also offered me free 0% interest financing to move my domains to Moniker. I queried how they could provide this, and received ‘$150,000,000 in the bank tends to help’. One thing is for sure Moniker aint going anywhere any time soon. Fill in a simple credit finance form, and you can move all your domains such that you don’t need to prolong the process.

What I loved about Moniker was the honesty. Whereas Godaddy sounded desperate for your business, Moniker were happy to accept your business if you both suited one another. Don would not for example offer free financing if my domains were crap. Why? Because Moniker only wants good domains, such that they can look after all their names and customers, rather than be flooded with spammers and scammers.

Interesting fact of the day: Moniker has over 3,000,000 domain names under its belt, putting it up there as one of the top 10 domain name registrars.

Moniker is by far and away the BEST domain name registrar. Don’t delay, and join at Moniker.com

The Support Game: GoDaddy

August 31, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (3)

I came up with a new game to entertain myself, and help others: The Support Game.

Essentially what happens is I phone up a support service, and ask ‘unusual’ questions. How well are support staff trained, and can they deal with a difficult customer?

Today I phoned up Godaddy, and was aided by Damien. The first thing to note is that he did not tell me his name until the end of the conversation when I asked. How impersonal !

I begun by disputing their ‘All conversations will be recorded’ process, asking if there was a secure line where such was not true. I did not want my conversation, and details of my domain names to be heard by anyone except Damien. His response was ‘No’. I pushed for an explanation, and was given ‘Training, and Security’. I stated that my request was in the interest of the security of my (made up) portfolio of 30,000 domain names. Nothing.

I went on to question what kind of manager was provided for such large portfolios, and was given a vague description of the portfolio manager that everyone gets. I felt no un-exclusive.

I probed as to whether Godaddy support staff were given a line to tell potential customers, as to why they should choose Godaddy over anyone else. Godaddys’ line is “24 hour support including holidays, free hosting deals, and bulk prices”. I made the point that near all registrars have that, but apparently they do not.. not many do. Damien has spoken.

Question 4 inquired about the ridiculous ‘Administrative Fees’ Godaddy like to charge for absolutely nothing. I for one was charged $200 in 2006. 4 of my Godaddy names were listed at tdnam. I then renewed them, Godaddy didnt remove the names, they sold. I was charged $200 in fees for non-sales of domains which GODADDY listed !
Another similar case, was one whereby a user had a UDRP filed against him, and was charged $29 without his permission for the honor.

The response to this was that Godaddy do not charge administrative fees without reason, and that fees are only charged for WIPO claims after GoDaddy have done an investigation. I.E Godaddy gives themselves a right they do not have to charge you based on their opinion. That is reason enough to avoid Godaddy.

He completely avoided my question about the seclists.org fiasco.

Fortunately for me, If I were to move my 30,000 domains over, they ‘might’ be able to get me an account manager.. Oh dear oh dear.

Check out Nodaddy for more reasons to avoid Godaddy.

Only on the Internet

August 15, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

I’ve never given real thought to this phenomenon until today.

There are some things which you can only buy on the Internet. The reasons are vast, and varied but certain products in certain niches simply cannot be bought on the high street.

When I see something I want/need, I often will go out and buy it from a shop simply because although the Internet may be a little cheaper.. it also takes a little longer. The problem is, that as happened today, I ended up wasting time looking for a product which now I will order online anyway

I have thus made it my prerogative to highlight products that I believe are only available online.

N.B I am English, I live in England, and these are my findings in my local area. I am sure if you look hard enough, and in the right places these products can be found offline BUT who wants to put effort in?! Feel free to let me know of any products you believe can only be bought on the net.

Body Fat Calipers: These things basically pinch your body fat, and give you a reading in mm. This can then be used to calculate your body fat percentage. I thought you could find these in any pharmacist, or sports shop. You cant ! I asked in JJB Sports, and the guy clearly had no idea what I was on about, yet pretended he did. “Any Idea where I could get them from?”… response “Yes, from the protein store” (I think he thought it was some sort of mass gaining supplement).

The logic behind such products is obvious… they don’t sell many, so it is not profitable. Why use storage space with something you are not going to sell.
This got be thinking: What happened if you wanted these before the Internet? Mail order catalog I guess.

If you know of any items which simply cannot be bought on the high street, then let me know. I will go an have a look, and If I cant… Ill give you absolutel nothing.

Addition One 15/08/2009 19:37
Thanks to Acroplex for this.. not sure how I missed it.

Domain Names
Domain Names cannot be bought in any way, shape, or form offline. It would however be extremely cool if you could: “I’d like a 20 pack of Malboro lights, and www.shopping.com please.” Response “That will be $100,005.99″.

Cheers

Buy Domains : Spammers

August 12, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

Admittedly I am quite easily annoyed, but you have to go a level beyond to make me post about you on my blog. Therefore kudos to Buy Domains.

Back in early 2008 I sent an inquiry to Buy Domains regarding a domain name which they owned. The domain in question was tomc.com

It is not the greatest domain in the world, and in retrospect I am not even sure as to why i inquired at all. Having checked my logs, I offered $450USD for the domain, an offer which I think exceeds the value of the domain.

Sadly Buy Domains did not agree, and responded with some ridiculous offer. $6,900 if I remember correctly. I politely responded, and said ‘No Thanks’.

Since then I receive an email from Buy Domains every two months, sometimes less. The emails always go the same: We are having a special sale, tomc.com is now only $STILL-EXTORTIONATE-PRICE USD.

