satoriweb
06-01-2008, 02:41 AM
Just by way of introduction, since I'm a noob to this forum (noob poster, longtime lurker), :D I've been doing web design since 1996, and mainly provide hosting to my design and marketing clients, with the occasional hosting-only site thrown in. I like doing the reseller hosting because it lets me have a fair amount of control over the client sites, enabling me to address problems as quickly as possible, while not expecting me to be able to address all aspects of server configuration and such. I'm not an expert anything, but I'm a pretty decent 'jack of all trades', and with a dozen years of various types of computer support in my history before getting into design, I like to think I can at least get a pretty good handle on issues with my sites. I try to do as much research on my end as possible before going to support.
Sometimes, though the support isn't really good when I do need them. I'm sorry to say that after 2 years as a Successfulhosting.com reseller (my other reseller accounts are with vortechhosting.com and hostgator.com), I feel forced to move my customers away from Successful. Their once excellent support seems to have sprung a leak.
Since getting my SuccessfulHosting account 2 years ago, and up until November '07 (right after the big server farm move/change), I had been extremely happy with their hosting, and especially with their support. Since then, its almost like my hosting account has entered the twilight zone.
I run a number of sites, a mixed bag of HTML, PHP, shopping carts, and about a dozen Joomla sites. Since November, my Joomla sites on Successful will inexplicably and randomly crash. Nearly every time it turns out to be php register_globals being turned 'on'. Each of my Joomla sites has a local php.ini file (and as required by Successful, an accompanying php.fcgi file with a reference in the htaccess) which sets register_globals to 'off'. For some reason, and no one in support has been able to tell me why, this will randomly override my local setting, and turn on. It happened just yesterday, in fact. It took 6 hours for them to turn it back.
And if that isn't strange enough, suddenly my customers and my own sites on Successful are prime hacking targets (never were before). Here's the thing: In 12 years of doing this stuff, up until last year, I'd only had one hack attempt. Lucky? Maybe. After November of last year, and *only* on my sites with Successful, I got a half *dozen* hacks on various sites, from gotmead.com, my high traffic joomla-simplemachines (switching to vbulletin) hobby site, down to a little 10-page HTML customer site.
I've spoken to Successful's support team via various tickets on this, and they assure me that there is no way that it could possibly have anything to do with their servers, that their security is complete, and obviously since I'm running Joomla, I'm vulnerable and should *expect* to get hacked. I explained to them that this problem was also occurring with non-Joomla HTML only sites, and not happening at *all* on my other 2 hosting accounts, which also have a number of Joomla sites. They insist that the fault lies with me, regardless.
I'm not looking for anything more than a willingness on their part to explore this issue, and see if we can find where this mess is coming from so we can lock it down. My reasoning is that if this was all me, then my other sites would also get hacked (using their oft-repeated 'Joomla is bad' mantra). Gotmead.com, a large popular site, and therefore what some might consider to be a hack target, never had a single problem until moving to Successful last May, and then not until *after* this server move they did in November (some may remember that they had *days* of downtime).
Then, since November, Gotmead has been hacked 4 times. In 12 years since I created this site, it's been hacked *once*. Now, 4 times in less than half a year, and also several other sites, on the same host, and in the same time period. Non of my other sites on my other hosts have had a *single* hacking-related issue. This is way too coincidental for me. I really suspect some sort of server security issue, but they refuse to consider that it could happen, and just keep insisting that their security is complete and unbreakable, and that the entire problem is of my making.
All these affected sites have, of course, separate id's and strong passwords, including letters, numbers, symbols and caps.
Finally, there have been a number of unexplained outages, again only since this move/change in November.
All of this adds up to weirdness. I've tried and tried to ask them to help me troubleshoot this, and what I get is 'our servers are secure, it must be you' and for the register_globals, they just reset it (often leaving the site down for hours before they do) and won't say what happened so we can avoid it in future.
Anyway, I'm not looking for refunds, or to trash Successful. I'm sure they've got plenty of happy customers. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them just now. In a perfect world, they'd see this and say they're willing to explore a solution to the hacking and register_global issues. However, I really don't expect that, as my repeated pleas to them have gone unsatisfied. So, this is just another reseller posting my experience with this company for future reference, if someone finds it helpful.
I'm currently in the process of researching (which is how I came to be here posting) a new reseller host. I've seen several here that are possibles, but here is my main requirement: a 'nix host with a good support staff that will work with me to resolve issues that I cannot resolve myself (about 20% of my problems, the rest I fix on my own), reliable servers, and a company that stands behind its services. I'm really, *really* tired of getting the Microsoft 'not our problem' line of support.
