Site owners check your site for robots.txt file!

[David]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

I wouldn't put it past vistapages given their horrible customer review
record. One day their system admin deleted all my perl scripts just to
see who was bombarding the server. Well, it wasn't my scripts, but he
didn't even bother to put my scripts back, lol.

First of all I wouldn't call him a sysadmin. Second if any sysadmin went
into my site and removed anything without first telling/asking I would
find another web provider. FAST There is *NO* excuse for that type of
action. PEROID

Also I've told the SA many times about their security risks, but he
doesn't bother fixing them.

That should of been a clue to move your stuff somewhere else.

Not that long ago my entire account was

wiped. He simply told me to make sure I periodically change my cPanel
password. Well, it turned out the hacker even deleted all _their_ site
back ups, so they couldn't restore my site. You can't just log into
cPanel and start deleting the entire server files because you don't
have access. It was obviously a site hack. Oh well. I guess we can
look back at such things and laugh.

Personally I don't see much to laugh about. That is really sad to know
there are businesses out there like that.

Just beware of web hosts that promise huge amounts of bandwidth, like
100GB, for practically nothing, like $5/month.

Anyone with 2 brain cells would know that bandwidth is NOT cheap. Just
how do you think that they are able to do this? Perhaps over
subscribing. Perhaps if one *reads* the companies TOS they might find
that it is not "unlimited" or "unmetered"

If web host want, and

 

[David]

BB, I had several domains with vistapages, but only switched one domain
so far. It was a very important domain-- business related.

And how long will it be before it happens to the others. Are you willing
to gamble that it will not happen.

As far as contacting vistapages, I can't bear yet another conversation
with them.

Man they would hate me than, I would be calling them all the time when
things were not working properly.

And call me cheap for not yet switching all my domains to

another host because they still have my money and laugh whenever I ask
for a partial refund.

Which has cost you more, the loss of traffic or the difference in
whatever refund that you would be getting?

I think the smart thing to do would be cut my losses and move.

 

[William Tasso]

Fleeing from the madness of the arbpen.com jungle
Adrienne Boswell <[email protected]> stumbled into
news:alt.html,alt.internet.search-engines,alt.www.webmaster,uk.net.web.authoring
and said:

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed (e-mail address removed) writing in

ouch!

How would your host (reliably) know your IP?

I really doubt that this was done with evil intent,

I doubt it was done by a sys admin at all.

probably a misguided
system administrator who got tired of seeing 404 errors, but was too lazy
to look up the robots.txt protocol and get it right.

far fetched? ok, plausible.

It's perfectly okay to have blank file, that way the bots are happy, and
the system admins are happy, too.

Certainly it is

Speaking generally (and not to the o/p in particular) I'd suspect the
developer had been experimenting and forgotton to delete the file before
the latest sync/upload.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

....

Anyhow, I would appreciate other web host recommendations.

www.liquidsix.com - reliable, fast, full-featured, inexpensive and
astonishingly helpful. (No connection, just consistently delighted with
them).

 

[Jerry Stuckle]

Adrienne Boswell wrote:




I'm cynical enough to suspect that it was evil intent, because hosting
companies can reduce costs by reducing traffic to small sites on
flat-fee hosting plans.
No robots, no search hits, no traffic.

I doubt it, Andy. They wouldn't stay in business for long if they did.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
(e-mail address removed)
==================

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Adrienne! Not even a bit dead, I see, just absent, eh?

BB

No, not really absent either, just haven't been posting to SE as much as
before.

 

[softwarelabus]

I doubt it, Andy. They wouldn't stay in business for long if they did.

There are too many newbies don't read hosting ratings, so they'll
probably stay in business. Vistapages really has horrible ratings.

Truth is I don't play with robots.txt files. It could have been from a
hacker, but I've talked with vista SA's too much to know they're not
innocent. IMHO they really have no morals.

Paul

 

[William Tasso]

Fleeing from the madness of the http://groups.google.com jungle
<[email protected]> stumbled into
news:alt.html,alt.internet.search-engines,alt.www.webmaster,uk.net.web.authoring
and said:

...
Truth is I don't play with robots.txt files. It could have been from a
hacker, but I've talked with vista SA's too much to know they're not
innocent.

Interesting - I've never heard of a s/a do that before.

Live & learn.

 

[axel]

Fleeing from the madness of the http://groups.google.com jungle

Interesting - I've never heard of a s/a do that before.

It sounds like a breach of professional ethics.

When I worked as a Sys Admin, not even in our wildest nightmares would
we have envisaged talking to a customer... we were not even allowed to
be disturbed by the second level helpdesk except in an emergency or by
email.

Axel

 

[Andy Dingley]

It sounds like a breach of professional ethics.

These are _sysadmins_ we're talking about. Web sysadmins at that.

Sysadmins will cheerfully switch off your core business server for 2
days, on 1 days notice. Even those who work foor your company 8-(


(Not a happy bunny today!)

 

[Karl Groves]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in

There are too many newbies don't read hosting ratings, so they'll
probably stay in business. Vistapages really has horrible ratings.

Truth is I don't play with robots.txt files. It could have been from
a hacker, but I've talked with vista SA's too much to know they're not
innocent. IMHO they really have no morals.

