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Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Over the last three months I have had an on going issues with the access, error, and process logs for the site sucking up over half of my available 350 mb of space. In January I resigned with OneWebHosting.com on the assurance that they would update the ASTmod.com site to their standard "new" Plan A. At that time ASTmod.com was on Plan A, but it was the old Plan A and did not have the benefits of the new Plan A.

The old plan A limited month traffic transfer rate at 9.8 GB, while the new plan upped that limit to 25 GB.

Because of the storage space issue and the hog logs, I submitted a request to have the logs purged. Their support service said the logs would be purged and they never where. I resubmitted my request and was today informed that my sight exceeded the plan that I was currently subscribing too. This is BS, and had nothing to do with my technical issue.

So in response I was told that I must upgrade at a substantial cost, or have my site shut down. They are attempting to extort $$ from me and this is unacceptable. I therefore will be making a phone call to onewebhosting.com tomorrow and depending upon the out come of that call, the decision will be made to either keep ASTmod.com up or take it down and try and find another hosting service. Of course I will have to battle onewebhosting for a refund and get one before I could sign on with a new host.

Given the dwindling hits on the site, the lower traffic, and the BS threat from onewebhosting, I am just tempted to kill the site now, take the opproprate finacial actions against onewebhosting for a refund, and start the process of looking for an afordable web hosting service.

I wanted to give you all a heads up on the issue in case the site does go down. I am sorry for this, but this is how corprate America has degenerated and this is the price we pay.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

If you do end up moving fyron got a good deal with his new host and I am sure he would be happy to post a link to them.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Ok well since Fyron hasn't responded as fast as I thought he would I believe he went with http://www.eniki.net/

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

They went from being a good host to some RUDE MOTHER [CENSORED]'s let me tell you.

YOU NEVER respond to a techniqal issue by telling your customer that they need to upgrade or be shut down. WTF???

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

You always seem to have the worst things happen to you AT.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

I didn't really want to vouch for a company that I have only been dealing with for 3 days...

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Well one thing is for certain, OneWebHosting is definately NOT a company you can do business with and have faith in.

All they say now is that I must upgrade or face interuption.

Perhaps one of you can tell me what I am missing.
I am suppose to have 12 gb a month / yet they have limited my account to 9.8 gb a month and here is my traffic stats for the last year.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...21-traffic.PNG

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Well "Tony" called and told me that my site, a basic html no script site, is using up a tremendous amount of cpu and memorie resources and that I must upgrade my plan. I asked him to explain HOW a basic html site with images and a few downloads could POSSIBLY be using up resources as they described. He could not tell me. He even went through the site and and still could not tell me.

So now its a resource issue as opposed to a traffic issue. I prove that its not a traffic issue so they swap issues.

This is the SAME thing that Angel Fire did. Upgrade or we will shut you down. It is nothing more than extorsion.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Gee AT, they must be nuts, with the info you posted you obviously have proof that you have not been abusing their service. Did you send them these numbers? According to your post you need to go back 11 months to see any kind of infraction. (10.2 gb slightly over the 9.8 you should have with your account.) I think that someone has looked through the history of your account and it's probably an automatic thing where if you go over your limit more than x times then they can 'insist' that you upgrade. this does not look like a good situation. at the very least they should have contacted you a year ago to say "hey you went over your alloted space, please pay us a primium.. but to wait a full year before taking action, it seems that they are just randomly signaling you out. There is only one way to deal with this, do not talk to tech support, do not talk to the techie's director, ask to speak to the 'CEO/President' of the company. Be polite and ask that he help to resolve this issue. It seems to me that if they had 2 different 'Plan A's' then they are at fault for not properly diferenciating between the two plans. I believe that companies are required to be clear about such contracts. You have obviously not abused their service, and the fact that you want to come to an amicable solution is proof tof that. If they insist on being ******* then you have but two choices, abandon them and move on to a new host or take them to court. Finding a new host seems the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, I hope you manage to get this resolved.

Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

EDIT: You made a post while I was writing this, so I'll add this tiny bit,.. They are obviously not good business people.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Are you sure that your site has not been hacked into and malicious programs uploaded to it? Check every folder for files you do not recognize...

