Was there a boom in the economy or something? [Archive]

2Grumpy

03-12-2002, 11:52 PM

Originally posted by batcavenet
wow! how did you manage that :) it's tough even getting one for me- I have less than that total!

Make that 13 and there's still 2 hours left in the day :)

I guess I'm just lucky.

I quit doing anything that even resembled advertising months ago, other than posting here in the for sale forums and running Ebay auctions, and I quit doing Ebay auctions about 5 or 6 weeks ago and I haven't posted in the for sale here in about that time or longer. Honestly I was trying to slow things down while we moved into the new colo here locally and kinda got our bearings and our feel for the new systems. Yeah so much for that idea. I've done more sales since March 1 than I did in the last half of February, granted I also did more in the first half of February as the last half, over $1000 more.

I wish I could make a detailed paint by numbers of what to do but frankly, I ain't done nothing really different that I know of. Folks call, I answer the phone and answer their questions, they email I reply back. Low prices don't hurt either.

Maybe it's that I'm not allowed to ever do what I plan. My plan was host 400-600 people, make enough money per month to pay some bills and stay home and just kinda get by not get all ambitious and try to be "big shot hosting company with many employees" so by virtue that wasn't allowed to happen and here I am about to hire at least 1, if not 2 more people this week and next, and also gotta get an accountant to start doing my books too and making sure I do the payroll and taxes thing by the book (I have no clue about that stuff which is allright if it's just me but it's not just me anymore). Ahh the best laid plans...

WebmastersHost

03-13-2002, 12:43 AM

This has been very inspirational.

Tommy

03-13-2002, 05:43 AM

Originally posted by Dixiesys

I quit doing anything that even resembled advertising months ago, other than posting here in the for sale forums and running Ebay auctions, and I quit doing Ebay auctions about 5 or 6 weeks ago and I haven't posted in the for sale here in about that time or longer.

Sometimes you will continue to benefit from advertising many months down the line. It's likely that many people that saw your ad months ago and bookmarked your site. Now they are looking for hosting or to change service provider they have come back. The return on investment isn't always immediate.

Or maybe you were just lucky :), but these new customers have to come from somewhere.

jgriff64

03-13-2002, 05:49 AM

We too have seen a large increase in sales from February. We have also stopped advertising as we now get as many new customers as we did when we advertised.

bitserve

03-13-2002, 05:45 PM

Well all of the orders checked out. I was expecting it to keep up, but didn't get any additional orders that day.

Got one order yesterday, which is the norm for us. Not sure why we're not more popular, but we've been slowly building ever since we started 5 years ago. Slow but sure.

Before 9/11, we were averaging 1-2 orders a day.

We never had 19 orders in one day before, so it was a major fluke.

Tina, 38 orders in one day? Wow. What's your secret? I wouldn't have imagined ordering web hosting on new years eve, btw.

Gary, even with how low priced your accounts are, I'm constantly as amazed as you are that you get as many new orders as you do. I hope it keeps up, because I'm excited for you never having to get a real job again.

I remember back when we started, a lot of our competition was actually bought out by verio, and I always held a grudge against verio for never offering to buys us. Not that we would have sold, but it's like they didn't think we were important enough. All I hope one day is to grow big enough to have an office downtown, and to be taken seriously in the ann arbor community.

We've been slow enough though, that jason will probably be managing everything while I get another full time job out of boredom. I have another interview coming up.

Walter

03-14-2002, 03:06 PM

Better slow but steady.

HRBrendan

03-14-2002, 06:22 PM

***** does around 300 a day I heard.

-Brendan

adland

03-14-2002, 09:09 PM

Your boost in sales occured about the same time that MCHost experienced problems.

Alan - Vox

03-14-2002, 09:53 PM

Sold 3 reseller accounts today, which i suppose is like 45 of Tina's Quick Start accounts. I think i have done 6 reseller accounts in a day, which would be 90 of Tina's accounts. Thats using the figure that they they stay for 10 months.

HRBrendan

03-14-2002, 10:19 PM

Can't forget Jumpline's customers jumping ship... we've gotten a bunch of them the past few days.

-Brendan

Bogdan

03-15-2002, 12:53 AM

Originally posted by HRBrendan
Can't forget Jumpline's customers jumping ship... we've gotten a bunch of them the past few days.

I've been missing out on the news lately - too busy. :(

What happened to jumpline?

Always seemed like it was a good example of a web hosting company to me.