Which begs the question: Why are you still with them?
It is hilarious how many people come to newsgroups and complain about their
hosts. MOVE! If you hate them so much, take your business elsewhere.
Problem solved.

 

[Jerry Stuckle]

There are too many newbies don't read hosting ratings, so they'll
probably stay in business. Vistapages really has horrible ratings.

Truth is I don't play with robots.txt files. It could have been from a
hacker, but I've talked with vista SA's too much to know they're not
innocent. IMHO they really have no morals.

Paul

Paul,

Word gets around. Sure, there are new suckers coming all the time. But
it's also very expensive to try to get new customers. Sooner or later
the turnover will kill them, if nothing else.


--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
(e-mail address removed)
==================

 

[Jerry Stuckle]

These are _sysadmins_ we're talking about. Web sysadmins at that.

Sysadmins will cheerfully switch off your core business server for 2
days, on 1 days notice. Even those who work foor your company 8-(


(Not a happy bunny today!)

Yep, and it is a huge breach of professional ethics.

And any sysadmin who does something like that for any company I've
worked or consulted for would be on the streets about five minutes after
switching off the server. Fooling with a customer's robots.txt (or any
other file) might allow him 10 minutes.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
(e-mail address removed)
==================

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ [ (e-mail address removed) ] on Tuesday 08 August 2006 19:31 \__


To put it politely, your Web host got you f**ked. This is unacceptable unless
you received some form of notification and an opportunity to rebutt. I have
heard similar stories before though (Cat, are you there?).

BB, I had several domains with vistapages, but only switched one domain
so far. It was a very important domain-- business related.

Now that you mention this, I suspect this affected Darren as well. When the
shared server is getting overloaded, rather than upgrading or
redistributing, the host filters out visitors (indirectly -- humans too).
It's laziness; or an attempt to cut down running costs.

As far as contacting vistapages, I can't bear yet another conversation
with them. And call me cheap for not yet switching all my domains to
another host because they still have my money and laugh whenever I ask
for a partial refund.

I suggest you get a host you can trust. If you can't speak to your host and
if dread an argument with the host, then the relationship is unhealthy. It's
time to break up.

BTW, so far I've had good luck with bethehost.com-- knock on wood.
Except they've been under severe attacks from a hacker this week and
had to take the entire server down for about 4 hours. I still give
them an A grade. They always email everyone with server updates, etc.
As for vistapages, I can't recall a single informative email from them.

Anyhow, I would appreciate other web host recommendations.

I have been happy with http://catalyst2.com for the couple of years that I
was with them (still going strong). I have 3 domains on their servers and
communication with them is a snap (spoke to them last night).

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed (e-mail address removed) writing
in

Rather than relying on back-ups of a site, a far better policy is to
maintain a development version of the site on your own machines and
refresh the production site from the development site as and when
required.

Of course if the site makes changes in a database, then the database
will need to be backed up separately.

I do this on a nightly basis for two small sites I maintain - I run a batch
file that FTPs them to my development machine (also a good way to keep my
development machine's data pretty much in sync.)

 

[Big Bill]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed (e-mail address removed) writing
in

I do this on a nightly basis for two small sites I maintain - I run a batch
file that FTPs them to my development machine (also a good way to keep my
development machine's data pretty much in sync.)

Adrienne, my dove, you need a spell-check on your site. It seems to be
the one thing you lack :-(

BB

 

[John Bokma]

Rather than relying on back-ups of a site, a far better policy is to
maintain a development version of the site on your own machines and
refresh the production site from the development site as and when
required.

See: <http://johnbokma.com/windows/apache-virtual-hosts-xp.html>
on how to create local versions of your site(s). (Windows XP).

 

[Big Bill]

See: <http://johnbokma.com/windows/apache-virtual-hosts-xp.html>
on how to create local versions of your site(s). (Windows XP).

This is aimed more at the dynamic site?

BB

 

[John Bokma]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

[..]

See: <http://johnbokma.com/windows/apache-virtual-hosts-xp.html>
on how to create local versions of your site(s). (Windows XP).

This is aimed more at the dynamic site?

I have several dynamic sites that way, and static. With dynamic you
probably want to install PHP, and MySQL.

For example, I use PHPbb on one site, and have written a (Perl) script [1]
that is able to download a backup. This backup can be copied into the
local MySQL database, so I have a 1:1 copy (for a short while).

[1] http://johnbokma.com/perl/phpbb-remote-backup.html

 

[Big Bill]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

[..]

See: <http://johnbokma.com/windows/apache-virtual-hosts-xp.html>
on how to create local versions of your site(s). (Windows XP).

This is aimed more at the dynamic site?

I have several dynamic sites that way, and static. With dynamic you
probably want to install PHP, and MySQL.

I did have PHP at one point but things went a bit foobar on 98SE.

For example, I use PHPbb on one site, and have written a (Perl) script [1]
that is able to download a backup. This backup can be copied into the
local MySQL database, so I have a 1:1 copy (for a short while).

[1] http://johnbokma.com/perl/phpbb-remote-backup.html

I'll probably get servers going here but just to fiddle with.

BB