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

I just got a new email:

Quote:

This has nothing to do with your email about the error logs, your are being asked to upgrade your account because of your resource consumption which includes higher then normal cpu and memory ussage. We do want to keep you as a customer, but you have exceeded your current hosting plan and we will need you to upgrade your hosting plan. We will need to get this resolved within the next 24 hours.

I reviewed my plan and I cannot find any refernce to limits for the CPU or memory resources. Like I said its just simple plan old extortion!

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Thanks guys will do both.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

I could not access the folder named CERT.
I have a folder named _vti_pvt with thing in it that have cnf extentions. (Access, botinfs, bots.cnf, service.cnf, etc
Past that it had a remote PBW game option, you know for playing PBW games when PBW is down, and some bike videos. Nothing more.

I don't know what is causing the issue, or even if there is really an issue.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

You should probably chmod any scripts you have that you do not use anymore (such as the PBW scripts) to 000 so that they can not be accessed... Or delete them from the server. Every script on the server is a potential security vulnerability.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Thank Fyron, I just removed the file. I also got a response to my email.

Quote:

I checked the server reports and I do see some major spikes, this maybe caused by your file downloads? There are times where the cpu and memory usage on your for your domain name are very high, this has been a consistent thing for many months now.

Please let us know which plan you would like to upgrade to?

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

The only thing that could resolve server usage is putting you on a different server... Just having a more expensive account on the same server will do absolutely nothing regarding resource usage. I still suspect that some sort of malicious program has been hacked onto your server. That, or the hosting company put way too many accounts on one server, which is entirely their fault, not yours. If we can eliminate hacking as a problem, you definitely need to get in contact with the Better Business Bureau...

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

At that suxs....i'm sorry to hear that.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

I like how they keep adding "So what plan do you want to upgrade to" with each response, while they are not really dealing with the problem itself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
The only thing that could resolve server usage is putting you on a different server... Just having a more expensive account on the same server will do absolutely nothing regarding resource usage. I still suspect that some sort of malicious program has been hacked onto your server. That, or the hosting company put way too many accounts on one server, which is entirely their fault, not yours. If we can eliminate hacking as a problem, you definitely need to get in contact with the Better Business Bureau...

What CK said is true, they are not addressing the problem, and trying to get them to help me over the phone is a pain in the ***. All they want me to do is upgrade to their most expensive plan, $19.95 a month. I asked them if my site was not using over using its traffic and disk space, then why should I upgrade. The answer was upgrade or be shut down.

Right now I am trying to figure out how, if I do upgrade, which I am not going to do, much it will cost me. They say I will have to pay for plan C at the minimum, which is $14.95 a month. I asked about the money I have already paid in and was told that I would have to pay $14.95 a month. Again no answer. Now they are not returning my phone calls.

Yes I think its time to move. I guess the only way to find out if Fyrons hosting company is any good is to do business with them.

The money I have already paid to OneWebHosting will not be refunded, ie I paid for a year, starting in January, so that leaves 9 months of service I paid for but will not be using. OneWebHosting will no credit my account if I upgrade, and they will not refund the money therefore I can only conclude that they do not want me as a customer.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

This is part of why I would never pay for an entire year of hosting at once...

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Why don't you just make some changes to your site to reduce overall bandwidth usage and in theory server usage so you don't waste your money:

i.e. Make most links point directly to the home page rather than through the intro screen, which is rather bulky at 175Kb. That means every 6 visitors are wasting a meg of bandwidth, so 600 visitors ~ 100Mb and I'm sure you have probably a couple thousand visits a month. You may also want to host only the current version in full, and drop the 1.9.0.0 versions. There's probably a lot of wasted downloads by people downloading the wrong versions - more waste than what is saved by people patching 1.9 to 1.9.1.2!

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

You might want to split the site. Go with a stable and multihomed site that has good DNS and some nice site managment tools. Put the web-pages there.

