Why Is gspn.tv Loading So Slowly? – Godaddy November 2010

by Cliff Ravenscraft on November 5, 2010

in Our Blog

Scroll To The Bottom of this Post for the 11/14/2010 Update!

You may have noticed that the gspn.tv site has been experiencing very high page load times. First, I want to apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Second, I’d like to explain what is going on.

I still use Godaddy.com for hosting of gspn.tv, the community forum, all Plus Member access information, as well has a LOT of other sites. A while back, I created a new hosting account it BlueHost. I LOVE BLUEHOST! Both PodcastAnswerMan.com and http://VirtualAssistantPodcast.com are running on my BlueHost Account. You can read all about why I switched those accounts to a new hosting provider by READING THIS BLOG POST.

Now, there is only one reason I have not changed all these other sites over to BlueHost up to this point. That reason is TIME! I can’t simply move just one site at a time. I’d have to merge more than 13 websites over to the new hosting account all at the same time because they all run off of the main gspn.tv directory. I’ve been tempted to do this many times, even though it would take me approximately 12 to 15 hours straight to accomplish. In fact, I’m nearly at the point of considering this again now.

Here’s an old forum post from one of my previous considerations: LINK HERE

Here’s what is going on right now. On Thursday, October 28th, I received the following email from GoDaddy.

Date: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 3:15 AM
Subject: Hosting Migration Notification
To: cliff@ravenscraft.org

******************************************************************
HOSTING MIGRATION NOTIFICATION
******************************************************************

Dear Cliff Ravenscraft,

As part of a continuing effort to provide the highest
quality service for our valued customers, your hosting account,
gspn.tv, will be migrated to a new server in 24 hours.

If you are using external DNS servers or your domain was created
under a separate customer number than your hosting account, then
you may need to modify your DNS setup with your new IP address:
208.109.14.115. You will need to log in to your domain account
and manually update the “A Record” for your domain.

Please note that your control panel will be unavailable for 24-48
hours. We also recommend that you do not make any changes to your
hosting plan during this migration process. We appreciate your
patience in this matter.

If you encounter any problems, please contact Customer Support:

+ Online Support:

https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/support.asp?tab=…

+ Email: mailto:support@godaddy.com
+ Phone: (480) 505-8877

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com, Inc.

As soon as they put me on the new hosting server, the site immediately began to experience painfully slow load time. I actually gave it a few days before complaining and I sent the following email to the support department on Tuesday, November 2nd.

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Cliff Ravenscraft and my hosting account was just transferred to
a new server there at GoDaddy. Starting this morning, I’ve been
experiencing extremely long load times on my site. Prior to this, my site
had been loading PERFECTLY for MONTHS without much fail. Can you please
investigated.

You send me the following message, just this past week:

Hosting Migration Notification

I was was not shocked to get the following response…. Because this is typical of GoDaddy.com.

Dear Cliff Ravenscraft,

Thank you for contacting customer support.

Your site does appear to be loading a bit slow. However, we were able to do some diagnostics on your server and did not find any issue. Furthermore, the static elements of your pages (images) load quickly when requested directly in a browser.

You can make modifications to your site that improve performance. Some of these changes are easy to manage while others might take some time to figure out.

Here are four things you can do to speed up your site:

GZIP Compression
Smaller pages load faster, regardless of your Internet connection speed. You can make your pages smaller by compressing them with GZIP. For more information about GZIP and our hosting, see Compressing Web Pages for Faster Load Times.

Image Sizes
If you use HTML to make large images small, a site visitor still needs to download the larger version. If you need a small image, don’t use HTML to do it—shrink it in an image-editing program instead.

Scripting
You can edit to say more with less. A good programmer does the same thing with code. If the code on your site is inefficient, it impacts your site’s performance. There isn’t a quick fix for bloated code, but if you’re using GZIP and you’ve reduced your image sizes, analyze your code to make your site even faster. One way to make a database-driven site faster is to use a database index to improve the speed of data retrieval.

