Can someone assist please, I suspect that I am having problems soley because I dont understand what is going on but I need confirmation of this: The mentions of the web hosting service on these boards seem to indicate that it is a relaible one so I must be doing something wrong?

My host (Siteamerica) went bellyup and I had to find a new service. I did some research and found Hostcabin. They seemed all sweetness and light until I signed up and then the problems started.

Initially my problems were that I download my old sites as they stood onto my computer in Front Page and then try to upload those sites onto the new server.

One site (vintagepen.com) uploads fine and works properly. The other (internationalawyer.org) uploads seemingly fine but only publishes as what looks like an FTP site. WHen I ask the host what is going on, he tells me that I have uploaded into the wrong directory. Which is all very well but I didnt upload into a directory, I just pressed PUBLISH TO WEB and then filled in the name of the site, the password and userID and watched it upload all the pages. One works and the other terminally doesnt?? The host then moved the pages into the correct directory for me but as soon as I changed anything, the site stopped working again and now looks like an FTP site again. (The host doesnt respond to my messages and seems clueless as to what I am doing wrong)

Secondly all of my e-mail keeps disappearing. Completely. For two weeks I log into my mail box, the host accepts my userID and password and returns the indication that it has checked my mail boxes and there is nothing there. People send me mail and it doesn't arrive. I send myself test messages through netzero and they don't arrive. Suddenly I do recieve a message (1, one) through that mail box but the host won't return my increasingly desperate messages on the general question of where the two weeks worth of apparently lost e-mail has gone. Now some mail boxes are working and some aren't. Some mail boxes may be going into and out of commission continuously.

Again, anyone got any idea what I am doing wrong? (The web hosting service has stopped responding to my e-mail queries as to what is going wrong and won't tell me where my e-mail has gone)

You have to delete the email boxes and recreate them...sometimes things like this can happen...the way I solved it is by deleting the email box and recreating it..
be sure to download the emails in the boxes before you delete them...

Oh I see, I didnt realise that there was a difference between letting Oulook check my e-mail and going to the actual mail boxes themselves, on the server, and downloading the messages?

well thatswhat outlook does already...
but the emails got to the server and outlook downloads them for you from the server...

So the host is holding on to them somewere and won't send them through to my mail box? (I went to the control panel and checked my mail through the server and there was none there)

well yes but since your mbox seems to be corrupted you need to recreate it...

I am sorry to address this question to you rather than to the tech support for the hosting service (they won't respond to questions about where they have lost my mail) but if I recreate my mail boxes, will all pre-recreation mail DEFINITELY now become lost? Some of it was extremely important.

Prior to creation of my account, when my mail was just being pointed towards their DNS numbers, they did seem to have some way of locating and forwarding my mail to me.

If the poistion is that the host has screwed up, does anyone know a way of getting a recalcitrant tech support department to respond to enquiries? Or is the position (as I saw with an ISP with whom I dealt a few years ago) that if the person wants to ignore you, he will. (I once actually saw a tech support person telling a guy to hold on while he worked on the problem and then go off and make a cup of coffee very slowly indeed)

Hostcabin seems to be doing this (over e-mail connections). Am I wrong?

Well can't say much to that, but if you plan to change your Host you may try our services. You can visit our site and if you have any questions regarding this we will help you as much as you can.

:)cheers,