im doing my best to restrain myself from flagrantly swearing right now. lets put them auto-censors to work, shall we?

aplus.net -- my web hoster.

about a week ago, i set up an american tribute flash movie, that has since circulated the globe, being viewed upwards of 60,000 times. i did it more or less out of personal reasons, as i've lost a great number of friends, as well as being, personally, and horribly, affected by the NY parts of the tragedy, first hand. but word about the movie spread, and lots of others viewed it.

notably viewed by high ranking officials in each of our great nations military divisions, chaplains of both the NYPD and NYFD, significant figures in the NY government, as well as several national news companies (newspapers and tv stations, alike).

im not braggin, i'd be an absolute scumbag if i was (and if it came off as such, then by all means, im a scumbag), im just trying to illustrate that, obviously, the movie on my site showed importance to a great number of people.

so ANYwho...

yesterday, around 3pm or so, yesterday, my afore mentioned [expletive][expletive][expletive] webhosting [expletive][expletive][expletive] company shut down my website, with no warning, no regard, nothin.

i called and complained about its missing-ness, to which they had no clue or response. calling back an hour or so later, it turns out that i had exceded my bandwith.

lo-and-behold, the plan i signed up for states "unlimited bandwith" (and, in other places "unlimited web traffic"). visiting their site now, and checking the plan i have (solo II), you'll note those quotes still stand.

apparently, "unlimited" doesnt mean what it used to.

so, my site was shut down.

i called, demanded the president or supervisor of the company, and spoke with him for nearly 2 hours, telling him of the importance of this movie to thousands of people, literally, around the world.

i told him id pay any amount to get it back online, just as long as people can see the event, without down time.

he said he could have it back up and running in FOURTY-EIGHT hours, noting that only AFTER my credit card cleared (the same credit card i'd used in my monthly payments for the last 14 months).

[expletive][expletive][expletive][expletive]!!!!

only after another 2 hours of screaming and ranting (even getting my father, god bless him, into the mix), and threatening the company with all sorts of horrible coverage (as i, for real, was having an interview with "usa today" later that night), he re-opened the account, in a temporary folder (which will, i guess, expire after a few days).

he then added that i should be greatful AND that i add HIS COMPANY LOGO to the america tribute movie!!!

[expletive][expletive][expletive][expletive] [expletive][expletive] lying [expletive][expletive]piece of [expletive][expletive][expletive][expletive] [expletive]!!!!

amazing, that he'd love to advertise on a TRIBUTE page, where the only other graphic is a link to the red cross donation thing.

i've yet to add the graphic. im "working on it" (and will be for some time! )

anyway, i just wanted to share this story. really for a few reasons:

1) to make SURE no one else uses this service.
2) to ask for help in finding another hosting company.
3) to see if there are any legit legal claims agains the "unlimited" fiasco

... alright...

i hope i did that level head-edly enough. and i apologize if i didnt.

thanks.

I responded to your pm rob, I'll host it for you...

At least until we can get someone suitable ligned up

thanks allen... ill talk to you via email!

as for what im looking for, in terms of a permanent home:

1) for starters, i'd need my domain name back from my current company (www.robkamphausen.com) asap.

2) realisitically, i only need 1 email address, but i wouldnt be upset having others.

3) somewhere in the ball park of 200 mb of space is fine (again, i wouldnt complain to have more).

4) cgi-bin (need t'get my message boards back)

5) ftp access

6) unix, i guess, is preferred. i dont use / need frontpage or microsoft stuff

7) traffic guidelines -- my average traffic looks like this (my august numbers):

KBytes - 2,936,193
Visits - 7,757
Pages - 65,735
Files - 180,103
Hits - 386,486

tho, since i've put up the movie, those numbers have sky rocketed (my sept. numbers):

KBytes - 69,673,870
Visits - 70,164
Pages - 131,529
Files - 380,747
Hits - 558,371

(and, keep in mind, those totals are really just reflecting a movie only up 2 weeks, not even the full month of september).

i have no clue how long the movie will have popularity, and be visited this frequently, but just to be safe, i need to purchase a home which is able to handle this high visitation / high bandwith rate.

not sure what else you need to know when looking for a home, but if you need more info from me, please feel free to ask!

[ 09-28-2001: Message edited by: drkknght ]

That really sucks, man! You can be sure that they won't ever be getting my money!