CSS
Cascading style sheets are great for formatting the look and feel of your website. If your style sheet contains a lot of styles that aren’t being used, you are forcing browsers to download things they don’t need. If you’re trying to maximize performance, trim your CSS files and remove anything that’s unnecessary.

You may also consider switching to a server with Grid Technology. In order to do this you will need to cancel your current account, purchase a Web Hosting* plan and set it up.

*NOTE:Before visiting this link you may need to clear your browsers cache and cookies.

Canceling your hosting account will delete all of your Web site files that you have stored on our servers. Be sure that you have copies of any files you want to keep before you cancel your account.

To Cancel Your Hosting Account:
Log in to your Account Manager.
In the My Products section, select Hosting.
Click the checkbox next to the hosting account you want to cancel.
Click the Cancel Account button above your account list.
In the Cancel Hosting Account section on the right, click Save Changes.

Once canceled, you may setup your hosting account and aliased domain names accordingly.

(Directions to set up a new account were here!)

If you decide to purchase a Web Hosting account, please respond to this email so we may move the available credit from your canceled hosting plan to the Web Hosting account once it has been set up.

If we can assist you further in this matter please let us know.

Sincerely,
Jesse P
Online Support Team

So I responded with the following email:

Seriously,

This is all I get, a note that says I can cancel my account or do something to optimize my site?

I am telling you, my site was SUPER FAST until you moved me to this new server. It is this new server that is the issue. I have been a loyal GoDaddy customer for FIVE YEARS. I know my site. I know nothing has changed, except that your company switched me to a new server. Last week, my site was AMAZINGLY FAST and this week, on the new server, I get these extremely slow load times.

Look into my pas;, I know what I’m talking about. It’s not just my WordPress site, it’s my forum, it’s everything running on this server.

Please bump this up to level three support and move me to a different server.

PLEASE!!! I am begging you!

Cliff

To which they responded with…..

Dear Cliff,

Thank you for your reply. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The issue you have been experiencing with your hosting account is being worked on by our technicians. Service will return to normal as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we are unable to give a specific time frame for this resolution. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Best Regards,
Thad P.
Online Support Team

I GAVE THEM THREE DAYS BEFORE SENDING THIS NOTE!!!!

I’ve been very patient. It’s been THREE DAYS since you sent this email.
I’m still experiencing extremely slow load times.

Please move me back to my old server or a new one.

Cliff

And then they responded with this…..

Dear Cliff,

We need the URL and steps needed to be able to duplicate the issue you are having. At this time I can not duplicate this issue with the information provided. If this issue is time of day related, please call in while the issue is happening so we can determine the cause of the issue. Our telephone support staff is available 24/7 at 480-505-8877. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Sincerely,

Paul P.
Online Support Team

So Here is where I am at:

-My site was loading PERFECTLY FOR MONTHS!!!

-They email me to tell me they are putting me onto a new server

-My site is switched to a new server

-My site now takes between 10 to 45 seconds to load each page

-I email Godaddy support and they tell me to cancel my hosting account & start a more expensive one.

-I tell them that that this is an issue with their server and ask for next level of support

-They admit that there is an issue and they are working on it

-I wait three days and check in to see how they are doing on my issue

-They deny that there is any issue at all.

SERIOUSLY? I mean come on… READ THE PRIOR NOTES!

So I just sent the following response.

I have created the following video for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B24q5NHsna0

it will demonstrate my issue.

Cliff

Here’s The Video:

Well, I’ll come back here and post updates as they come in. Though each update will take me at least five to ten minutes due to page load times. :(

Folks, use BlueHost!

Update: 11/6/2010 1:47am

I just received the following message…

Dear Cliff J. Ravenscraft,

Thank you for your response regarding this matter. We have reviewed the server your site is hosted at this time and we did not find any issues with the server. Currently we see that the site is loading within a few second. As you are using a shared hosting account, there may be times where there may be spikes in the server usage may cause temporary slowness with your site.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Sincerely,

Gary P.
Online Support Team

So I wrote back with this…

Dear Gary P,

You are absolutely correct. I just now checked my site, immediately after your email came in. You wrote… “Currently we see that the site is loading within a few second.”

