hosting issues

asimegusta · #1 (**permalink**) 11-08-2007, 07:19 PM

I just had a strange experience with a hosting company. I purchased a "Pro Hosting" account for a new website with a company I knew from a couple years ago. Before signing up, I read all the specs, seemed the same as before.
However, when I got the the links to my new account, it turned out to be just a subdomain of the hosting's domain. The link went www. xxxxxhosting.com/cpanel/myusername.
I was so surprised not to see my new domain url, I didn't believe it at first. I checked to see that my websites url would be username.xxxhosting.com.

I went back and checked the webhosting plan. It read just like all the plans out there.

It seems there are webhosting companies selling you hosting plans and then giving you just a subdomain, no domain url at all.

I immediately asked for a refund of course. Now I'm looking for hosting serivces and wondering if this is a common happening.

Anybody else had such an experience? Any comments?

hpham · #2 (**permalink**) 11-09-2007, 04:52 AM

No, it's not common. I believe there is something wrong in their configuration
For new hosting account, what're your requirements?

tamecrow · #3 (**permalink**) 11-09-2007, 05:15 AM

This isn't something I've heard of before but it certainly sounds pretty dodgy.

Was your refund request successful?

asimegusta · #4 (**permalink**) 11-10-2007, 06:26 PM

I have had an email from the company accepting to cancel and make a refund. They stated that I should see the refund on my credit card within 30 days. I'll be watching.

Since posting ere, I did some researching on the internet about this old new hosting. Come to find out that they were fine until about 6 months ago when customers began seeing massive downtime, poor communication, and service remains sketchy still. Since I haven't completed the refund, I will not say more.

I don't need anything special, it's a simple business site for information and contact, no cart or forum. I have now contracted services with steadfast hosting. Looking good.

Thanks for your comments

tamecrow · #5 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 10:02 AM

Good luck - let us know how the refund goes!

bj · #6 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 05:34 PM

In my experience, hosting and registry are two separate issues. Some hosts offer a "free" registration if you sign up for hosting, but I've not used them. I prefer to deal with an ICANN accredited registrar for domain name registry rather than a reseller, which this person probably is.

In future I suggest you keep the two issues separate and use an ICANN or other accredited registrar for your domain name.

suzstephens · #7 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 05:40 PM

As BJ wrote, hosting and domain registration are usually two separate processes. I use Pair.com for hosting. If you sign up for an account with Pair, you automatically are assigned a Pair subdomain. Most, if not all, of Pair's accounts allow the use of a domain name, but you don't automatically get a domain name just by having an account with them. I register my domains through Pair's sister company, Pairnic.com, then point the domains at my Pair accounts.

I have some circumstances where I actually need bare bones, no frills accounts to host files that can't be uploaded to my real estate clients' sites, so I have them subscribe to Pair's cheapest account and use that account, without a domain, for file uploads.

Compu Solver · #8 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 06:24 PM

I've been in the Web Biz since way back when everything was BBS's (remember those?).

I have seen many horror stories where new clients did not own their domain names like they thought they did. In some cases, I was able to browbeat the hosting company into turning the name over and in some I was not able to do so.

ALWAYS have clients register their own domain name. To do anything else is just plain not legit, even if you are only trying to help the client. What if something happens to you? Where does that leave your client?

As for hosting companies "going south", that is just the way it goes. Hosting is business that burns people out. I was continually having to move my clients, year after year until I came across a really great company that sells reseller accounts - dixiesys.com aka 8-95.com These are good people and I've been with them for five years now. I handle the customer support for my clients and they handle all the hardware and system issues. These are Unix servers with complete PHP / MySQL support. Since I am a PHP developer, supporting my hosting clients (with my Business Class Web Hosting for Small Businesses domain) is a snap and sometimes leads to new dev work.

If you need to host a half-dozen clients or more, contact dixiesys.com. If you just need hosting and support where you even get a real, honest-to-goodness working cell phone number, then host with SmBizHosting.com

By the way, other than being a happy customer, I have no affilliation with Dixie Internet Systems

Bill in AZ · #9 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 06:25 PM

I have seen this sort of thing with hosts but only when the customer did not provide a domain name to use with the account. My host uses this sort of subdomain for customers who want to fully populate and test a website without associating a domain name with it. When the customer is ready to associate an existing or new domain name with the account, then it is just a matter of waiting for the domain to propagate.

RegDCP · #10 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 06:58 PM

The host was probably a reseller using cPanel.

CPanel puts reseller's domains in as a sub-directory then redirects visitors to see the site as a unique URL without the host's domain.

Reg

nottheusual1 · #11 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 07:40 PM

Reg is right - it would only take a DNS entry to make everything work - you just needed to provide them with the Website's registered name and have the registrar point to the appropriate DNS server.

Reseller's "my bad" for not realizing what you were asking about.....

But, don't judge all CPanel hosts by that experience. We use it on all 6 of our servers and it is robust and reliable, even on older PIII boxes.

You just need to move a bit up the food chain - find the guys that own the servers.

craigmn3 · #12 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 08:45 PM

Did you register a Domain name at the same time as you signed up for hosting?
Some companies will assign you a temporary url in their own domain until your account is set up.

infinity22 · #13 (**permalink**) 11-13-2007, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by craigmn3

Did you register a Domain name at the same time as you signed up for hosting?
Some companies will assign you a temporary url in their own domain until your account is set up.

craig is right.
i have register many domains and use several cpanel hosting and now i own a reseller account so i can confirm you that you will need to update your dns setting to link your domain to the hosting account and before your dns setting make effective, hosting company will give you a subdomain for you to upload your site to do what you want to do first.

khurramali · #14 (**permalink**) 11-13-2007, 08:51 AM

Yeah, The Domain name and hosting are two separate product / service that you need to buy.

some hosting company sell them as a one unit / package for new businesses.

are you sure you have a domain name included in the price of the package as well.

sanver · #15 (**permalink**) 11-13-2007, 11:49 PM

We provide H-Sphere hosting where all hosting accounts are given a "server URL" which is nothing but a sub-domain of our hosting site domain name. This server URL runs all the time. If you point the nameserver of the hosted domain to our nameservers, the domain name gets active and resolves at server URL but with the right domain name.

there is nothing corny in this practice. This is a very useful feature which many hosting companies are not able to provide.

This feature becomes very useful when hosting is to be done on a dedicated IP alone.

===================
Sanjay Verma
SugarCRM Community Edition Hosting

hostBrain · #16 (**permalink**) 11-14-2007, 03:43 PM

Wow, lots of confusion here.
First of all the poster never said anything about registering the domain with this company, so I don't know why replies had to be "domain registration and hosting should be separate, bla bla"

Secondly, that url

Quote:

The link went www. xxxxxhosting.com/cpanel/myusername

Looks more like the link to your control panel, than sub-domain hosting. Your domain is not going to show up until you have edited the nameservers for your domain.
This url looks like nothing more than a link to your control panel of your hosting account.
Seems to me you panicked without simply asking the co.
But, sounds like you did your homework afterwards to find this firm to be less - than optimal, so it probably worked out anyway.

G[dot]com · #17 (**permalink**) 11-16-2007, 10:14 PM

yeah, in short, as you have not made one mention to nameserver changes to your new domain or anything alike, we have to presume that the hosting co. has given you a temp URL as they always do till you get your own domain redirected properly.

Second fact that can possibly be true, yet your details are no proof enough is that you purchased a name-based hosting, not an IP-based hosting (this is more expensive, eg: name-based starting from u$d 4/month, and IP-based from $18 ) so you share the IP with other sites. Otherwise the guys generally give you your own new IP adress as temp URL ( eg: http://64.24.300.21/cpanel [invented url] )

There's nothing specially wrong with name based hostings... as long as the people administering them have some common sense and ethics and give websites enough bandwidth and disk space and make sure some security measures are taken (to prevent people from other shared-IP sites to login to your panel, etc).

In my experience, in the hosting industry "too cheap" means trouble (yet not always "expensive" means better, but certainly for $4 a month you won't get the same as for $20, following the example).

My two cents. Good luck.