MCHost-Marc

03-15-2002, 04:43 AM

We get an average of 12-20 orders per day plus around 3-4 dedicated per week. Weekends are usually slow between 3-5 orders/day.

avara

03-15-2002, 07:45 AM

Sales have picked up quite a bit. In January, we were receiving maybe 2 orders a week. But now it's 2 orders a day, sometimes up to 5 orders a day. A lot of people jumping ship. I think 1 chargeback so far, but we cought about 4 stolen cards this month before they could do a chargeback. :)

Edit: 6 signups so far today.

AH-Tina

03-15-2002, 07:52 AM

Originally posted by avara
Sales have picked up quite a bit. In January, we were receiving maybe 2 orders a week. But now it's 2 orders a day, sometimes up to 5 orders a day. A lot of people jumping ship.

Yeah, thank you Jumpline and Readyhosting! We've had alot of new orders from their former customers. :D

--Tina

Jedito

03-15-2002, 08:00 AM

Still get a sustained 3 daily sign up av. since 3 month ago.:confused:

allan

03-15-2002, 12:22 PM

If it makes anyone feel better, I average about 0 new orders a day...

Of course, I don't run a hosting company, so that may have something to do with it :D.

Neo3Net

03-16-2002, 06:57 PM

19 WOW Thats good. The most I have ever gotten were 4 in one day.

Sure you didn't have an advertising campaign going LOL. Anyway good luck to you.

allmark

03-17-2002, 12:56 AM

We had 6 today, 4 where fraud :bawling: :bawling:

and yes I'm jealous :stickout

Peeps

03-17-2002, 03:21 AM

From 12/5/2001
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=28141

Close to 50 new orders plus alot of renewals. Our average is about 10 new orders a day - 20 is a REALLY good day.

The same user says this.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=39559

Funny I stumbled across this thread today.

Our highest number of orders was 38 on New Years' Eve. Today I rec'd 4 chargebacks...all 4 were transactions put through on that date.

I generally get 10 orders a day and 1 chargeback every other month or so. Now I just feel stupid.

And this, dear casual reader, is why you should always take any and all claims by web hosts with a grain of salt. I have no doubt that some of the hosts who are talking about one or two (or no) orders per day are telling it as it is. The others, though....I won't call them liars, no. But exaggeration or not being able to keep track of what they've said? Yes. I have a hard time believing that a really busy company could afford to have their people hanging around in this forum or on newsgroups all the time.

All of you smaller hosts who keep plugging away at this, day after day, I say more power to you. Clients want your honesty, and it's refreshing to see someone not afraid to be the little guy.

bitserve

03-17-2002, 04:05 AM

I highly suspect that this thread is going to turn into a flame war.

I set up a query on our site where you can see how many .com, .net, and .org domain names a nameserver is authoritative for. Although this isn't scientific, it could be useful for a ball park figure on how many domains a web host is hosting. If tracked over time, it could be useful at monitoring the number of new clients that are being gained.

http://www.bitserve.com/cgi-bin/query.pl

I'm going to try to update it every wednesday with tuesday's data. I figured as long as I'm monitoring my competition, I'd let everyone else do it too. Although I'm removing our nameservers, because we seem to be the most popular search. And I obviously didn't create it so that our competition could monitor us. Damn them! :)

Walter

03-17-2002, 04:26 AM

Originally posted by bitserve
Although this isn't scientific, it could be useful for a ball park figure on how many domains a web host is hosting.

LOL. So for Dotster it states "ns1.dotster.com has 2095 records". So what does the number tell you? That dotster has only 2095 domains? No, only that this particular nameserver has 2095 domains.

Peeps

03-17-2002, 04:44 AM

Originally posted by bitserve
I highly suspect that this thread is going to turn into a flame war.

The only thing we have to go on in the online world is what others present to us. If they aren't going to be honest and they get caught out, people will find out one way or the other. Most of the time, like this time, it's through their own words. This is not an attempt to start a flame war. It's an attempt to point out that people should be wary of what they read.

I set up a query on our site where you can see how many .com, .net, and .org domain names a nameserver is authoritative for. Although this isn't scientific, it could be useful for a ball park figure on how many domains a web host is hosting. If tracked over time, it could be useful at monitoring the number of new clients that are being gained.

How? With most hosting companies using a variety of different nameservers, people who use third party DNS management services, or with hosting companies that do a lot of reseller work where resellers get their own nameservers, it's just like relying on what the companies themselves say. Better for the companies to present themselves in as honest a light as possible at all times and therefore have their words taken at face value rather than relying on something like this which is likely to be inaccurate in a lot of cases.