I would like to point out to you that if you look back in the records of this incident report, that your support department initial response was unacceptable to me. The first thing your department said to me was there was poor coding or scripting issues on my site. You gave me one of the longest emails I’ve received in a long time that told me ways that I might want to consider optimizing my site and then ended that email by telling me how I could CANCEL my hosting account, WHICH WOULD CAUSE ME TO LOSE ALL MY DATA ON YOUR SEVERS, and sign up for a new, more expensive account.

Wow… what if I would have spent the last four days working on all those suggestions? And here, as you can see, without me changing anything at all, my site is loading within a few short seconds per page load.

Next, your email said to me…. “As you are using a shared hosting account, there may be times where there may be spikes in the server usage may cause temporary slowness with your site.”

My response to this is question…. “Are you telling me that FORTY FIVE SECOND PAGE LOADS ARE TYPICAL on your shared servers where there are spikes in server usage? Seriously?

If this is the case, why have I not had this issue over the past FIVE YEARS that I have had my account with you, with the exception of three occasions in the past when your servers were clearly having hardware failures that took me between two days and two weeks to convince you of?

Each time, in the past, your 3rd tier support moved me to a new server and ALL MY ISSUES DISAPPEARED and I never had a single issue with slow page loads, even when there were spikes in traffic.

Please go back and read this entire support ticket from the beginning. You will see that this happened THE VERY MINUTE that your company switched my site over to a new server. Sure, my site is loading within a few seconds right now. But if over the weekend, the slow page loads return, I fully expect to be put onto a different server.

I would appreciate your help in the matter.

Cliff

Update, Monday November 8th, 2010

Well on Saturday I received the following email in my Inbox.

Dear Cliff J. Ravenscraft,

Thank you for your reply.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused. Your site should not experience 45 second load times while it is hosted on our servers, however, in a shared hosting environment there can be times where another user on the server is over-utilizing the resources which can cause latency on your site. We do monitor the performance of our servers 24/7, and when this situation occurs, our network administrators correct the problem as swiftly as possible to return the server to normal functionality.

Please note that you are on our Legacy hosting environment, and we do recommend that you upgrade to our Grid hosting environment for increased performance. Our Grid environment uses the resources of multiple servers to host your site, so any spike which is impacting the performance of one particular server would have a lessened impact on your site’s load times in our Grid environment. There is no cost increase to upgrade to our Grid environment. For more information, see Web Hosting Powered by the Grid Frequently Asked Questions.
NOTE: When migrating to a Grid-based hosting account, you cannot switch your hosting account’s operating system. However, after the account migrates, you can switch it.

To Upgrade to Grid-Based Hosting

Log in to your Account Manager.

From the Products section, click Web Hosting.

Click the domain name you want to use.

Go to the Edit Account Details tab.

From the Plan menu, select the new plan you want to use. Grid-based hosting accounts are labeled “[Plan type] [Operating system] Web” — for example, Deluxe Linux Web.

Click Save Changes.

Complete any necessary purchases.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Sincerely,
David P.
Online Support Team

I responded this morning with the following note.

David P., Thanks so much for your message. I’m glad that someone over there agrees that there should never be a time when my site takes 45 seconds to load, as demonstrated in the YouTube video that I created for your video department and shared in my previous correspondence on this support ticket.

The idea of upgrading to your grid environment sounds appealing. My question is this. Do you guys simply transfer all my data and SQL databases over to this new environment? And if the cost is the same? Why not just switch me over? I don’t mind going through the steps you outlined in this response. However, I just want to confirm that I do not need to re-upload and reconfigure all my SQL Databases, etc. Please confirm that my account will suffer no downtime while you make such a switch and that all my sites and their data will be transferred and seeming appear to have no change to the outside world and I’ll go follow those steps this evening.

