Archive for the ‘reference’ Category

Web Hosting – why you should avoid Hosting.com

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

My web hosting company used to be called HostMySite.com until few years ago when it was bought out by Hosting.com.  I have Linux basic plan.  Since Hosting.com took over, the quality of service has gone down dramatically.

Now I will abandon ship soon.  Do not buy from hosting.com.

Here are the specifics:

  1. Every time a new client signs up, several features on the control panel don’t work, like directory browsing.   I have to call and have them fix it.  This seems like a setup script issue, and I’ve notified them, but it’s not fixed.
  2. Database time and server time are off.
  3. I’m noticing that in some cases PHP Session variables are overwritten by global variables.  A serious systematic problem that poses security threat.  This a problem with hosting.com’s installation of PHP, not PHP itself.
  4. Their PHP installation does not parse ISO characters properly.  It was fixed only after I asked them about it.
  5. They stopped supporting on-click WordPress install, which is fine for people like me but not for many others.
  6. Tech support wait time has increased.
  7. The features and capacity are dismal when you consider the above-average price,  faulty setups, and security holes.

I don’t mind paying above average for good service.  I also don’t mind having troubles for cheap products.  However, hosting.com is sub-par quality at above-average price.  Stay away.

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Web Development Writing

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Whoa, I must have been on hiatus from the webdev world too long… Digital Web Magazine closed its doors back in March and I just found out. Even though it’s sad to see a quality site go, I suppose keeping up such a site without a steady source of revenue run by volunteers is a difficult proposition.  I really hope that AListApart doesn’t do the same.  These sites don’t offer in-depth coverage of any certain topic or the detail how-to of the latest trend; instead the articles tend to be generalized, with broad strokes, aimed to argue the finer points about web development and offer a broader perspective.  Quality writing in web development is hard to come by, as most websites simply offer up chunks of code without any consideration to best practices.  Most of the latest information is mired in discussion forums that is too difficult to decipher unless you’re actively involved in the thread.  (I recently tried to make sense of this forum but gave up half way.)  I suppose this is good for book selling…  except that books are not as user-friendly when it comes to programming.

Other sites I find helpful are evolt and sitepoint.   All these sites have too many awesome contributors who also run their own sites with tons of information, but with increasing amount of info, organization like this is sorely needed.

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