MY encounters with Communitech - If you are looking for a host, you should read this.
Thanks for the info on communitech. I am/was thinking of using them as my host. How many page views a month were you getting with them.
Thanks
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Isn't it time you started making money with your site!
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My Site got hacked, but i'm coming back?
Voltec posted this at 04:47 — 24th June 1999.
They have: 220 posts
Joined: May 1999
I was putting about 150,000 to 175,000 up back then. We have grown since then. Now we do 275,000+ pageviews monthly.
Matt
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JP Stones posted this at 19:14 — 24th June 1999.
They have: 2,390 posts
Joined: Nov 1998
Well I am leaving CT, mainly through fear of having my account shutdown without warning - as it is quickly becoming a big bandwidth user.
JP
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Voltec posted this at 21:11 — 24th June 1999.
They have: 220 posts
Joined: May 1999
JP,
Obviously I can't vouch for Powersurge.net yet, I can vouch for their well laid out hosting plan. I LIKE the fact that they draw a clear line concerning the bandwidth issue and display exactly it will cost beyond that line. Their large account is 700 megs of space and they allow 10 gigs of space for $70 monthly. Beyond that 10 gig limit, you become a 'Bandwith usage account' and get charged $7 per gig. I think it is simple and fair. (and that is the reason I am going with them).
Matt
----------
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com/
Thousands of Players around the World compete weekly!
fairhousing posted this at 22:44 — 24th June 1999.
They have: 1,587 posts
Joined: Mar 1999
Sounds good Voltec, let us know if powersurge is worth a crap. I'm glad you posted this because I was really thinking about going with communitech, but not now.
----------
Isn't it time you started making money with your site!
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My Site got hacked, but i'm coming back?
Voltec posted this at 02:41 — 25th June 1999.
They have: 220 posts
Joined: May 1999
I have seen a few posts praising Communitech and others saying that they were ok... so I figured it is time for me to enter my encounters with them. I signed up with them about a year ago and to be honest, everything went pretty smoothly for awhile.
Then one day my account became inaccessible. I couldn't login, the website wouldn't respond... nothing. Needless to say, I was on the phone in momments! The person I spoke to had no idea who turned it off or why ... and turned it back on. During an e-mail query to Gabriel Murphy at a later date, he did mention that my error log was quite large. I downloaded it (which was a pain since it NEVER got reset, unlike the weekly access logs). I found that most of my errors were a small clear gif that I use for placement was not where it was supposed to be. So I cleared that up. (There were cgi errors as well to be honest).
A few weeks later my account appeared to be shutoff again, except that I was able to ftp in. After 2 days of MANY phone calls, it was discovered that it wasn't shutoff... just that the entire site content was DELETED. They claimed they had no idea of how this happened. (A line of BULL I found out later). After I had reloaded the entire site a person that I continue to refer to as "The Leach" started posting messages on my message boards. He said he hacked the site and to be honest, this was partially my fault. My password for my site was too short (only 5 characters) and was discovered easily using John the Ripper. (For those of you that have passwords shorter than 8 characters, let this be a lesson, CHANGE it now to 8-10 characters, using numbers and letters. Mine is now 10 characters, upper/lower case and numbers... but I digress).
Each time the Leach threatened to erase the site if I deleted his post, or anything else, I deleted the post. Then I found ways of shutting down his double-proxies... (notifying the system engineer of the system he is manipulating). But, through all of this, he mentioned some other sites that he Leached on Communitech... some TWO WEEKS BEFORE MY SITE! Communitech WAS aware of this problem and pleaded complete IGNORANCE! As far as I know, they have never notified their customers that there was a problem.
A couple of months after this fiasco passed my account was just shutoff again. No warning, nothing. After getting on the phone again and jumping and down to 2 days (via e-mail as well), I received an e-mail from Gabriel Murphy telling me I was leaving Communitech because my cgi's were causing problems. (Some were reporting malformed headers which I have corrected since then)... but what is funny is that at least 2 other large usuage sites were kicked off at the same time. The way I see it is that they wanted to get rid of a few of us that actually use what they offer.
So, in short, I recommend people stay away from Communitech. They are very quick to shut you down and very slow to respond to you. I have seen others say the same thing so it wasn't just me.
If anyone would like to contact me about this, feel free. I have even 'sugar coated' the above a little to keep my butt from being sued.
Matt
----------
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com/
Thousands of Players around the World compete weekly!
Voltec posted this at 23:36 — 25th June 1999.
They have: 220 posts
Joined: May 1999
My suggestion to go to Burstnet burstnet.net and let them make you an offer!
They claimed to be able to match or beat competitor's offers, and I held them to that statement. They most definetely backed it up, and offered me a deal I couldn't refuse!
Matt
----------
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com/
Thousands of Players around the World compete weekly!
Jes posted this at 01:13 — 26th June 1999.
They have: 120 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
Voltec,
I am in exactly the same position as fairhousing. Was seriously considering CT, but will probably reconsider now.
Would be interesting to hear CTs comments to this here in this forum.
JP, are they members?
Jes
fairhousing posted this at 01:29 — 26th June 1999.