First time I replied stating I was not interested, and to remove me from their list. Gradually my replies started getting more and more ‘flame-filled’.
Over the past year I have received over 25 emails offering me the same awful domain which I do NOT want !

Apparently Buy Domains tactic is to change the name at the bottom of the email, then it is not spam.

I have received the exact same template message from Jim Beltz, Jason Miner, and Neil Kavanaugh.
Their emails are always signed off with ‘Head of something really complicated, and important sounding’

In reality I think that Buy Domains employees work on a commission system, and spamming gives them more opportunity to sell domains.
Sad fact, I will never buy from them ever, and I hope others follow suit knowing their unlawful practices.

Hostgator: My new host !

March 19, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (0)

I have now been a customer of Hostgator for a week !

As you are most probably aware, Lunarpages Sucks !
I was previously hosted by Lunarpages, and after they let me down time and time again I decided to take some responsibility and move elsewhere.

I am a very particular person. When it comes to money I will research for hours and hours prior to spending a penny. There was no difference this time around.

No web host is perfect, especially one as large as Hostgator. There are always good stories, and horror stories. That comes with the territory as a webhost. The trick is looking through the cracks, and making an overall decision.

I took the plunge, and went with Hostgator. The things that attracted me were: the positive reviews; the live chat feature; the fact they run a full, and current version of cpanel; and the fact that other domainers I know use them !

It took me quite a lot of effort to move my websites over to Hostgator. This however is the same for any web host.
Depending on the nature of your website, Hostgator offer a transfer service where they will move your websites, and databases absolutely free. +1

Once set up I had a few problems with dns propogation, but these were simply teething problems which were easily sorted with the help of live chat support.

Having worked on and off all day I left it for the night, and went to bed. In the morning I checked a website of mine to find I was being offered the option to download my own PHP source code ! DISASTER ! My hours and hours of coding was being offered completely free to absolutely any and all visitors ! I was distraught ! -10 !

I logged onto the live chat feature and explained my problem. My agent was ‘Richard Ha’. He put forward a variety of lack luster suggestions in a rude manner. None worked. He stated he would escalate the request, such that ‘at some point’ it would be fixed. I explained in no uncertain terms that it could NOT wait. He did not care. Eventually he had a Eureka moment, and suggested a fix that worked. Had he not had this I would have been completely *insert-rude-word-here*. Unsurprisingly, I was disgusted. I had spent ages setting myself up with Hostgator and they were looking to melike a bunch of rude amateurs !

Richard Ha then directed me to leave feedback on his support services ! I laughed, and obliged. Perhaps his surname is ‘Ha’ because his support services are a joke. He also directed me as to where to complain.. He told me how to complain about HIM ! Again I obliged.

At this point you are probably thinking that Hostgator definitely should not get your money. WAIT! Read on….

ONE HOUR, yes a measly 1 hour after this occurred I received a personal email from ‘Patrick Pelanne’, ‘Deputy Chief Technical Officer’ at Hostgator. He apologized profusely, resolved the problem properly (the technicians fix was a band-aid fix), explained what had happened, and gave me a free months hosting ! Now that is customer service !
This was independent of the email I had sent to ‘feedback@hostgator.com’, and I received a useful response from them too.

Kudos to Patrick, and his team. There was a problem, they noted it, and they fixed it in a matter of hours. The free months hosting was a bonus.
Admittedly there should not have been problems in the first place, BUT realizing your mistakes, and NOT simply blaming the customer is something that is very rare nowadays.

I have an account at Hostgator for 3 years, and I am looking forward to it. Hostgator are awesome ! If you are looking for a cheap, quality host then Hostgator is the way to go ! Best of Luck

Speak YOUR mind !

March 17, 2009 | Written by -GRUMBA- | Topic: My Views | Comments (2)

I follow a few blogs. I do this because blogs are great resources. The content varies depending on the subject matter. You could be reading ‘How Tos’ on a cooking blog, or news stories on a blog covering news for a specific niche.
Blogs are great, and the reason for this is because you can always find a blog written by a good writer regarding the subject matter on which you are interested. Furthermore blogs CAN be biased, whereas news agencies such as Reuters cannot. This allows for reading of something which YOU agree with as opposed to a middle man stance.

I have previously ranted about bloggers, and their practices. This is a continuation.
I regularly check Domain Investment Updates such that I can keep up to date with my domain news. DIU collects together all the best domain news sources, and displays their posts on one page. Previously there were loads of blogs connected to the site, now however there are only the best. Why you might ask? Simple !

Previously when you visited DIU.net you would see a page full of blog posts from different authors with similar titles: clearly all on the same topic. What seems to be happening in this niche, and I assume others is a flood of bloggers.
Reputable bloggers are researching news stories, and then writing them up. It would then seem that a flurry of ‘small-time’ bloggers (who are just trying to cash in) go ahead and essentially copy the content of the post onto their own blogs.

Now I am all in favour of stories being posted on multiple blogs, and multiple opinions being portrayed. What I do not agree with however is flooding our screens with other peoples opinions/findings. IF someone reads your blog, they want to read what YOU have to say, not what Steve from otherblog.com has to say.

The worst of the bunch are those whose post is essentially:
“Steve at thisotherblog.com says this…..
I agree……”

Fair enough if you reference the original author, and actually write something substantial in continuation, however too often I am seeing people who literally copy and paste someone elses content to their blog, and expect to make money.

It is a joke ! You know who you are ! Speak your own mind.

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