One that I'm considering is Ubiquity. Any feedback on their reseller programs and associated support? I searched and only found info on their dedicated and VPS stuff, so any input would be gratefully accepted.
Sometimes, though the support isn't really good when I do need them. I'm sorry to say that after 2 years as a Successfulhosting.com reseller (my other reseller accounts are with vortechhosting.com and hostgator.com), I feel forced to move my customers away from Successful. Their once excellent support seems to have sprung a leak.
Since getting my SuccessfulHosting account 2 years ago, and up until November '07 (right after the big server farm move/change), I had been extremely happy with their hosting, and especially with their support. Since then, its almost like my hosting account has entered the twilight zone.
I run a number of sites, a mixed bag of HTML, PHP, shopping carts, and about a dozen Joomla sites. Since November, my Joomla sites on Successful will inexplicably and randomly crash. Nearly every time it turns out to be php register_globals being turned 'on'. Each of my Joomla sites has a local php.ini file (and as required by Successful, an accompanying php.fcgi file with a reference in the htaccess) which sets register_globals to 'off'. For some reason, and no one in support has been able to tell me why, this will randomly override my local setting, and turn on. It happened just yesterday, in fact. It took 6 hours for them to turn it back.
And if that isn't strange enough, suddenly my customers and my own sites on Successful are prime hacking targets (never were before). Here's the thing: In 12 years of doing this stuff, up until last year, I'd only had one hack attempt. Lucky? Maybe. After November of last year, and *only* on my sites with Successful, I got a half *dozen* hacks on various sites, from gotmead.com, my high traffic joomla-simplemachines (switching to vbulletin) hobby site, down to a little 10-page HTML customer site.
I've spoken to Successful's support team via various tickets on this, and they assure me that there is no way that it could possibly have anything to do with their servers, that their security is complete, and obviously since I'm running Joomla, I'm vulnerable and should *expect* to get hacked. I explained to them that this problem was also occurring with non-Joomla HTML only sites, and not happening at *all* on my other 2 hosting accounts, which also have a number of Joomla sites. They insist that the fault lies with me, regardless.
I'm not looking for anything more than a willingness on their part to explore this issue, and see if we can find where this mess is coming from so we can lock it down. My reasoning is that if this was all me, then my other sites would also get hacked (using their oft-repeated 'Joomla is bad' mantra). Gotmead.com, a large popular site, and therefore what some might consider to be a hack target, never had a single problem until moving to Successful last May, and then not until *after* this server move they did in November (some may remember that they had *days* of downtime).
Then, since November, Gotmead has been hacked 4 times. In 12 years since I created this site, it's been hacked *once*. Now, 4 times in less than half a year, and also several other sites, on the same host, and in the same time period. Non of my other sites on my other hosts have had a *single* hacking-related issue. This is way too coincidental for me. I really suspect some sort of server security issue, but they refuse to consider that it could happen, and just keep insisting that their security is complete and unbreakable, and that the entire problem is of my making.
All these affected sites have, of course, separate id's and strong passwords, including letters, numbers, symbols and caps.
Finally, there have been a number of unexplained outages, again only since this move/change in November.
All of this adds up to weirdness. I've tried and tried to ask them to help me troubleshoot this, and what I get is 'our servers are secure, it must be you' and for the register_globals, they just reset it (often leaving the site down for hours before they do) and won't say what happened so we can avoid it in future.
Anyway, I'm not looking for refunds, or to trash Successful. I'm sure they've got plenty of happy customers. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them just now. In a perfect world, they'd see this and say they're willing to explore a solution to the hacking and register_global issues. However, I really don't expect that, as my repeated pleas to them have gone unsatisfied. So, this is just another reseller posting my experience with this company for future reference, if someone finds it helpful.
I'm currently in the process of researching (which is how I came to be here posting) a new reseller host. I've seen several here that are possibles, but here is my main requirement: a 'nix host with a good support staff that will work with me to resolve issues that I cannot resolve myself (about 20% of my problems, the rest I fix on my own), reliable servers, and a company that stands behind its services. I'm really, *really* tired of getting the Microsoft 'not our problem' line of support.
One that I'm considering is Ubiquity. Any feedback on their reseller programs and associated support? I searched and only found info on their dedicated and VPS stuff, so any input would be gratefully accepted.