Then get a large storage and large bandwidth site to put the downloads at. You CAN also keep large graphics and sound files there while linking to them on the web page but avoid that with the first page.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Thank you all for the adivise and help. I am going to be leaving later this evening for a few days and hopefully when I get back I will be in a better mind for dealing with this nonesense.

I honestly believe it is a host issue and all they want is for me to pay more more their severice. They didn't even know I was an annual subscriber so that tells you how indepth they reviewed my account.

Kwok, you are correct, a re-organization of the web site will help stream line it. Thank you GP for the email, I haven't had a chance yet to read it, been running around like a crazy man with all the prep work for this weekend, phone calls, and other fun stuff. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

Well here is an update.

After many emails back and fourth I finally decided to upgrade in order to keep the site up. One Web Hosting agreed to apply the funds that I had already paid for PLAN A to the upgrade. I am going with a month by month agreement for 5 months. They are ripping me off for about $6.40 as they will not give me a partial month of service.

It has now been ten days since we reached the agreement and they have yet to upgrade my service plan. This is unacceptable. So I went ahead and filed a complaint with the www.bbb.com (Better Business Bureau. Much to my surprise I discovered this:

Quote:

Better Business Bureau of Northeast California
400 S Street
Sacramento, CA 95814-6997

BBB Reliability Report

One Web Hosting
1414 K Street, Suite 701
Sacramento, CA 95814

General Information
Principal : Mr. Tony Balanco Owner
Phone Number: (888) 314-1925
BBB Membership: This company is not a member

The information in this report has either been provided by the company, or has been compiled by the Bureau from other sources.

Customer Experience
Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to unanswered complaint(s).

I went ahead and filed one of my own.

Quote:

I renewed PLAN A in Jan 2005; plan states that I get 25 gigs of transfer per month, however actual transfer bandwidth was limited to less than half of the Plans stated amount at 9.8 gigs per month instead of 25 gigs. I noticed in January that error/access logs were using 100 Megs of disk storage so I submitted a ticket on Jan 17th asking for help. Nothing happened. I resubmitted the tick on March 7th. I then received an email stating that I was exceeding my plan and that I had to upgrade or be shut down. When asked how I was exceeding the plan I was told that my site was using too much bandwidth. I showed them that I was using less than a third of the bandwidth that my should have access too, and asked why I was limited to 9.8 gigs a month when the plan states I should be getting 25 gigs. They then said that my site was using too much CPU and memory do to some downloads I have. This is untrue as the problem is on the HOST side. NOTE: No where in the contract for Plan A does it state that CPU or Memory usage is limited. I pointed this out both by email as well as by phone. I talked to "Tony" and was told that I would have to upgrade or be shut down. I opted to upgrade because I was told that I would not get a refund. They agreed to apply my funds toward 5 months of Plan C. Plan A was only $8.95 a month. I paid $107.40 up front for a years worth of Plan A, and have only used 2.5 months worth of this plan leaving $85.02 in change. This $85.02 was to be used to pay for 5.5 months @ $14.95 for Service Plan C. It has now been 10 days since this agreement was reached and my service plan has yet to be updated to Plan C. This is unacceptable. Either One Web Hosting upgrades my plan to Plan C or they refund the $85.02 they now owe me. They lied about a problem in order to extort money and once paid, refused to follow through with the agreement.

I know that really no one here gives a rats *** about this, but still I am posting it for your reading pleasure. Being a bad luck magnate, I often like to share the unbelieveably negative things that happen to me in the hopes of proving to others that no matter how bad they have it, someone always has it worse. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Try not to laugh to hard, if they can do this to the mighty Atrocities, think what they could do to you? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Buyer Be Warned, if you do business with OneWebHosting, expect to get ripped off.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)

I've been pretty happy with my web host: ICDSoft
for $10 a month, I get

1GB web space
15 subdomains
unlimited emails accounts
18 FTP accounts
60 mailing lists
3 databases (MySQL)
6 parked domains
support for php, MySQL, CGI/Perl, Python, TCL
15GB/month transfer

I haven't had any problems running my fantasy football site, plus other odds and ends.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Re: Star Trek Mod Site (Problems)