Thanks

Cliff

Update 11/9/2010 12:42pm.

Overnight, I received the following response from GoDaddy.

Dear Cliff,

Thank you for your reply. All of your data will be automatically transferred to the new server when you elect to upgrade to grid hosting. The cost will be the same. We are unable to make these changes on your behalf. You will need to follow the instructions in the previous response. You will not need to upload and reconfigure your databases.

Please know that while your site may not be affected, your Hosting Control Center may be down for 24 – 72 hours while the transition takes place.

Please do not access your account through FTP while the transition takes place.

Please let us know if we can help you in any other way.

Sincerely,

Christian P.
Online Support Team

In response to that message, I’m going to try to find some time in my schedule to make a PHONE CALL to GoDaddy Support and confirm that the above statement is true. Meanwhile, I’m going to download a backup of my FTP folder and see if I can’t grab backups of my databases.

Let’s see if they can’t make this a seamless process.

Update 11/9/2010 11:09pm

This is the last straw! I called GoDaddy to confirm that I could switch to Grid Hosting without losing ANY DATA at all and that it would be a seamless transition just as Christian P had stated above. The phone support tech confirmed that this was the case.

So I followed the instructions just as listed above and with the Godaddy Phone Rep assuring me that I was taking all the proper steps.

Then, when I went to save the changes, I get the following error!

That’s right! My account is not eligible for this “seamless” transfer.

All I wanted, from the beginning, was my account to be taken off the server that they just put me on a week and a half a go. In the few years I”ve been with GoDaddy, they have done this for me over and over again, ONLY AFTER FIGHTING WITH THEM VIGOROUSLY FOR DAYS/WEEKS EACH TIME!

Here I am again. I’m told that there is NOTHING they can do for me except for having me copy all of my server side info to my own hard drive, cancel my current account, and then start a fresh new account and re-upload all my data.

I’m sorry, but that’s just a load of BULL CRAP! If I could only get someone in LEVEL THREE SUPPORT TO HEAR MY CRY FOR HELP, they could simply move me to a different server and all my slowness issues would disappear.

I mean, if I’m going to take all my data and have to put it on a new account, I’m going to do that with another host for sure.

I’m just so TICKED OFF RIGHT NOW THAT I CAN HARDLY SEE STRAIGHT!

I KNOW FOR A FACT that they can just move me to another shared server.

Remember, that’s how it all started… They sent me this email on October 28th….

As part of a continuing effort to provide the highest quality service for our valued customers, your hosting account,
gspn.tv, will be migrated to a new server in 24 hours.

If you are using external DNS servers or your domain was created under a separate customer number than your hosting account, then
you may need to modify your DNS setup with your new IP address: 208.109.14.115. You will need to log in to your domain account
and manually update the “A Record” for your domain.

Please note that your control panel will be unavailable for 24-48 hours. We also recommend that you do not make any changes to your
hosting plan during this migration process. We appreciate your patience in this matter.

My site was WORKING PERFECTLY before they did that. It’s been 8 to 45 second page loads as soon as I was put on the sever found at 208.109.14.115.

WHY ON EARTH WILL NOBODY AT GODADDY HELP ME JUST TO Simply move to a different server than this one? I know it will solve my problem! It’s worked every other time in the past.

I AM ANGRY!

VERY VERY ANGRY!!!!!

UPDATE: 11/10/2010 7:47am

After updating this blog post with the previous update. I went ahead and copied and pasted the above update and sent it as a SLIGHTLY MODIFIED email response to GoDaddy Support.

This is what they came back with this morning….

Dear Cliff,

Your recent correspondence has been escalated to the Office of the President for further review and follow up.

Our office would appreciate the opportunity to speak with you regarding this matter to ensure any concerns you may have are properly addressed. Please feel free to contact our office at 480-505-****, Monday-Friday 7AM-7PM and Saturday-Sunday 7AM-4PM MST (Arizona). Alternatively, if you prefer please let us know a good time and number to reach you during these hours so we may schedule a call back.

