After getting this article dugg, the digg-effect of course was to happen. Quickly my site got 3000-4000 unique hits, and everything still worked fine.
This is the second time an article of mine got dugg, but this time, when I got home from work, I received a mail from my webhost - Surftown.
The mail was in danish, freely translated to english:
Our serverstatistics has shown an extraordinary high use of resources from your webhotel. The consumption has affected other Surftown users negatively, which we of course cannot accept.
We will have to close down the customer-relationship, which will happen in 30 days from now
What the mail didn’t say, was that they altered my index.php file and replaced it with a new. That is why the site has been down for a while, I am sorry, and by this post I will encourage everyone, never ever consider »Surftown - Success online« as a place to host your site. I have a handful other domains running on the same server, and those they want to close down as well, although they almost don’t generate any traffic.
29 comments
Chris Morrell Says:
If the webhost won’t let you generate traffic it would definetly be prime time to close up shop and headover to another host. Media Temple has been very kind to me, letting me blast their servers over and over again and they keep coming back for more. Shop around, I’m sure you can find a good home.
23/05-2006 | 16:41
Sam Says:
Thanks for the heads-up. I can’t find any lists of honestly-rated web hosts, so I’m left with individual comments like this…
23/05-2006 | 16:42
The undersigned Says:
I am indeed looking for a new host! Thanks for the reference - I am looking and their offers as we speak :)
23/05-2006 | 16:43
Zach Hale Says:
Wow that sucks man. Good luck with a new host.
23/05-2006 | 16:48
CoXis Says:
Well bad news. Write about this on some webmasters forums to people now that they suck.
Maybe this one helps you: DreamHost
Very popular hosting.
Also i see many people talk about Media Temple (but i don’t know this).
Also this is good: http://devotedhost.biz/.
23/05-2006 | 16:55
klevo Says:
That`s very unprofessional from them. I would never consider hosting at such company.
23/05-2006 | 18:04
GUESS Says:
I’ll second the Media Temple sentiment. They’re just an all around good place to get your hosting from.
I say surtown needs to get dugg for a few days…
23/05-2006 | 18:10
AND.Ypsilon Says:
Give a look to Hostforweb.com. I’ve used them as a test server for a couple years now and while my traffic usually never spikes, they have been very helpful with some other problems I’ve had; even stuff that isn’t really covered under their support contract
23/05-2006 | 19:58
Bryan Culver Says:
*cough* Media Temple *cough*
There I got it out. That was a nasty cough. Nice article by the way.
23/05-2006 | 21:08
Jens Christian Says:
Hey. I like servage.net - you get a lot of space, a lot of traffic, they support Ruby On Rails and stuff. I have a coupon for you, if you’re interested. You’ll get even more space and traffic, and I’ll get two months of free hosting..
Just contact me. I speak Danish, by the way.
24/05-2006 | 1:47
adam Says:
yikes.
even when i had a real problem with wordpress (related to caching permissions on a windows server), and i was on the phone explicitly giving the guy permission to alter a php file, he wouldn’t, because it violated easyCGI’s TOS. i would double check your TOS, your host may have run afoul of their own.
24/05-2006 | 22:53
Michael Wales Says:
A lot of people have suggested, Media Temple - which is a very good host.
Personally, I recommend Dreamhost. I haven’t had any issues with them, and if you use the gift code ‘777′ you get one year of hosting for $9.24.
Not bad at all.
25/05-2006 | 21:47
Morten Brørup Says:
You write that Surftown modified your index.php file, but not how they got access to modify it, and what the modified page looked like.
If your service contract allows them to modify your files, you’ll have to live with it. But if it doesn’t, they have illegally hacked your web site, and you should report Surftown to the police for hacking your web site.
If their modification of your web site affected your AdWords click rate, you can demand compensation for your loss of revenue.
Write them an email and ask for compensation. If they are not willing to pay up, report Surftown to the police for hacking and demand compensation for your economical loss. The IT crime department of the police force are very competent - I contacted them in a case involving a racist hacker on a web site I used to run.
26/05-2006 | 8:18
Lars Bachmann Says:
Same thing happent to me (http://www.larsbachmann.dk/kommentar.asp?id=313)
But after a few mails, they allowed me to stay after all.
Surftown - Success online..??? yeah right, if you get success, they will shut dowm your webhotel.
26/05-2006 | 8:52
Sune Christesen Says:
It’s the same story again and again.
Did you get any explanation on why the other sites were being closed as well?