I find it interesting, at the bottom of their "Compare" page, they have the following quote:
How does it feel to be in the .1% of the customers who don't enjoy the unlimited traffic, even though most likely your traffic is generated by an exponentially more important reason than other peoples'? (I wonder, was that there before? Or did they just add that in since they kicked you off?) It's really sad that the host is so close-minded.

If you haven't alraedy, you may want to go to some of the major web host search sites (um... webhostdir.com, hostspot.com, are the ones I can think of at the moment, though I'm sure there are more) and post your story there, as it may get more notice and action.

---Skorpion

I take it you meant .01%?


Man, that sucks. I would not ut their logo in and if I did it would be something like their logo after it saying a bunch of ****. People these days. Thery are trying to make money and get publicity because people are viewing somehting big.


Sad.

Or you could put their logo in there really really small and tell them it's their you just have to zoom in..

heya guys... thanks for the support.

i really wish i either was a lawyer, or knew one well, because id love to break this company! donate all my winnings to the redcross. jerks.

im currently in the process of switching from their servers to a company called rackshare. (aplus.net AGAIN raised the prices, sending me a quote of somewhere around 1000/month, and its only that "low" IF i put their logo up -- whutta way to profit, right?).

rackshare is hooking me up with a much better offer. still a boat load of money (i mean, i AM getting a boat load of traffic on the site), but they're cutting me a much better deal.

i dont wanna put advertisements or ask for donations on the site, cuz i feel that just cheapens it (AND it makes me feel really uneasy, cuz i feel like a jerk). finally, i decided to sell copies of the movie on cd. so, if you wanna watch it for free, or cant pay, or just dont wanna pay, just go to the site. but, if you wanna own a copy, contact me.

with that "plan" i dont feel like im THAT big a jerk. plus, if i happen to sell a lotta cds, anything i make over the costs, ill just donate, myself, to the red cross.

not so bad, right?

Thats terrible service. I mean advertising on a PAYING website? HELLO?! you're PAYING, jeez, those freaks should know better..

I ran across this page while trying to find something on aplus.net. Maybe I should have done this a bit earlier. I use vbulletin and I'm having trouble with a send mail function to my users. Anything over 10 user will not work and 10 at time had the same error before I got through 100 people. I won't go into much detail since this board isn't about vbulletin.

However, so far I have found Aplus.net to be a little less than on the ball. It took them 3 or 4 days to grant me SSH access. Customer support doesn't seem to be a great thing for them either. BTW, in regards to the movie fiasco above, this isn't the first time they have been caught or that I've heard of them getting PR in a wrong fashion. They were inserting hidden code on their users pages to improve "their" ranking with Google.

After this little issue started popping up all over the net on boards... a Yahoo press release was issued blaming it on some outside contractor and ignorance of it happening. From the report above I think I can add 2 and 2. The President would proudly stick his logo in a tribute, hidden in you web page or anywhere else he could get it without batting an eyelash probably.

Sounds like sloppy service. I use HostNuke which doesn't limit sendmail and ssh is configured with your plans (most other hosts will also do this, but there are still those which "take their sweet time" setting things up)

Thanks Gizzy, looking at host as we speak. I found out the setting for PHP setting max_execution_time_set is low balled at 15. Most likely I believe this is my problem. The default for this setting is 30 btw.

After diagnosing this myself... after they blame it on 3rd Party software, the answer is no we will not change anything. The blame can be partially on the scripts processing time, but 15 on a server that is probably pretty crowded/oversubscribed is not good.

Like the guy say at the end of the Outkast song my girls play all the time... "Moving!!..."

Rob, that was 69 gigs?

$299 using Infopop's hosting on a Orcas plan

Put in Aplus Sucks in Google, this is what you get, and I couln't totally agree more. It would seem that most ost would have the policy to notify you before they just pull the plug on your website. I see that the first post was back in 2001 and they are still up to the same old shhhhhhttt. They will also hold any data you have hostage on their servers until they deicde to let you have it back, so I advise any one that deals with this pathetic company to make certain that you have ALL your files cached locally. I swear on my mother if I was in San Diego I would go there and wait for the so called tech that I spoke to on the phone to get off of work and open up a can of whoop assssssssssss on him. People get so sick of people talking junk on the phone just because they're far away and don't think they can get touched. Even worse when they know they're in the wrong they hang up the phone like a little biaaaatch. Stay away from this company people, I learned the hard way, and someday they're going to learn too.