[removed URL]

I'm going to try to update it every wednesday with tuesday's data. I figured as long as I'm monitoring my competition, I'd let everyone else do it too. Although I'm removing our nameservers, because we seem to be the most popular search. And I obviously didn't create it so that our competition could monitor us. Damn them!

So, you're willing for anyone and everyone to use something like that hostspy thing that was removed from this forum for anyone's company but your own. How...noble of you. :rolleyes:

TedS

03-17-2002, 06:10 AM

If someone wants to lie about their success, they will, if they want to increase numbers to look powerful, they will. Although having the biggest site and making the most money is always fun, doing it is far more important. As far as I care, if you want to make up some numbers do so, be respectful and keep them statistically valid so you don’t ruin posts (ie if you had 3 signups, 1 fraud order, don’t say you had 20 signups and 1 fraud order).

For those people not lying, if you're getting lots of orders, awesome, if you want to get more orders, these forums sure seem to give good advice, I know I've learned alot. All in all, if the guy next to you is lying, that’s his bad, your going to sleep at night knowing what you make while he's sleeping wishing he made half that much. If you keep it up one day you'll merge or do a nice press release and all your success will be shown to the world while that other guy applies for a job at your new office :)

Thats my take on the matter.

Jedito

03-17-2002, 07:01 AM

Well, I must doing something wrong I guess, because this week was one of the slowest week in 5 month :P

allan

03-17-2002, 09:59 AM

Originally posted by Peeps
From 12/5/2001
And this, dear casual reader, is why you should always take any and all claims by web hosts with a grain of salt. I have no doubt that some of the hosts who are talking about one or two (or no) orders per day are telling it as it is. The others, though....I won't call them liars, no. But exaggeration or not being able to keep track of what they've said? Yes. I have a hard time believing that a really busy company could afford to have their people hanging around in this forum or on newsgroups all the time.

Please notice, dear casual reader, that Peeps was also doubtful of Tina's success in the previous thread. I won't call Peeps a flamebait troll, but i do encourage others to take what he says with a grain of salt.

As far as the data presented, it seems pretty consistent to me, in both threads she said said that she averages 10 new customers a day -- which is what is really important. As for the highest signups in a single day, since I doubt most hosts burn that information into their brain, I think it is easy to make a mistake with that number. Given the level of helpfulness and support Tina has provided users with over the years, I think a little leeway is more than in order.

Alan - Vox

03-17-2002, 10:56 AM

At the price tina sells her hosting at i wouldnt say 19 orders in a day was that amazing, all though it is good :) You need to look at how much each sign up is worth and not just how many sign ups a company gets.

EDIT: Sorry Tina, getting everyone muddled up here :)

AH-Tina

03-17-2002, 11:33 AM

By trying to prove that I lied - you've actually pretty much proved my truthfulness.

I said "close to 50 orders and alot of renewals"...while 38 is not 50...it is close when you throw in all the renewals and take into consideration that I didn't run off and do an exact count before I posted the first time. I did, however, have the exact number the last time I posted...because I had just got done looking at why the hell we got so many chargebacks from one day.

I also stated, in both (and probably alot more than that) posts that we get about 10 + new orders per day.

I have a five figure monthly income...every month it goes up by about $2000. I know I'm lucky and I also know that it could all be taken away (the nature of changing technology)...which is why I work 14 hours a day and have no life outside of my business. Yeah, its great...but alot of aspects of 10+ orders a day isn't so great.

I don't need to brag, but I did think this was a place where hosters could share, commisurate (sp?) and tell each other "congrats". Guess not.

--Tina

<EDIT ADDED LATER> My husband just pointed out to me that the 38 number was credit card orders only (that thread was about chargebacks). The 50 I quoted before included ALL orders on that day. The actual number may not have been exactly 50...but it was more than 38 actually. </EDIT>

Neo3Net

03-17-2002, 03:48 PM

Chicken Could You Lock this Thread before we bring out the UZI's and flamethrowers.

:uzi: :flamethr: :D

:rolleyes:

Peeps

03-17-2002, 05:41 PM

Please notice, dear casual reader, that Peeps was also doubtful of Tina's success in the previous thread. I won't call Peeps a flamebait troll, but i do encourage others to take what he says with a grain of salt.

