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Random musings from the PaperDemon admin.

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Tech Support Frustration

Mar 13, 2006 10:51 am by BogusRed

I’ve been so frustrated the past week with my hosting service, Micfo.com. I had a couple of support requests about an .htaccess file problem and a problem with an add-on domain. It was clear to me by the responses I received that they hadn’t even been reading my trouble tickets carefully. It is as if they just glance at it real quickly and then come up with some half-baked response like “clear your cache.”

Take the htaccess file problem for example. Here is the support request I sent in:

Hi I've created an .htaccess file with a mod_rewrite code in it and I get an internal server error when I access files from that directory. Do i need to add something to the .htaccess file to make it work or does your hosting not support mod rewrite?

Here's what's in my .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule {code removed for privacy purposes}

I placed the file in public_html/data/
I removed the file after placing it in this directory so my site visitors could still access the files in there.

And here was Sarah W.’s response:

Hello,

We have mod_rewrite enabled on the server. I am unable to locate any .htaccess file in your /public_html/data directory.

Uhhhh…… hello? Did you not read the part about me removing it? Did I not copy and paste the contents and place it in the body of my ticket? I was able to solve the problem with the help of a friend. No thanks to my tech support.

So later I had another problem setting up an Add-on domain. I had set up the domain name susiesahim.com on top of the directory “main” under paperdemon.com. But when I visited susiesahim.com I was receiving a cPanel message saying “There is no website configured at this address.” Now for those of you who don’t know what cPanel is, it’s a control panel system used by hosting services. So this page I was seeing was coming to me from micfo’s servers.

They said they could see the page loading correctly and suggested clearing my cache or trying it on another machine. I have my Internet settings to ALWAYS download a recent version of the web pages I view. Of course I don’t have caching turned on. I’m a webmaster. I’m always making changes to my web pages and refreshing to see the changes. But I did what he asked anyway and tried it on my Mom’s machine and I had my buddy Michael try it on his computer. Both computers saw the same message. I suggested to tech support that perhaps they could see it because they are within the network. Here is how the conversation went from there:


My Response:

Perhaps because you are within the network you can see it.

I tried it on another machine and had a friend try it on his computer and we both see the same thing. "There is no website configured at this address."

Sarah W.:

Hello,

Please check {web page link removed} from your end and let me know if you are able to view your site there or not.

My Response:

Yes I'm able to view that website.

the title of that page is "Secure free anonymous web surfing demo"

Sarah W.:

Hello,

It clearly shows that you have local problem. Please check with your ISP. Also check if you are able to ping your site from your machine.

Local problem? Check with my ISP? WTF?

My Response:

It is NOT a local problem because i asked a friend to visit the website and he gets the same cPanel message "There is no website configured at this address." He is NOT in my network.

I'm requesting that a top level admin take a look at this ticket.

Here is a trace route:

Tracing route to susiesahim.com [205.234.232.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 2 ms 1 ms homeportal.gateway.2wire.net [192.168.1.1]
2 78 ms 76 ms 77 ms adsl-67-117-147-254.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [67.1
17.147.254]
3 113 ms 124 ms 109 ms dist1-vlan50.snfc21.pbi.net [206.171.134.130]
4 76 ms 79 ms 101 ms bb1-10g2-0.snfcca.sbcglobal.net [216.102.176.224
]
5 110 ms 114 ms 114 ms core1-p6-1.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.243.121
]
6 94 ms 97 ms 97 ms bb1-p8-0.crsfca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.243.2]
7 101 ms 97 ms 101 ms ex1-p14-0.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.41.10]
8 80 ms 84 ms 84 ms ex2-p10-0.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.191.67]

9 70 ms 69 ms 69 ms unknown.sjc.scnet.net [66.225.245.237]
10 55 ms 57 ms 59 ms ge0-3-0.j1.sjc.scnet.net [64.202.104.230]
11 117 ms 109 ms 94 ms ge3-0-1.3940.j2.ord.scnet.net [205.234.205.97]
12 76 ms 84 ms 74 ms so2-1-0.j1.ord.scnet.net [64.202.110.13]
13 71 ms 67 ms 67 ms tagged.b2.ord.scnet.net [64.202.111.114]
14 69 ms 64 ms 64 ms beverly.micfo.com [205.234.232.100]

Trace complete.

Sarah W:

Hello,

I have cross verified through it . And found that SusieSahim.com site content as ....
===============================
SusieSahim.com
Large websites I own, program, design, and maintain

My blood, sweat, and tears go into PaperDemon.com and it's dark, alter ego the Red Curtain. It's like my baby. So check it out!
================================

Have you checked with your ISP ?

Ok by this point I’m realizing that I’m not going to get anywhere with them.

My Response:

Yes you are seeing the content that I want the domain to point to...

However, I'm still not seeing it...

How could it possibly be my ISP? You can clearly see through the tracert that susiesahim.com is reaching YOUR SERVER beverly.micfo.com. AND I've told you the message I'm seeing is a CPANEL MESSAGE. CPANEL IS THE SOFTWARE YOU USE! SO IT MUST BE AN ISSUE ON YOUR END.

FUCK IT you guys are the worst trouble shooters ever. I'm just going to remove the domain and set it up a different way because this is a complete waste of my time.

It should have stopped there. But it didn’t. They continued to try and trouble shoot my problem even after I told them I would remove the domain.

Sarah W:

Hello,
I am unable to locate susiesahim.com on the server right now. have you removed ?

I don’t know how I kept my cool after that one

My Response:

yes i removed it. i am just going to park it on one of my other domains because this is too frustrating to make work correctly.

So they should have stopped by THIS point right? Nope. It didn’t seem to get through to them that I have given up on the add-on domain and would set up my domain differently:

Micfo Support:

Hello,

Working on your issue and get back to you soon.

Regards,
Linda.

Danny Pateman:

Hello,

The current issue generally happens when there is a cache of the site in your browser or ISP seetings cache. Try clearing the cache of the browser and check your site.

For Internet Explorer:
To clear the cache; you would need to click on: 'Tools' >> 'Internet Options' >> 'Delete Files'. This will bring up a popup box. Here check the option: 'Delete all offline content' then hit 'Ok' and then hit 'Apply' and 'Ok' on 'Internet Options' popup box.

For Netscape:
To clear the cache; you would need to click on: 'Edit' >> 'Preference' >> 'Advanced' >> 'Cache' >> 'Clear Cache'. Then hit 'Ok'.

We also request you to try out the following:
If you are accessing site as http://SusieSahim.com then try accessing it as http://www.SusieSahim.com or vice versa.

If the issue persists, then we recommend that you try some different browsers. If you are using ‘Internet Explorer’, then as an alternate please try using ‘Netscape Browser’ or vice versa. OR Please try with other machine with other networks.

Who do they think they are talking to? They have given me specific instructions on how to clear my browser cache. They’ve completely ignored everything I’ve said. Holy F***ing Christ! At this point, I go ballistic with my response. I told them to close the ticket and the message finally got through.

As you might have guessed, I am now looking for another hosting service. Lunar Pages hosting is starting to look good to me. Actually, I almost switched to them before when I was leaving Apollo Hosting (worst host ever). If you know of a good hosting service, feel free to recommend them to me.

Other than the tech support, Micfo hosting has been pretty good because I rarely have down time and they’ve got a lot of great features that are hard to find elsewhere. My plan now is to stick with Micfo until I outgrow my hosting package. Once PaperDemon.com gets large enough that it requires a dedicated server, I’ll switch to Lunar Page’s dedicated hosting plan.

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