View Poll Results: Is Lunarpages More About Good Marketing Than Good Service

Voters
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  • Yes

    2 66.67%
  • No

    1 33.33%
Results 1 to 16 of 16
  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    35

    Lunarpages, So Far

    This is a big company, that offers a lot of features for a relatively small price (with discounts readily available). They have a positive image. Customer service seems cheery. Unlimited storage and bandwidth is a definite plus. I signed up with them in November 2008, and mostly did not encounter problems with them until late July other than slow server access via my base from South America. Sign up and set up went relatively smooth. I had no major problems other than my page loading slowly, which I partly improved by making several adjustments to my Joomla site, but even after optimization the page still has its moments of slowness.

    In an earlier post in this forum, I detailed the first issues. There were two main problems: one, my articles pages were showing up blank in PhP5, and two, I was unable to enter my Joomla Administrator at times. On the first issue, it turned out partly due to PhP5 not performing properly, and later, a plugin that should have been de-activated. The second issue, am still not sure, and its happening again.

    One week ago, after just a few precious days of my site functioning normally, the bad luck poured on further still. I was hit this time by the NobodyCoder hacker. What an incredible coincidence of bad luck! Made me wonder, given the tone of some of my prior complaints, but then I did see that other Lunarpage customers were also hit on the same day as me, and some of them, on the same server.

    Two days after the hacker struck, and no response to my emails, I finally got someone from Lunar to give me some time after I complained publicly in their forum page. A customer service supervisor took the unprecedented step of calling me.

    First, though Lunarpages harps on its customers being at fault, through faulty scripts and such, I learned of some security measures that Lunarpages fails to inform its customers about that could conceivably help with such issues -- especially on shared servers -- such as the really helpful step of activating "suphp." When we were talking, the customer service rep was inside my Cpanel and I asked him if he would go ahead and make that change for me. He said he would do that, and that he was doing so while we talked. I was disappointed to see after the conversation that he had lied to me and had not make that change for me. Beyond this blatant display of dishonesty, I moreover pointed out to the customer service rep that I had read mod_security for Apache should be activated and configured -- he assured me that it was. I looked after our conversationm it in fact wasn't and that there was nothing about this to be found in their Knowledge base.

    Concerning the hacker who messed up my site, it appears that multiple sites have been hit, particularly on my server. The customer service rep rightly agreed with me that this hack is obviously not targeting sites individually but sending it out en masse via a robot or program. Given that, and that many sites on my server have been hit, it would appear the hacker has found a way to exploit sites on their server (s). However, the response from Lunarpages support people again has so far has been mainly to tell people to do virus scans of their computers and change passwords, all of which helpful but likely don't do much to tackle the real issue.

    The net result is that while the security issue appears to have been a broader, server wide security breakdown, the Lunarpages company has sidestepped any responsibility in the matter and done little to help customers get out of this mess. One wonders if it will happen again once my site goes back online (because of their slow server it took me about 3 days to upload the backup.) In general, though their customer service reps are generally polite, they react slowly to customer issues and often are completely ineffective.

    I am looking for a new web host.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Posts
    460
    While I don't want to defend Lunar pages as I recently saw there packages and didn't agree with them, you are using Joomla.

    What version of Joomla was you using?

    I have used Joomla in the past and it is imperative to keep fully upto date with all patches, it is very popular script, with a few holes and by hacking a single install he might have being able to get in and compromise other accounts.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Vancouver
    Posts
    973
    I would not consider "unlimited" as a plus, usually it's a red flag. Regardless sorry you had a poor experience with them, but thanks for sharing and good luck in finding a new host.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    35
    Websprite: my Joomla 1.5 is and has been up-to-date, with all the most recent patches.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    Texas
    Posts
    232
    From what i have notice lunarpages has had alot of server outage recently

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    35
    I just took a look at the Lunarpages forum thread on the NobodyCoder, and found this nugget about my server, Jalal, and the NobodyCoder hacker:

    " A site http://zone-h.org/archive/ip=216.97.226.235 that shows 236 defacements on Jalal server by nobody coder. From the looks of it many of these sites are still showing issues."

    Its followed by another poster, Russell, who writes: "I checked five other Lunarpages servers just now (naos, eternal, pallus, fomax, and scorpio) and there wasn't one single site that had been attacked by NobodyCoder on any of them."

    See the entire thread here: http://www.lunarforums.com/lunarpage...t53256.30.html

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    From what i have notice lunarpages has had alot of server outage recently
    How did you notice this exactly?