I am not a troll. If I was, I would probably claim the same thing, but what is really important here is how hosts conduct themselves. Since the perception is that some hosts are so helpful and participate here quite extensively despite what must be incredibly busy schedules given their claims of how much business they're doing, I guess we'll have to let these lapses slide. How lucky that we're all graced with their presence. If I was a customer, I'd be pretty brassed that my host was spending all that time here or in the newsgroups.

By trying to prove that I lied - you've actually pretty much proved my truthfulness.

I didn't say you lied. I pointed out inconsistencies in what you've claimed. And by saying so, I proved that you can't keep track of your own story. That's not surprising, since it happens to everyone eventually. I would expect that someone who seems more interested in proving themselves so much more successful than anyone else would keep a closer eye on what they were saying.

I said "close to 50 orders and alot of renewals"...while 38 is not 50...it is close when you throw in all the renewals and take into consideration that I didn't run off and do an exact count before I posted the first time. I did, however, have the exact number the last time I posted...because I had just got done looking at why the hell we got so many chargebacks from one day.

Well, we'll just excuse you per uuallen's post. It's interesing that you came here specifically in early December and started an entire thread about how much business you were getting but that stellar day somehow slipped your memory. You were then able to name an exact alternate day (New Year's Eve) and an exact number (38). I find it odd. Other people do as well.

I don't need to brag,

You seem to make it a point in almost every business-related post you make. Why not let your business speak for itself?

but I did think this was a place where hosters could share, commisurate (sp?) and tell each other "congrats". Guess not.

And I did think this was a place where fairly accurate information could be found on a number of hosts instead of a pissing match between hosts trying to prove who's better/more successful/gets more business every day. Guess not.

I vote no on closing this thread. Why can't hosts be held accountable for the things they say in a public forum? The only reason Tina's posts are singled out in this context is because she has made the claims herself. It would be no different if Deb at FQ were to pop in telling us all how they had 500 signups in a single day and then two months later tell us all that their actual highest day was 150, several weeks after that original date. Since FQ lets their actions speak for themselves, though, it's unlikely we'd ever see something like that from them.

bitserve

03-17-2002, 05:50 PM

Originally posted by Walter

LOL. So for Dotster it states "ns1.dotster.com has 2095 records". So what does the number tell you? That dotster has only 2095 domains? No, only that this particular nameserver has 2095 domains.

Since when does dotster offer web hosting?

Anyway, you should have typed in their other nameservers:

NS1.DOTSTERINC.COM 156430
NS2.DOTSTERINC.COM 156389

AH-Tina

03-17-2002, 05:57 PM

This is crazy. I spend maybe 15 mins a day here and you're thinking that makes me a bad host? As for my "story" - you're talking alot of posts over a 3 month period and they all say *basically* the same thing.

Yeah, after working 12 - 14 hour days and no vacation or time off since last July, I don't always remember 100% of the details and time-line on every facet of every single thing that happens.

Uh oh, maybe that makes me human? :bawling:

--Tina

bitserve

03-17-2002, 06:00 PM

Originally posted by Peeps
How? With most hosting companies using a variety of different nameservers, people who use third party DNS management services, or with hosting companies that do a lot of reseller work where resellers get their own nameservers, it's just like relying on what the companies themselves say. Better for the companies to present themselves in as honest a light as possible at all times and therefore have their words taken at face value rather than relying on something like this which is likely to be inaccurate in a lot of cases.

That's the unscientific part. Duh.

Originally posted by Peeps
So, you're willing for anyone and everyone to use something like that hostspy thing that was removed from this forum for anyone's company but your own. How...noble of you.

Thank you. I will not do anything that will hurt the business that I own a part of. If you don't find the information useful, don't use it.

Peeps

03-17-2002, 06:08 PM

Big deal. All hosts work hard, including the two in my signature. I expect it, since I work long hours myself. You keep reading things into my posts that aren't there. I never said you were a bad host. I am saying that you should take care to insure that the things you do say are accurate and don't lend themselves to contradiction.

Let's use bitserve's script. I ran through all the nameservers I know from FQ and HM and they're in an acceptable range of the number of direct clients that both say they have (not including resellers) considering that there will be a fair number of people who manage their own DNS. The range is fairly large, since bitserve himself admits that it is unscientific, but it will do for now. HM is pretty decent sized, and FQ is bigger, for those interested. :)

I think I've tracked down your nameservers. How about we run them through bitserve's little script and then track them over a few days or a couple of weeks? What do you say?

