As i said in the lie/truth thread i'm making a poll.

The main question: are we willing in organizing ourselves in some sort of union/association worldwide to keep the good name of our businesses ?

If there will be a positive answer i'll ask for volunteers to set it up.

Also it will be great if we can designate a council among wht users (not myself cause i'm a newbie) to make rules.

Any opinion welcome ! ;)

Let me be more specific:

1. we can promote our objectives and even protest against institutions and companies
2. we can protect us and our customers by creating lists of bad clients/providers
3. WHT is a THE PLACE for our opinions but from here we cannot send a global message or opinion

Also if the WHT group wants they can do it right here ! :)

All we really need is a well promoted and publicised list of good hosts / bad hosts, including reasons and reviews, to encourage everyone to improve their standards so they get a better review.

I like the idea in theory, but I'm not sure if I'd like to be involved. Too much responsibility for my liking. I don't mind helping out, but I can't go round telling other hosting companies that they're not pulling their weight re. the industry as a whole. Which seems to be what this thread is aiming at.

I've just re-read decibel's comments, and this time I have understood them in a very different way. This time decibel appears to be thinking of a joint advertising/marketing/public relations effort of some kind. Decibel, what exactly are you getting at? I'm sure you know, but I've just understood your same comments in a different way for every time I've read them, and I've confused myself.

there was a thread about this in september(started through bad experiences with *****).

The problem is who decides who is a good host or not, would it not be viewed as biased if most of the goos hosts are also members(you aren't going to join if you know you are lacking in reliability and support, oh and quality)

Any legitimate body or organisation starts at the basics if it is to have credibility whatsoever in what it hopes to achieve. If the emphasis is on providing the end result which is to make it safer for the "customer" to find decent hosting amonst all the trash on the net, then you have to examine what are the components that define that. Sure, there have been duscussions on this sort of topic which looked mainly at the advertising aspect of what is involved in defining a fair playing field in defining a decent host.

Would think though that there are many other important issues, apart from the aspect of unlimited bandwidth that would be essential to a well structured policy on providing a fair structure for the benefit of the consumer.

Its not really a bad ideal but...

1. There is a possibility it could (As mentioned above) be biased.
2. If the client/consumer were the ones to give the review it may not be fairly done, and may not even be the host that is at fault. (I do know that if you do things right the good reviews will out weigh the bad).
3. Some money hungry jackal will turn it into a money making scheme rather then actually helping people...

4. I will shut up now :stickout

This time I'll try to be even more clear.

1. the initiative will came from all reading and posting here and mostly from resellers (because we are in a position in that WE CAN state which provider is good and which one is bad).
2. the board will be elected by persons with activities on WHT
3. also, i have nothing to win. i'm a reseller from Romania so i think i'm not after any part of your clients (YET ;) )
4. we'll make a set of rules and conditions to be met by all interested in this
5. using polls and forums we can clearly promote and offer our colleagues ways to choose the best solutions to their needs

Thank you for your time.

PS . My name is decebal not decibel
:D

What you are proposing isnt what the previous threads were aiming at, but more so a trade org, segmented at that.

How about putting together a joint site to help customers compare and contrast hosts properly and choose the right one.

Advise on the pitfalls to avoid, such as hosts offering unlimited space and bandwidth only to cancel your account when it exceeds a certain quota, etc.

Originally posted by HostFox
How about putting together a joint site to help customers compare and contrast hosts properly and choose the right one.

Advise on the pitfalls to avoid, such as hosts offering unlimited space and bandwidth only to cancel your account when it exceeds a certain quota, etc.

I agree with you and i'm willing to set this up with WHM and users support.

I'm waiting for a while to see the general opinion and then i'll start a new thread with details.

Thanks, ;)

Well, I tried to stay out of this but I feel I need to say my peace about why this will not worked.

First off, anyone who knows WHG (Web Host Guild, i think that’s their name anyhow) will know why I speak this way.

They are a small organization who charges membership fee's, have ridiculous requirements to become a member, extremely biased and are not regarded whatsoever as making a host good. Of course they are also now non-existent and defunct.


There are several things which makes your idea one that would be extremely hard to work.