We thank you for your understanding and look forward to speaking with you.

Kindest regards,

Corey Slocum

Well it appears that I have a “special phone number” that I can call there at GoDaddy. It seems that “someone” will be expecting my call. This is interesting. Not only that, but this is the “first” time that this has occurred. In the past, there were at least two other incidents where I was EXACTLY WHERE I AM TODAY or TWO STEPS BEYOND THIS, and each of those times, they simply moved me to a new server and my page load woes went away.

Now, two unique things happened differently on my end this time.

1) I put out a VERY PUBLIC Twitter Post, that also syndicated out to Facebook & LinkedIn. It said….

I HATE, LOATHE, ABHOR, DESPISE, & DETEST @Godaddy! Updates made at the bottom of this post: http://gspn.tv/godaddy112010 #GoingToBedAngry!

The folks who manage the GoDaddy’s social media must have got a little concerned when they saw that this message was retweeted a few times. In total, that status update, with a link to this very slow loading blog post, had exposure to more than 100,000 people.

GoDaddy’s Twitter department responded with this…..

@GSPN Can you please DM us your current incident # ? Love to get this resolved & handled by the right dept. for you cc: @nlcast @erikjfisher

I did send a DM to @GoDaddy with my incident number and told them I simply want to be moved off the server that I was put onto on October 28th.

2) The second thing that I think happened differently this time was that I got one of those GoDaddy Support Followup Surveys that asked if my most recent call to support had solved my issue and asked if I would recommend GoDaddy to my friends or family. I’ll just let you guess how I answered those two questions.

Just after those two questions was the ability to provide additional feedback regarding my overall satisfaction with GoDaddy support.

Unfortunately, I forgot to copy that response for posting here. However, it was very much like the update just prior to this one.

So it seems that I have the ability to talk to a whole new department at GoDaddy today. I do plan to call. I am certain that if I can just get someone who has any authority at all over there, that they can get me off this horrible server and my site page loads will return to normal speeds.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
At this point, regardless of what GoDaddy does or does not do, I have already blocked out ALL Monday afternoon and evening to transfer all my sites off of GoDaddy’s servers and over to my BlueHost Account.

I received a generous offer from one of our gspn.tv community members to help me through this progress, someone who has a great deal of experience in migrating sites like mine between hosting companies. So one way or another, I hope to have this and all my sites back to running at optimum speeds by Tuesday of next week.

UPDATE: Sunday, November 14th, 2010

As I am typing this, I am VERY HAPPY to tell you that I am posting this update from my BLUEHOST HOSTING ACCOUNT. After TWO AND A HALF WEEKS of 8 to 45 second page loads and a countless number of phone calls and email exchanges with GoDaddy Support, I finally decided that enough is enough.

I want to point out, again, that this extremely long post is NOT the first time what you are reading about in this blog post has happened to me with GoDaddy. However, I can not begin to tell you what great joy it gives me to be able to say that THIS IS THE LAST TIME EVER that I will ever deal with GoDaddy support related to the hosting of any of the sites that I own.

I am very thankful to Jorge Cisneros has been a loyal member of the gspn.tv community and is now my friend for life. Jorge generously offered to assist me through the entire process of migrating all of my sites from GoDaddy’s servers over to my Blue Host hosing account.

I spent between several hours downloading all of my data from the GoDaddy server and uploading all that data to the BlueHost server. All of this had been done prior to today, Sunday, November 14th, 2010.

Today, at 3pm Eastern Time, I fired up my GoTo Meeting and connected with Jorge via Skype. We spent the next four and a half hours exporting SQL databases, configuring .php files, creating new databases, importing backed up data, creating addon domains, forwarding dns records, etc, etc, etc.

And here I am now, at 8:05pm ET telling the world that my sites are now FREE from the chains of GoDaddy hosting forever!