They have: 1,587 posts
Joined: Mar 1999
Voltec let us know how burst does for you.
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Isn't it time you started making money with your site!
http://www.birminghamnet.com/cgi-bin/links/pages/WebmasterResources/MakingMoney
Traffic-Website.com free traffic, affiliate programs, hosting, & domain names.
My Site got hacked, but i'm coming back?
Brian Farkas posted this at 18:37 — 27th June 1999.
They have: 1,015 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
I have an account at powersurge and their reseller plan is really good. They have good support, etc. and great uptime as well as a good control panel. The one bad part is that they don't offer ICQ support, except for one client *cough*Chad Simpler*/cough*
and they are very secretive about ICQ numbers. But other than that they have a great service. If you do sign up you can tell them that infostardesign.com referred you...[plug]Or, you can sign up through us. By signing up through us you get all benefits of a PowerSurge account, with a lower monthly setup fee. Plus, you get support via ICQ and the web from us, phone support from them and e-mail support from both. It actually is a very good deal. Check infostardesign.com/hosting/ for details. 
BTW I will lower the $30/month plan to $25/month for anyone coming from here. Just mention webmaster-forums in the "Where did you hear about us?" field.[/plug]
Ok, but seriously PowerSurge is a very good host. I like them a lot and they are well worth it.
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Anonymous posted this at 01:04 — 28th June 1999.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
Brain,
That cough sounds kind of nasty. You better have someone look at it.
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Brian Farkas posted this at 02:49 — 28th June 1999.
They have: 1,015 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
Brain?
Anonymous posted this at 03:21 — 28th June 1999.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
LOL - Oops. Sorry about that Brian. Hey, Brian, Brain, what's the difference
Just a couple of letters in different places.
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Dynamic Internet Solutions : http://www.dids.com
UNIX and Windows NT Hosting
Brian Farkas posted this at 03:39 — 28th June 1999.
They have: 1,015 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
It's ok, not a problem.
Sincerely,
Brian the Brain
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Fazer84 posted this at 21:43 — 28th June 1999.
They have: 62 posts
Joined: May 1999
Hi-
I am currently with CT, and very pleased. I have had no problems with them so far. However, I am hunting down a NT host, because they do not support ASP...
My 2 cents...
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Casey Hansen
www.caseynet.com
JP Stones posted this at 22:41 — 28th June 1999.
They have: 2,390 posts
Joined: Nov 1998
May I be the first to officially nickname - Brian the Brain! (or Brainy Brian)
JP or Kipper if you go by my local soccer side nickname - and no, I'm not explaining!
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TradeViceroy posted this at 03:17 — 29th June 1999.
They have: 99 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
I want to be the Brain!
Voltec posted this at 01:35 — 30th June 1999.
They have: 220 posts
Joined: May 1999
Casey,
I am not saying that they would cutoff all of their business... that would be self-defeating. But, watch your back should your site become sucessful and get thousands of pageviews daily. If it was just my site that was kicked, well, I would still be upset... but, they didn't just kick my site - they kicked at least two others that were also high volume sites.
My moral is that they don't want to keep higher volume sites and give ZERO warning - they just shut your account off. THAT is NOT very professional!
Matt
----------
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com
1-On-1 Free Basketball Game - Wanna Play?
http://basketball-game.com/
Thousands of Players around the World compete weekly!
Fazer84 posted this at 00:17 — 11th July 1999.
They have: 62 posts
Joined: May 1999
Hi-
My site is in no danger of getting too popular
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Casey Hansen
www.caseynet.com
Webmaster posted this at 21:49 — 11th July 1999.
They have: 16 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
I have a site with CT. It is very popular. It gets about 100,000 - 145,000 pageviews a day. I also run two very popularly used CGI scripts on there. One is a Top Sites script, and one is a Survey. I've only had problems once with the Top Sites script but it was fixed right away.
I believe CT to be the best host out there. If you have doubts, I recommend you give them a try first before pushing them aside altogether.
gregb posted this at 17:19 — 24th July 1999.
They have: 12 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
From all these posts, I am even more confused than ever about Communitech. I love the features they have to offer for the $20 dollar price, but from the horror stories I read on this forum and other I am reluctant to host with them. My website is 100 mb, heavy on picture galleries and sound files, and has quite a few cgi scripts. Maybe that's small enough for me not to run into any problems or restri
If I were to host with Communitech (which I am not sure I should), I would pretty much use everything they have to offer including RealAudio/RealVideo, Secure Server, Miva/HTMLScript, multiple ftp accounts, subdomains, and pop accounts, MSQl, and etc. In your opinion, is it. Would you reccomend that I host with them? Are there any other web hosts with similiar priced plans but that are more reliable? I
ventrue21 posted this at 22:21 — 24th July 1999.
They have: 12 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
The only thing I would say is that as you grow things get harder. If you do not watch yourself your customers will suffer. I heard they are working on their customer service:-) I would give them a chance if you like what they have to offer, if you do not wish to take a risk find a company that will give you a free trial of the server. This will let you test the waters before you jump in:-)
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