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PROBLEMS ON THE WEBSITE FRONT
The Star, In.Tech, Jan 28, 2003
I WAS all set to enter my third year as the author/ developer/ proud owner of my own website. I'd paid MYNIC (Malaysian Network Information Centre) for the third year to keep my site's domain name. Now all I had to do was pay my webhosting company.
It was way past the usual date the webhosting company usually sent me the invoice, so I thought I'd be nice and e-mail them to find out what had happened to my invoice. After all, they might have forgotten.
To my surprise the e-mail bounced back.
No problem, try another e-mail address at the same webhosting company. Same result.
Try a third e-mail address at the webhosting company? Same result.
I was starting to get worried. So, I decided to call the company by phone. The voice at the receiving end said I had the wrong number. I stared at the number on my computer screen. It was the same telephone number that I had just dialled.
I decided to surf to the company's website in case they had moved and changed their telephone number without informing me.
No such site!
Decided to give it a day and try again.
Still no such site.
Reaching panic stages, I decide to log in to my website pages on their web server.
Can't get in.
Can't get in.
Can't get in.
Aieeeeeeee!
Lost in cyberspace
Yes, it was time to press all panic buttons. My website was down, I couldn't access my pages and pictures on the webhosting company's server, and the webhosting company could not be reached.
Thankfully, I had all the pages and pictures on my own PC. Luckily, on one of those nights when I was bored I had decided to back up my files.
Although I had got my money's worth of the year's webhosting fees that I'd paid in December 2001, I was still shocked and appalled to find that my webhosting company had gone AWOL without so much as a note to inform me.
I mean, isn't it common courtesy to inform your clients in advance so they can find another webhosting company? This would have saved me a great deal of sweat, worry and work and I would have been able to the necessary work of finding another webhosting company in advance and limit the disruption to my website to a bare minimum.
It didn't help that this all happened in the end-of-year holiday period when everybody seemed to be on leave and nothing could get done.
All I could do was sit and wait.
With an old friend's help, I managed to find another webhosting company. Aren't they a dime a dozen these days? To its credit, this company's fee was actually half the price of what I was paying formerly.
Now it was just a matter of getting my user ID and password from MYNIC (something my old webhosting company never bothered to help me do. Thanks, guys!) and also applying for a change of webhosting server from MYNIC.
Everything has to be applied for at MYNIC and confirmed by MYNIC. While I found MYNIC to be really fast and efficient (including the extremely efficient and helpful woman who answered the phone when I called and thankfully spoke in English!), the process did take a few days of faxing and e-mailing back and forth.
In all, it took me a good three weeks before I could get my website up again.
Lesson learnt
There are a few lessons to be learnt from all this, of course. Isn't there always?
1) Find a webhosting company that's reliable.
2) Preferably call the webhosting company in advance for the invoice.
3) If you can, get a company that you know will still exist in a few years' time.
4) When you can do nothing to fix the situation, have a cold drink, go shopping, watch a movie, chill out. You might as well, since you can't fix it right now and all the hopping and jumping up and down will not fix anything.
5) Always back up your files.
All I have to say to my ex-webhosting company and the many other webhosting companies out there is: If you're closing shop and shutting down your servers, at least have the common courtesy to inform your clients in advance instead of just disappearing without a word.
Trust me, a little common courtesy goes a long way in establishing trust. Trust is something you need if you want to retain a good name in business and if you want to keep your clients/ customers or have any clients in future. A bad reputation can go a long way.
Copyright Star Publications (M) Bhd
ALSO:
What mum taught me, May 14, 2006
Daddy's Girl, June 25, 2002
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