  8. #8
    I have tried both Lunarpages and their nemesis DreamHost and from their blogs and customer support DreamHost feels like a much more genuine company. At Lunarpages all the blog comments and reviews felt fake. As far as the service goes I found DreamHost's servers to be slightly faster and with slightly better uptime.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    As far as the service goes I found DreamHost's servers to be slightly faster and with slightly better uptime.
    Based on my personal experience so far, I can definitely agree on the uptime assessment (it looks like I started on the wrong foot with Lunarpages ), but not the server performance. When it's up, LP's server outperforms DH's quite significantly.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    Texas
    Posts
    232
    Quote Originally Posted by ldcdc View Post
    How did you notice this exactly?
    A friend of mine is a customer with them and he constantly has been having trouble. Also lunarpages website has been down alot and there support aswell. I hear it's from that nobodyhacker or however it is called.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Iowa
    Posts
    1,139
    Quote Originally Posted by HypedHosting View Post
    A friend of mine is a customer with them and he constantly has been having trouble. Also lunarpages website has been down alot and there support aswell. I hear it's from that nobodyhacker or however it is called.
    Perhaps is was just that server or customer. This is actually the first news I've heard that LunarPages is suffering from outages.

    I never had hosting with LunarPages but I feel they have a strong website with excellent marketing to back it with.
    We develop brand identity for the web.
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  12. #12
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    35
    Hello, update...perhaps I'm the fool, but because I purchased a 2-year plan and Lunar did not want to refund the rest, and because they made an effort to rectify some issues, and because I purchased the premium restore plan, I am still with Lunarpages.

    I briefly gave a serious look at moving to Rochenhost, because I have a Joomla website, and though they have a much higher quality service (and significantly faster server than Lunarpages), my site is a magazine and needs a lot of storage and Rochen, which is already a bit more expensive than others, does not provide the amount of space I need unless I am willing to pay a lot more.

    So, here I am still with Lunarpages, and today my site has been all day as their supervisors and others in the customer service take the day off and those who are presumably working don't know how to solve the issue caused by them, in which my site is getting a "404, can not find the requested URL on this server" because of someone not knowing how to correctly integrate my site with Google Apps and/or a restore I requested last night that was, typically enough, done wrong. An entire day lost and no hope in sight as Lunar takes a day off.

    Is it becoming more clear to the webhosting world how unreliable this company is?

  13. #13
    I used this company for a small forum for a while, I was moved from FreeForums.org (I was a greater n00b than I am now) as they used offer an "advanced hosting" package with them, for some reason they now use HostGator. Everything was great to start with fast servers the lot, everything you could ask for. Then they contacted me telling me I was using too many resources for a shared plan, when this cannot be true as I didn't come anywhere near to the "unlimited disk space and bandwidth" that they offer , after all it is unlimited right? No it is not... This is untrue, they try to force you to upgrade to a dedicated server, of course, I wasn't stupid enough to upgrade to a dedicated plan. The forum software was SMF I seeked a little help at the SMF forum and they told me that this is common practice amongst over selling hosts and they're trying to force me to upgrade to make more money from me. I moved hosting I highly wouldn't recommend them. I moved to JWNMedia.com, which is a small but good and loyal company, I regret leaving them, was the best hosting experience I ever had. I'd recommend you try it.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    ZombieLand
    Posts
    205
    every company is about marketing and making money

    For example diamonds are not rare ... it was all marketing which made them expensive.

    and hacking is not there fault ... it is yours for not keeping you site secure ... all you can do is ask them is to restore the site.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by ItsJustHosting View Post
    I would not consider "unlimited" as a plus, usually it's a red flag. Regardless sorry you had a poor experience with them, but thanks for sharing and good luck in finding a new host.
    Unlimited is almost always something to avoid like the plague.

    Quote Originally Posted by iloveunicorns View Post
    every company is about marketing and making money

    For example diamonds are not rare ... it was all marketing which made them expensive.

    and hacking is not there fault ... it is yours for not keeping you site secure ... all you can do is ask them is to restore the site.

    Especially when using Joomla to operate your site.

    I have had two sites that I run Joomla on, both were hacked during the first 6 months of operation, however, I had not kept them completely up to date.

    Since the hacks, I have made sure to update them as often as possible (once a week or more if need be), and I have not had a single hacking instance in two years.

    Kindest regards,
    Pete

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
    Posts
    21,920
    Unlimited is almost always something to avoid like the plague.
    When is is not? When it's unlimited email accounts or domains?

    From a moral POV unlimited is always unlimited. There's no difference between unlimited this and that.

    Surprising as it may come, unlimited hosts do not have to be bad, unreliable and slow. Some hosts are better at it than others, same as limited hosts. It is very much a matter of management and choice. Either the management (business and server) is incompetent, or they willingly chose to cram the servers and not stop heavy users in their tracks.

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