AH-Tina

03-17-2002, 06:12 PM

Yes, feel free to do so. You would have to keep in mind that we host alot more that .com, .net and .org domains and aproximately 1/4 to 1/3 of all of our customers are resellers and plenty of those use their own nameservers.

That said, testing JUST our nameservers would still give a pretty good indication that what I say is accurate.

ns1 through ns14.affordablehost.com

Oh, and be sure to post the results here with an apology in 2 weeks.

--Tina

ScottD

03-17-2002, 06:15 PM

Umm, Peeps, nothing Tina ever said was contradictory. 38 is pretty close to 50, and she said "close to 50", not "exactly 50".

Further, why do you feel so threatened by her? She is successful and this is good as an example to follow not defame. Tina has helped tons of people time and again as I've bared witness. She has helped me in fairly significant ways, and she probably doesn't even know it!

Also, she qualified the 38 as only being credit card orders thereby possibly inflating the number to be even closer to 50 and you chose to ignore that.

As proof that you aren't reading the entire message and just basing conclusions on what you skim, you mention using bitserves script "a few days or a couple of weeks", even though bitserve made it clear that it was only updated once a week.

I think that says enough. I hate it when good people are treated with disrespect. Good luck to you.

Peeps

03-17-2002, 06:35 PM

I love the qualifications placed on things.

And I don't feel threatened in any way, shape, or form by Tina or anyone else here. In my business, being less than truthful or not providing accuracy in the things you claim can be very dangerous to business both in terms of the business itself and to the reputation of that business. In my business, it is also required that we read very closely what people say and note inconsistencies in what they say. You accept a post of "about 50" as being close to 38, three weeks apart, when something of that nature would probably be something that stuck with a host when they made a point of sharing that little tidbit with everyone. Good for you. That isn't acceptable for when someone seems so bizarrely concerned with making sure that everyone knows just how well their business is growing. If it is growing, great. I prefer hosts that are confident enough that they don't need constant reassurance that they're doing a good job. Self-esteem counts for a lot.

For your point about bitserve's script, grow up. In your haste to try to accuse me of not reading carefully, you seem to have lost track of time. A few days from now will be Wednesday. I have today's figures. Do you think a comparison cannot be made between now and the next update?

TedS

03-17-2002, 06:54 PM

I said this before and I say it again, if the person next to you is lying or if you think they are lying, so be it. However much you make is what you make and hopefully you can improve on that, make more and improve your company. If someone else is saying they had 20 orders instead of 15, maybe they made a mistake, maybe they lied, the point is it doesn't hurt your life so get over it, its not about what the guy next to you makes, its about what you make.

From what I've read Tina seems to be a dedicated professional with no real reason to lie. Maybe she only had 38 hours, maybe it was 50, maybe she made a mistake but either way that’s awesome, good job! Clearly the fact that she encouraged you to check her nameserver results shows that she’s not here to lie or pretend to be something she isn't. We can go on and on comparing numbers, trying to figure out what’s happening, insulting each other but what’s the point... to possibly prove that someone else overstated something while certainly proving that we can waste time?

ScottD

03-17-2002, 07:37 PM

Peeps, you clearly said that you would track the numbers over a few days, not that you would check them in a few days. You cannot change your intent simply because you failed to be more enlightening. Why you care so much that you have to track the numbers at all is frightening, but good luck. :D

Annette

03-20-2002, 05:50 AM

Some of us are very fortunate that business has been good and continues to get even better. Peaks here and there are to be expected. With things shaping up in the economy, some of those people who might have otherwise passed on setting up a site somewhere might be more willing to part with their dollars than before. This should help those people who are trying to get their business off the ground if they keep their heads about them and don't try to be all things to all people all at once. Of course, we get rashes of obviously fraudulent orders too. Those are deleted since we screen every order that comes in and we don't have to worry about getting something kicked back a little later. Other than that, it's the same as it's always been, except better, if you take my meaning.

Mike Feury

03-20-2002, 06:40 AM

Commenting as a newcomer here - it looks to me like both disputing parties could be right. They're just coming at it from different values and perspectives.

Peeps mentioned he [?] works in a sphere where accuracy is important. As such, he is likely to value attention to detail and find 'rough' numbers as indicative of being slipshod - or worse.

Tina seems to value the social aspect of her business highly. I often see this trait in females especially, and it tends to make them better general managers as a whole.