#1, to be fair and honest anyone who works there, handles reviews etc should not be connected currently to running or working for any form or shape of hosting, review site, forum etc. That means that the only viable people would be customers, not resellers, current webhost owners, tech employee's etc. Or else you will have some form of bias based on loyalty to the company they own/work for and/or who sponsors their forums etc.

#2, that being said, you need money to successfully run something like this. What does that mean? That means annual membership fee's, NOT donations. Having donations allows for companies like ***** (example) to hand you a few hundred thousand and a wink and a nod and wham they become #1 on the list, but without some form of cash flow you are doomed to fail, both on supporting the website and the staff required to properly evaluate its webhosting members. Sure, you could do it on a part-time for free basis with a couple friends, but your not going to get very far unless you are 200% dedicated to the idea.

#3, You need a charter agreement drawn up by a lawyer to lay out terms of membership, as well as how they will be monitored, what it takes to get them removed, as well as lay out the set standards that it takes to become a member. You could base it on customer reviews but if you do that you must also base the customer reviews on a % based on how many customers they have. Since rackshack is large and active here I will use them as an example.

Lets say Compare RackShack and Company A

Rackshack has 4000 dedicated customers
Company A has 400

RackShack has 400 positive comments and 40 negative

Company A has 40 positive comments and 4 negative.

Well, which company would you let in?

I'd say both, for the fact that each company has a varying level of customers, but yet their negative feedback rating is both only 1%, HOWEVER, you must also compensate for the fact that more people will post bad comments than the people will post good, which means you must rely on the companies to provide you with a rough list of how many customers of each type (virtual, reseller, dedicated, co-loc) that they have so customer reviews can be based in each category.

But I’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg with the amount of problems you'd face , and to surmount those problems would require a lot of dedication from a few people. If any other effort is undergone that is half-ass done, then its not worth it and no more than a waste of everyone’s time.

Sorry ! Correction :
it's WHT and it's all about us and our presence here.

I'm thinking for the start for a reseller joint since i've launched the poll here.

Excellent points against the ideea in generally ;) but i have a principle: don't give up. I'm a Romanian and i brought up this ideea to see what all of you say.

This means that if there is a positive wave then i'll try with some of us to bring it to life. If not ... i'll survive :bawling:.

Also THERE WILL BE NO DONATION FROM MY POINT OF VIEW. The judges will be decided on the wide opinion basis. I hope, if ... , that all competing companies (VO, MC, SH ....)

Also the rules will be constructed on the same principle.

Let's wait for a while to see how interesting is gonna be then we can really go for it.

I think it would be better not to mention any hosts by name. Just give general advice to customers. Let them decide which hosts are best, or at least give them enough knowledge to be able to spot a dodgy host. Customers like hearing things like 'unlimited', but they need to be warned in advance of the downside of these claims. Similarly with ridiculously cheap hosting, which means that something else is lacking and/or the host is overselling. Customers need to be told of the important of things like redundancy, and to have these terms explained to them. They need to have the differences between managed hosting, dedicated hosting and shared hosting explained to them, and be given an idea of the 'going rate' for these services, so that they don't pay too much, or pay too little (thinking they're getting a good deal, and then finding out that the host is saving costs by having poor connectivity or customer service.

Listing good hosts and bad hosts doesn't help. Educating customers does.

DanielP has illustrated some extremely good points, and I am sure that your intentions are sound, decebal.

If you want to have reviews and so on, then realistically it would become like the majority of sites out there that have slanted ratings or views on different hosts that are on their lists. This will happen no matter how straight the line on unbiased reviewing, you may try to uphold.

In any industry, a code of conduct that doesnt list reviews or show any favouritism towards any single entity does more for the customer than any review orientated organisation will. The sole reasoning of it's purpose tells the customer that the host in particular follows the commonly accepted codes, and laws relevant to their jusisdiction and nothing more.

If the customer wants to do some digging, then they can be directed to places like this, usenet, so on where they can judge for themself what is good or bad. Either way, it's much work, organisation, and time required to implement such a concept.

HostFox, I will disagree with you there, you just asked someone to create an orginization that judges based on what might be an un-true standard. Who decides which companies business plan is sound and which is not, it may very well be possible for a company to charge extremly low prices and do just fine and have redundancy etc, but yet the company who charges a ton of money have horrible support. That right there alone, by trying to decide for the customer or by trying to set a standard does more harm than good and is biased towards only a certain sector of hosting.

