Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : FreeHostingWeb problems

[judith]

I have four sites hosted by FreeHostingWeb.com, and up until recently I was happy with the service. Over the last few weeks, though, there have been several considerable downtimes and my help desk tickets have gone unanswered. This last weekend my personal site was offline the whole time, and today when I try to go there I get a message that my "new site is ready" for uploading of files. I uploaded all of the files months ago and now I have no idea where they are and why this is happening. I get no response from the help desk, as usual. Does anyone out there know what is happening?

I notice that the company is "under new ownership", which I suspect is part or all of the problem, but I have not received any communication from them about this.

[ANMMark]

Hi Judith,

We I have to say that by choosing a host with no monthly fees, you kind of stuck yourself with ver low levels of service, technical support, and uptime.

It appears as though they had a complete loss of data, and your site is gone. Of course, I could be wrong, but if all of your files are gone.....thise seems to be the situation.

[Kevc978]

Checking out the site gives a lot of info,

They have a phone number listed, have you tried giving them a call?

They mention at the bottom that they have just had a new support centre installed, either its not up and running yet (they should still be able to reply to your tickets though) or they are having problems. I would recommend trying to give them a call.

One thing that concerns me, as it does with most hosts that only charge a one-time setup fee for a lifetime account is that usually, later on, they notice they cant keep it up. This isnt the case for all of them, but definetely most of them.

They still have bills to pay, and if their current customers dont need to pay, the only thing they can use is setup fees from new signups.

[judith]

Thanks. I notice the phone number is for sales only. I realize my mistake now. Like another poster here, I went to cnet and relied on a positive review from them. Perhaps the service was better when those tests were done.

I am hunting for a new host, will gradually move all four of my sites if I can find something reasonable.

[ANMMark]

Judith,

You also need to realize that those cnet reviews can be posted by the host themselves as well.

There was a huge issue over this in cnet's downloads.com. Software vendors rate their own software very high, and doop people into downloading or buying the software.

[Archbob]

Go for a paid host. If you go for a free host then you get what you pay for, which in a free host's case is nothing.

[Informity]

I would move hosts ASAP.

They charge $30 per gb overage(they provide you with 1gb) and their service seems pathetic.

For as little as $5 or $6 per month you can get some good hosting for a small site or 2, with good support and no rediculous overage charges.

[ANMMark]

I certainly agree with phision

[ATST]

Why don't you know where the files you uploaded are? Did you FTP in and look for them?
Like that page says:
Your new site is online.
Please upload your files to your public_html folder for viewing via the internet.
Your secure server can be accesses using: https://saturndns.com/~username/

What that means is you should FTP in and open the public_html folder. Inside you may see a index.htm file. That is probably their "Site Online" Page. What you need to do is upload a index.htm page to overwrite theirs, or if you upload a index.html, or other index file, you must delete their index.htm page to make yours appear.
This is called "File Hierarchy" which is the order in which apache looks for index pages to display. index.htm is usually first, then index.html and so on. If there is a index.htm and a index.html page, the index.htm will be displayed. If there is only one index page in there it will be the one that is displayed regardless of the extension.
I hope this helps.

[ANMMark]

ATST,

She stated that she had already uploaded her files a few months ago.

[ATST]

I know she uploaded them, but did she upload a index.html file in the public_html folder and did she delete their index file? This is a very common mistake. I see it all the time. I've even had people from other hosts write our support asking this.

Gee, I knew the host looked kind of "you know" but I was trying to help figuring she already paid or something. While I was typing you all were replying. Now it looks like I am on the hosts side. Which I'm not. I don't approve of deceptive practices.
Hey, if you think they suck, then by all means look for a better one I just thought you might want some help using the space while your looking.

[ANMMark]

heh good point.

[judith]

My site was online and working fine for months. It was only this last weekend that it disappeared.

I went to look, through my ftp software, and saw all the files were still there on the remote server, including the index.html file. It seems like the site has been moved to another server but I have no idea how to get there. I went to the site listed and got a blank page. Nada. How helpful is that?

[judith]

idoogleceo, I did not know that cnet reviews are sometimes written by the companies themselves. The one I read was a comparison of four budget web hosts, so it did not seem to be that situation. I am only guessing that things have changed since they did the evaluation.

[sprintserve]

Hi Judith.

If your files are still on the remote server, then this can be an issue of misconfiguration. If there's downtime, my guess is that the web server you are on may have some major issues that requires them to reinstall the server software, or they may have lost some configuration files in that crash/downtime (just speculating without basis). So what happens is that all your files remain untouched. But perhaps the httpd.conf is reverted back to the default file, thus your domain don't point to your files virtual directory correctly.

That said, the fact that you cannot get support is indeed a cause for concern.

My recourse will be in this order: Call, Email or Help Tickets, a second try, and perhaps looking for a new host.

I hope this is of help.