Because....

1. Almost all of the time after saving a file that I edited with the file manager, I get an error message and have to close the window before I can go back to the main menu.

2. There is no way to log out, so I have to close the browser to prevent others from getting to my control panel without needing a password. (I use public computers)

3. The server was down twice within about a week. The last time, it was down for two days and worked intermittently for the third.

4. The  's in my code show up as regular spaces.

5. Small files are shown to take up 0K instead of .5K or whatever. (the least signifigant complaint)

6. Any newly saved file will sometimes be shown to take up 0 bytes until a certain amount of time passes.

7. Certain edits take a while to appear on the web page, or in the case that finally made me decide to switch hosts, NEVER appear, even if they appear in the code. (specifically, a link to a formmail script gives me an error saying that the script can't be found, but the address in the error message is an address that I overwrote in the script DAYS ago when customer service told me what to change it to. Customer service now tells me that it appears I haven't changed it, but I did, and the code shows it!)

But I have to admit that their customer service is fast.

Apparently, character entities are displaied as the characters they represent here. the 's in my message should be a non-breaking-space entity.

During the year that I had a web site hosted with Digital Zones, I never experienced any down time. The control panel is by Alabanza, and I did not have any problems with that either. I used FTP to upload/make changes to my web site though, so I don't know about the online file manager.

From my own experience, on a scale from 1 to 10, I'd give them 9 (I would give them 10 if they allocated more disk space).

Originally posted by avara
During the year that I had a web site hosted with Digital Zones, I never experienced any down time. The control panel is by Alabanza, and I did not have any problems with that either. I used FTP to upload/make changes to my web site though, so I don't know about the online file manager.

I have to agree, as I do not experience any problems as I have 2 clients for almost a year now and I also used FTP to upload their files(web designing accounts) and have never used File Manager so I can't comment on it.

I don't have the luxury of a home computer, and I don't think I'd use HTML software anyway, so I'm highly dependent on file manager features and availability. I tried to deal with the problems, but I think I better switch hosts now, before my site grows any more and it becomes even more of a hassle to transfer files from one host to another. I'm sure there is software to automate such a transfer, but I don't have access to it.

Here is the email I received about the most recent downtime:

From: support@dzones.com <support@dzones.com >
Sent: 08/07/01 04:18 am
Subject: Network Slowdown Issues

Good afternoon,

As you all are probably well aware, we are experiencing some network issues. The reason you are experiencing a slow connection is that, over the weekend, we had to do some modifications on one of the main switches that leads to our network. The Network administrators picked the lowest traffic hours of the week to do the upgrade, but there still seems to be some of you who are not experiencing an optimal connection.

Please do not send in any emails to support to ask why the connection is slow or your request is timing out. We are aware of the problem and are currently working on the issue. The system administrators are monitoring the network for any connection problems. We will keep you advised of our progress.

If you are still experiencing problems please send a traceroute to traces@dzones.com. To run a traceroute ( from windows) click start -> programs-> ms-dos prompt. This will pull up a separate window. Type 'tracert domainname.com', where the domainname is the domain name you are trying to reach. You can also run a trace route from the following URLs: http://traceroutes.com and http://tracert.com.

We are trying to get this resolved as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience that this might cause.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

Technical Support / Customer Support / NOC Team
dZones.com

That particular slowdown/outage affected hundreds of hosting companies, from jumpline.com on down, all of which use thweAlabanza NOC. It was resolved on Monday. So that isn'y one you can really blame on your host, as hundreds of others were in the same boat. I have personally used the File Manager interface many times to edit a file quickly, and have never encountered what you describe. Perhaps a connection issue? Are you using dial-up? Do you get disconnected a lot? Is there a firewall where you log on?

As for the logout, we have suggested to Alabanza that they write one, but the authentication shceme currently in place doesn't allow for that. Not to mention, what's the big deal about closing the browser? Either way, it's one click - either to log out or hit the big X in the upper right... I just don't see that as a major hassle worthy of host-jumping. And be careful not to jump right into another Alabanza host if you don't like the Control Panel, cause it's the same software from host to host!

Ok, I won't blame that one on them, but for their own good, they should have made it more clear that the problem effected many hosts. I'm also going to play with the file in which my edit seemingly didn't register. I had this problem with a free host a couple of times too. If I can get it to work after copying the file and deleting the old one, or doing something stupid like that, then I think I'll be looking for a new host. (because I'll know it wasn't my fault)

Yep, I'm still outta there! Bye Bye Digital Zones! It's possible my edit will register sometime in the future, but I'm betting against it. Try this out:

Go to my website: http://www (dot) polisource (dot com) (I don't want the search engines to index it yet) and click on the link to the Polisource Health Insurance Survey (near the top right). Answer a question and click submit. You'll see an error message that referrs to an address that I'd edited out of my code DAYS ago! View the source of /insurancesurvey.html and search for the address or any part of it in the code, and you won't find it! And I've already tried deleting the old file and re-saving the code, but it doesn't work! AND I CANT FIND ANOTHER HOST THAT I LIKE!

:angry:

From what I could see, all that's wrong is you have a 'public_html' as part of the path to the script. Removing that works (does not yield a 404)...

Good luck finding a new host!

I forgot to check the source with View Source yesterday, and I can't check it now without a validator, but according to the HTML as seen with the file manager, the public-html isn't there. In fact, I replaced the entire form-action address with the word test. I bet if I change the name of the file it will work, but I don't want to play games. I'm looking for another host.

Just want to set something straight so Alabanza doesn't get undue blame... shpilkus said that Digital Zones uses an Alabanza control panel, but their customer service just told me that it uses Cpanel. So, both Alabanza and Cpanel have security problems, but only Cpanel (as far as I know) has bugs.

Yes, I see that now. Although their demo panel looks JUST like the Alabanza panel, including the blue bar across the top with the link back to 'menu'. Interesting... perhaps they did this to minimize confusion to their customers as I believe they used to use Alabanza at one time.