I have already clealy stated that I do not agree with trying to make the customers decisions for them, but that I think there is a need to provide education. Too many customers do not understand the potential problems. Of course some hosts can charge lower prices and still have a good service, but at the same time customers should be warned that many hosts offering low prices have poor network and internet redundancy and connectivity, and poor customer service. I'm talking about providing a guide to choosing the right host.

Hostfox, lets take an example here.

Lets just say that we have a potential customer visiting the site due to recommendation so their going to trust the site judgment.

Lets just say the site goes on about "educating" them about potential problems of a cheap host, lets just say they offer 400meg space and 10gig bandwidth for 4.95 a month, pretty cheap right, well, lets just say that company uses rackshack for arguments sake which is fair in the connectivity range and pretty cheap on servers but they seem to be decently reliable. Well there may be nothing at all wrong with them, but will the customer actually investigate that far, or will the customer say "well that site said be wary about cheap hosts because they might not be able to fully support the company as it grows, or they might not have proper connectivity, or they might be overloading the servers". Thus, in effect, YOU made the decision for that customer on part of the market.

The site becomes extremely biased if you try to educate the customer on as you say

customers should be warned that many hosts offering low prices have poor network and internet redundancy and connectivity, and poor customer service

Which may be a lie in regards to some companies. You cannot educate them based on price, you can only educate them based on set questions, and key things to look at, and ways to test customer support responses etc. Like I said earlier, this task cannot be undertaken if its going to be half-ass done, and it really will not work well, about the only thing it would be by your suggestions is a biased way to redirect customers from particular market segments (i.e. the low end) and maybe pass a little education to them along the way. If you truly want it to be an educational website, then you cannot even mention price at all, much less specific names of webhosting companies.

Price is not the only consideration as you well know. It was an example that I gave.

I am still very much interested in the idea of an advisory site for potential hosting customers informing them of the sorts of things they should be thinking about, and the sorts of questions they should be asking any hosts that they are considering.

Such as, but not limited to:

Price - Is the host openly declaring their pricing plan?
Network Redundancy and Connectivity
Internet Redundancy and Connectivity
Ability to upgrade/downgrade account quotas (bandwidth, disk space, etc) easily as required.
Availability of things like SSL certificates, shopping carts, databases, etc if these things are likely to be required at the time, or possibly in the future.
Customer Support - Average response times? Technical knowledge of staff?
Support for CGI, PHP, Perl, etc?
E-mail access - POP3, web based e-mail, or both?
File access - FTP, web based file manager, or both?
Hosting type - Managed, Co-located, Dedicated, Shared?
Hosting - Off a server in someone's garage? Off a server in a hi-tech data centre?

Many hosts simply do not answer these questions unless they are asked, and many customers do not know that they should ask these questions.

If you take a look at http://hostfox.net/hosting.html you will see that I have done my best to clearly state my pricing plans, technical information, etc so that customers can make informed comparisons with other hosts, but looking at some sites I have seen that not everyone does this. Would the average customer even notice? Quite frankly, NO. They are not stupid, but there are things about hosting that we take for granted that they simply do not know. How many of your customers know what redundancy means? To many customers, terms like 'high redundancy' sound bad, because of the negative connotations of the word redundant. These terms should be explained to them.

What is being emphasised is essentially an information portal, giving consumers a definition of what different hosts may use on their site's in regard to hosting information, and advertising, right ?

If that is so, then it realistically cannot be a movement/organisation/body as such due to its reflection on issues that DanielP has raised wich have merit in different areas. How would this information be disseminated and conclusions reached that was fair and undisputable?

Putting up a poll or posting a thread on this board as such wouldnt get a consensus, and even represent a true overall representation of the different areas of this industry, as WHT isnt the "be all, end all" of hosting but a drop in the ocean. Not only do B2C customers seek hosting on this board, B2B also would use this as a reference point with different requirements from the B2C environment. If a standardised outlook is being set, then how can this be reflected to demographically cover each segment effectively and realistically?

If those who want to pursue this further do so, then take this into account before trying to instigate a means to confusing the consumer even more.