I am now going to thank God for my friend Jorge and spend the rest of the evening enjoying my family.

Life Is Good!

UPDATE: Saturday, April 30th, 2011

I just not thought to come and post an update here. So I got everything moved over to BlueHost back in November of last year. Things were great for a few months. However, I started to experience outages with BlueHost’s shared hosting services.

It became obvious to me that I could no longer rely on any sort of “shared hosting” services due to the fact that I am actually running an online business where people pay hundreds of dollars to access training materials that they purchase from http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/help.

I don’t have enough time to write out the entire story of what I did next, but I did share that entire story in episode 196 of Podcast Answer Man. I’ll paste an audio player with the file if you would prefer to listen to it from this post:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It has been been nearly three months since I made the switch to a VPS server with ServInt Hosting and I have not experience any down time on my site AT ALL. Nothing. Not even five minutes!

Let’s hope and pray it continues to be this way.

Post comment as
twitter logo facebook logo
Sort: Newest | Oldest
Cliff Ravenscraft

Nope. Never said I hate everything about them. I am keeping them as my domain registrar. However I DO HATE THEIR SHARED HOSTING AND CUSTOMER SERVICE.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

It feels soooooooooo Good!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Steve

Great News. Cliff. Congrats. What about registrations? No websites, just registrations. I have been thinking of moving those too.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Keeping my domains with GoDaddy "for now" I don't think that BlueHost will host a .tv domain.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Christiaan Conover

Cliff,

I had GoDaddy hosting starting in 2005. It was decent, but it had its share of problems. I would experience random outages, and some slow load times occasionally. However, the thing that drove me away for good was their odd firewall settings that prevented basic PHP capabilities like mailing from working properly, even through SMTP servers. I switched to Dreamost for about 9 months but had major server issues with them, and from there switched to Bluehost. I've been on Bluehost for almost 3 years now & haven't looked back once. Speed is superb, and their servers are very reliable (though recently I've been experiencing periods of late night down time for 15-30 minutes at a time).

One thing you may want to look into as an additional speed enhancement for your sites is a service called CloudFlare. It's free, and works using DNS. It takes over the job of the DNS servers for your site, and caches any static content it can to deliver it much more quickly from their CDN. End users won't notice a thing, aside from a decrease in load times. They also protect against malicious agents & requests made to your site. My personal site has seen over a 50% increase in performance since adding CloudFlare. I'd definitely recommend you check it out.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Looks interesting. Though, I'm happy with how things are working now on the BlueHost servers. WIll look into this if I have further performance issues.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Christiaan Conover

Here's a page of videos CloudFlare provides that explain why it's useful http://cnvr.cc/i8lj8L

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

I looked at all the videos and it just doesn't look all that appealing to me. Not sure if I'm missing anything. Sure, it will show me Bot Traffic on the site. However, I'm not so much concerned about that. Google Analytics gives me a ton of valuable data about those who visit my site.

As for the "Never Offline Feature" it seems this would be better suited for a static html style site as it can't call the SQL Database for people who are digging through my dynamic site if my server is actually down.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Christiaan Conover

I see your point. I think the idea is that it keeps cached static versions of the dynamic pages, so that it can still operate if the database is down.

For me personally, I'm a fan of compartmentalizing services, and since DNS is a very important component of a reliable & fast web site I like to delegate that component to folks who make their entire business on DNS. Plus, I'm a web geek so new services are exciting to me :-)

That said, I've seen tangible benefit using it on my Bluehost Wordpress sites. Perhaps not mind-blowing improvements, but they're there. I like it.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

I want to make sure that i really appreciate the suggestion. I've pretty picky when it comes to adopting new things. However, I do so enjoy learning about all the options out there! Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Steve

Is there any wonder that Godaddy has placed itself up for sale? ( but who would want it with these problems?)