It is natural for a social personality to want to share her joys and successes, usually from a perspective of 'spreading a little sunshine' and maybe with a desire to uplift others in the sense of 'your day will come too'. But mainly, it's something she almost 'has' to do - being social.

Detailed accurate people tend to be more reserved in their behavior, so I can easily imagine how Peeps could find Tina's effusiveness distasteful. Just as I can imagine Tina's puzzlement "38 or 50? Who cares - let's celebrate!"

Ceasefire folks? Nobody's wrong here, because the measures of "right" are fundamentally incompatible. Or have I just let myself in for a crossfire? Peace :)

From one with an eye for detail, who gets 0 orders per day :D

allan

03-20-2002, 07:52 AM

Originally posted by disconet
Build a successful business or advertise your current business the right way.

So. how many threads did you post this drivel to? I hope the mods tar and feather (no offense to Chicken :D) your spamming self and run you out of here.

Omair Haroon

03-20-2002, 03:27 PM

I don't like Flame Wars so won't peek in. But would like to ask Mark of BitServe where can I get the script he is using at http://www.bitserve.com/cgi-bin/query.pl from?

It really got my interest!

Annette

03-20-2002, 06:00 PM

It's fairly similar to the hostspy script that used to be somewhere here on WHT. I popped over to look at it, and am surprised that at this moment our old primary nameserver is one of the top five in his query list - especially since we haven't used that on for eons (in Internet time). It's an interesting utility but not something I'd rely on alone as a gauge of size. This would probably explain a question I received that I thought rather strange at the time asking why we had 18 servers listed on our network status page when ns.hostmatters.com shows only 610 records. :)

AH-Tina

03-20-2002, 06:03 PM

I just checked it out for the first time.

I noticed that some of our nameservers are coming up "not in database". How do you go about getting them added?

--Tina

bitserve

03-21-2002, 05:11 AM

Wow, lots to reply to:

Mike,
Great post! That definitely makes sense. I think there was just a communication problem, and your post helps to point that out.

Omair,
Maybe you're the one that sent me a PM about the script. If so, I'm sorry that I didn't reply. The script itself is accessing a MySQL databse. I'd be happy to give you the script, but it has libraries that I've written, which are proprietary. I'd give it to you without the libraries, if you want. :)

The data, unfortunately, is also proprietary.

Annete,
I want to know how the hostspy script used to work. I'm sorry that I missed it when it was here. I noticed that hostmatters is one of the popular searches too. You must be getting a lot of new customers checking up on you. It's too bad that they're too lazy to research your nameservers.

Tina,
I'm not sure why all of your name servers wouldn't show in the database, unless they weren't in the zone files for the three letter TLDs. I can research it if you let me know the name servers.

The little 750Mhz machine that I have working on this in the background is still chugging away on the data from tuesday morning. Last week, it seemed to have taken less time to finish. I need a spare 1+Ghz machine with SCSI drives, lots of memory, and a huge Internet connection. Anyone want to donate one? :)

AH-Tina

03-21-2002, 07:32 AM

Originally posted by bitserve

Tina,
I'm not sure why all of your name servers wouldn't show in the database, unless they weren't in the zone files for the three letter TLDs. I can research it if you let me know the name servers.

ns1.affordablehost.com through ns14.affordablehost.com

ScottD

03-21-2002, 12:29 PM

The entire gTLD domains database which has the information you need to mine how many domains point to specific nameservers is available here:

> http://www.verisign-grs.com/tld/

The zone file contains all .com, .net, and .org's and their nameserver IP's.

Annette

03-21-2002, 02:28 PM

Mark, I believe WHT removed the hostspy script as it was returning sample URLs in addition to record counts. Some people had issues with that. Even though the information is readily available, it isn't likely that the average user is going to be able to determine some random URL that happens to use a particular set of nameservers without the use of a script. It's my understanding that point was the primary issue for most hosts, beyond the fact that many use multiple nameserver sets as we do. How that particular script itself functioned on the backend is something that no one has answered. Personally, we do get a lot of new business, but I don't think most care about using something like this to verify what we say when they ask about the number of clients or servers we have since there is no reason for them to expect us to respond with anything but accurate information or with a pointer to our status page. So, I wouldn't term them lazy at all. They simply don't find this piece of information as interesting as the other things about which they are concerned.

Tina, I ran a couple of random selections, and all are coming back in the database. I did notice that if you add a space at the end of the nameserver, you will receive the not in database error.