26/05-2006 | 10:46
I don't belong here Says:
Lillebror bliver kendt…
Så er min lillebror kommet på Computerworld.dk. Mit webhotel ligger også hos den omtalte host, så jeg ved ikke lige helt, om jeg skal have fundet mig en anden eller hvad der sker. I hvert fald er det noget svineri, de har haft gang i. Fy skamme.
……
26/05-2006 | 11:05
Brian Says:
This is what to expect from a host where you pay under $2 per month.
But it sucks anyway :-/
26/05-2006 | 11:47
Kristian Risager Larsen Says:
How awful of Surftown. I am a very happy customer at FairWeb. Brilliant customer service - and after I used about twice the capacity I paid for, we just agreed that I would pay a little extra on the next bill. That was very fair.
26/05-2006 | 12:09
The undersigned Says:
Morten Brørup> I looked through the terms of agreement, and they are in their right of letting me go with 30 days warning. And if traffic becomes a problem, they are allowed to limit my bandwidth.They are also allowed to delete JPG, ZIP, MP3 and other “download-files” if they are causing any trouble with the bandwidth.
26/05-2006 | 12:54
The undersigned » Blog Archive » Baaaad host 2 Says:
[…] Two days ago I was contacted by a reporter from computerworld.dk who had read my post about my previous web host. This has resulted in some coverage on the issue through this article (danish). […]
26/05-2006 | 13:07
Morten Brørup Says:
The undersigned> It makes sense that Surftown wants to deny file hosting on a service sold as web hosting - after all, it that is two completely different services regarding bandwidth. If “download files” cause high traffic, they can terminate the contract with 30 days notice and delete the relevant files.
But since your visitor peak was not caused by “download files”, and Surftown claim (to the news media at least) that your termination is not due to high traffic, I don’t see how that clause can come into effect. My conclusion is still that they hacked your page when they modified it.
28/05-2006 | 15:26
Simon Mikkelsen Says:
I have just had the same problem with Surftown and a website, except that I did not get any e-mail: My users informed me that some parts of my website did not work.
31/05-2006 | 22:16
The undersigned Says:
Morten> I agree with you - they weren’t allowed to modify my files, and especially not the index file, which made my site url return blank.
The issue may have been to many database calls which I could have decreased by using some sort of caching for the site - but that is too late.
I am not mad that they are closing my account - I’m mad ’cause they modified my site and made it unfunctional.
Simon> Glad to hear that other people have suffered from their crazy way of handling traffic issues. Still hosting your site with them?
01/06-2006 | 10:34
john roche Says:
Well, i know this blog is old, but just wanted to say that SURFTOWN did the exact same to me. Shut down my site. i tried calling support, and they wouldnt take my call, because i was a private user. I sent 3 emails requesting a response, an explanation as to ‘why’….and i have not received one reply yet, a week later. Their site boasts 24/7 support, what a load of bull. anyhow, i really dont like being treated with such disregard, so going to take it further. I would like to tell people what a bad host they are, and make it public.
john
28/09-2006 | 23:54
Dulsinea Toboss Says:
Does anybody know any other guestbooks relating to this?
22/10-2006 | 1:35
Merwin Pack Says:
Love comes quickly, whatever you do
30/01-2007 | 6:43
Martin, Norway Says:
I’ve been using mediatemple.net now for a while - and they are happy with serving whatever content you may have; hey, they specialize in offering their services to media companies. Our company’s site runs there, and we have a lot of demo films.
Also, they recently introduced a new system, which handles sudden spikes in traffic. They had some hiccups when first introduced, but now it seems to work fine…
04/05-2007 | 10:04
Surftown Hater Says:
Surftown is the worst shit around - stay away!!!
23/06-2007 | 10:33
Robert Bergström Says:
I’m using the company version of Surftown and I’m more than pleased. I had some trouble with a customer’s site in the beginning of 2006 where her movies were deleted and renamed with a “Deleted by admin due to exceeded bandwidth” or something. When I asked the helpdesk about it they told me that they were trying a script that reported high usage of the bandwidth. I said that was crap and he almost agreed… Now, the script seems to have disappeared and recently they upgraded all accounts to more space, unlimited database, subdomains and ftp accounts.
However, the SAFE MODE ON sucks. After all, you don’t pay much for it, so you can’t expect a superior service.
I don’t think that any webhost should cancel an account without contacting the owner first, that’s pure evil.
24/09-2007 | 20:37
Leave a Reply