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
klandwehr

I know you don't want to spend (or have) the time to move your sites to BlueHost, but I think you will feel a lot better after you do it. No one should have to go thru what you have simply to get their site to load correctly. i wish I could help you do the transfer, but unfortunately I am not sure what I could do. Hopefully everything will go smoothly.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Thanks Kim!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
David Praet

Cliff, I'm glad to hear you've finally made the decision to switch. I know it's a pain, but dealing with companies like this will take years off your life. It's just not worth it.
Good luck.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Thanks. Hope to be migrated over by mid next week.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Rogerspens

I am in the Customer Service business in much the same way. I maintain cancer treatment systems and various cancer centers in Southeast Alabama and Southwest Georgia. If I gave answers like this to my customers i would get booted off the customer sites. Some of the responses you recieved, especially the first one, sound like "form letters" sent by "Phone operators" setting in cubicals who have no technical knowledge at all. My I answer your last question "Why on earth will nobody at Godaddy helm me just to simply move to a diffrent server...", well, Ihave to proof but probably because they want you to "upgrade" to a diffrent package that costs more.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

I would normally agree with you. However, I was only suggested to move to a more expensive plan once. Beyond that, they understood that I don't need those other environments. From there, on, they wanted me to simply upgrade to their "grid hosting" which is the same cost, but where my site is on multiple servers. They just didn't want to manually do it for me.

The reason why they wouldn't just put me on a new hosting server like the one I'm on is because they are phasing them out and they are pretty much putting all their sites left on the "legacy system" into the few servers they have left. Thus, this is why this site has been taking so long to load. :(

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
stephen

Cliff -

Sorry to hear about the poor customer service you are receiving. The performance issues you are having are common with shared hosting environments and are not exclusive to GoDaddy. I would suggest moving to a virtual server environment.

I'm not familiar with Blue Host's hosting options, but I expect they have some variations of the follow:

Shared server environment - This is what you are using. For this service, your website is sharing hardware with a number of other websites. When someone else's website is having a spike in visitors, it will affect the performance of your website. This is a good option for websites where the highest level of performance is not required. Your needs have outgrown this.

Virtual server environment - A virtual server is taking one physical server and breaking it into multiple virtual servers. In this environment, the virtual server has a dedicated portion of the physical server resources (RAM, CPU, Disk Space). Traffic on someone else's website will not affect your website. The key to this service is scaling. You can start at the lowest level of dedicated resources and easily upgrade to more dedicated resources as your needs increase. With this server, you are in complete control of site performance.

Dedicated server environment - For this solution, a physical server is dedicated to your website. All of the server resources are dedicated to you. This option is for companies that have unique software and hardware requirements. God willing, you will need dedicated hardware someday.

If you move to a new hosting provider, but stay on a shared hosting plan, you may have similar performance issues in the future.

-Stephen

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Thanks Stephen. I do understand that by moving to BlueHost's shared hosting that I am likely to eventually run into the same slowness issues. However, I am more confident that I can get to the level of support that I require to simply have them migrate me to a new server if that were to happen.

I was able to finally get to this level with GoDaddy yesterday. However, it took me more than a week and a half and all of the communication that you see in this post, plus several phone calls to get to someone who could help me.

The person I talked to today was ready to bend over backwards to help. However, I had already decided to be done with GoDaddy at that point.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Dodge

Cliff as a network admin, I can tell you that sometimes things get complicated and that at least i the Windows side things go weird at times. However, I can also tell you that they're yanking you around as well (intentionally or not) and that I would get into trouble if I treated someone like this.

At this point may I recommend that you tell yourself what you would tell any one of your listeners and clients. Go ahead and move to s company that cares about your business.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

I've blocked out my Monday afternoon and evening. I have a friend who has offered to help me migrate everything over to BlueHost.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Chuck

I used to have all 100+ of my domain names with GoDaddy. During the several years that I was with them, they seemed responsive to my recommendations about how they could improve the company...including phone calls from vice presidents to make sure they were getting it right.

However, they are run by a megalomaniac named Bob Parsons. After dealing with him on his blog...and his utter disregard for the opinions of his customers about those slutty ads they ran year after year (he actually called his customers idiots or something roughly equivalent...I heard it out of his mouth directly...it wasn't just implied), I moved all my stuff completely away from them to NameCheap (not quite as full-featured a domain registrar, but they got the job done and the price was comparable). I always consider it a danger sign when the president of a company is more interested in being seen hanging out with rock stars than running his company. LOL...

I wouldn't ever trust them to host domains. It's not their primary business...and in the time since I've left, I have watched them move to become a "value-added" company...the interface is less functional than it ever has been before...you constantly have to call into the company for tech support, while they take every opportunity to "up-sell" you to stuff you don't really need. You can't even cancel paid services anymore without a phone call to them.

BlueHost is OK. They would certainly be better than GoDaddy. However, I can't tell you how many times I've been glad I pay an extra 10 bucks a month for an even better shared hosting account with another host. I have NEVER had an issue with them, and their support team is dogged in pursuing any question until its resolved. But, the simple fact is: Hosting is hosting. You'll occasionally have a problem with almost any company. In fact, one of my small hosting accounts (I have about 5 at the moment) is down right now while they tweak a server. Fortunately, it's not my critical sites. But...there's NO EXCUSE for the run-around you've been getting from GoDaddy. Ever wonder why the initials of the company are G.D.? Hahaha!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
charleyhays

Yeah, its hard to believe that Bob Parsons at one point in time he owned Parsons Software which was one of the largest bible software companies around.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
David Cole

(massages Cliff's shoulders) "Hey Buddy, why the long face?" the reply: "Shared Hosting" As a former ISP Tech and mass site migrator (On a Cobalt Qube Raq Server) I winced right along with your blog post. Sheesh. just when you think support has underwhelmed, another low reached. I often screen-grab my error messages. It helps me deal with them to move on :) (staying lost)

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

LOL.. Thanks for the comment and the encouragement. Great to hear from you David!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
James Kennison

Cliff... move to BlueHost! It was the best advice I've ever taken from you. Sure it took me three days to get everything moved over... but man it was so worth it.

I wish I'd documented the process I eventually used (after much trail and error). I do urge you to move your databases exporting and importing directly phpadmin. Then install WordPress and connect to each database manually by editing wp_config

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

It's not the WordPress blogs that I'm concerned about. It's my Membership Management software that runs the gspn.tv Plus Membership that most concerns me.

But yes, I think it's time to make the switch. Just sent an email to my gspn.tv mailing list letting them know that I may be working on this within the next few weeks.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
CarolesThought

I noticed something was up when I was was working on the Weekly Round Up - yeah - REALLY SLOW! I have heard nothing but bad things about GoDaddy hosting. I'm sorry you're having so much trouble... Maybe you need to hand this off to Andrea and save your blood pressure! :-D

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

If only it were so easy to hand it off. There is a great deal of custom stuff that I've had custom built. There's really not anyone familiar with several of the items that need to be moved. The idea of moving all the Plus Membership mechanisms is painful enough. I don't look forward to the day that I actually go through the stress of moving it. ;)

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Steve Riekeberg

I have my domains through GoDaddy, but their hosting is absolutely horrible. I wouldn't wish their pathetic hosting on my enemies, much less my friends, wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Yep, they are good with domains. Just stink as a web host. :(

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
charleyhays

Cliff,
Sorry to hear about your Godaddy experience, although I'm not surprised as I had a similar experience a couple of years ago with them. (And my site didn't get nearly as much traffic as yours).

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

Yep.. this is like the 4th big issue in the past four years

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Cliff Ravenscraft

That is awesome. Thanks Zac!

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Erik Fisher

Wellness Break Radio was basically experiencing the same thing with GoDaddy, and they did similar emails with us. We were up for renewal anyway, so we dumped them and went to Wellnessbreakradio.com.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Previous post:

Next post: