Tag: godaddy

Domain squatters suck

I’ve been trying to move domain registration and DNS hosting for darcynorman.net from GoDaddy to Dreamhost for a couple of months. It’s been a long and frustrating process, involving faxing my driver’s license to Arizona to somehow prove I am who I say I am.

I just logged into my Dreamhost account to check on the status (still hasn’t finalized – they sure did set it up in a hurry, but it takes a looooong time to switch off of GoDaddy). On a lark, I tried adding registration for darcynorman.com. But Dreamhost’s registration utility complained that the domain was already taken.

Mwaaaah? Another D’Arcy Norman out there? Lemme check that out. A quick whois darcynorman.com turned up this: 

   Domain Name: DARCYNORMAN.COM
   Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
   Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
   Name Server: CNS1.CANADIANWEBHOSTING.COM
   Name Server: CNS2.CANADIANWEBHOSTING.COM
   Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
   Updated Date: 16-mar-2006
   Creation Date: 16-mar-2006
   Expiration Date: 16-mar-2007

Oh, wait. No. It’s a domain squatter. Sitting on my name, assumedly hoping for a portion of the mad cash this blog generates. Mad cash, I tell you. Some lame squatter leech decided to register my name in the hopes I’d pay a ransom to get it back. At least the squatter is using a Canadian service provider to park the DNS for the domain. I guess that’s better than having it offshored to Moscow or something.

The combination of cheap domain registrations and “secure/private” registrations where you can hide behind a proxy make this practice possible. When I register domains, I need to go through CIRA verification, accept agreements about usage, etc… But these roaches can register other people’s names and park them for ransom. Rules (like locks) are for the honest people.

Screw you, squatter. I just went and registered darcynorman.ca – the only other variant of the domain I’d care about. Go ahead and squat on the rest, you rat bastage.

I’ve been trying to move domain registration and DNS hosting for darcynorman.net from GoDaddy to Dreamhost for a couple of months. It’s been a long and frustrating process, involving faxing my driver’s license to Arizona to somehow prove I am who I say I am.

I just logged into my Dreamhost account to check on the status (still hasn’t finalized – they sure did set it up in a hurry, but it takes a looooong time to switch off of GoDaddy). On a lark, I tried adding registration for darcynorman.com. But Dreamhost’s registration utility complained that the domain was already taken.

Mwaaaah? Another D’Arcy Norman out there? Lemme check that out. A quick whois darcynorman.com turned up this: 

   Domain Name: DARCYNORMAN.COM
   Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
   Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
   Name Server: CNS1.CANADIANWEBHOSTING.COM
   Name Server: CNS2.CANADIANWEBHOSTING.COM
   Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
   Updated Date: 16-mar-2006
   Creation Date: 16-mar-2006
   Expiration Date: 16-mar-2007

Oh, wait. No. It’s a domain squatter. Sitting on my name, assumedly hoping for a portion of the mad cash this blog generates. Mad cash, I tell you. Some lame squatter leech decided to register my name in the hopes I’d pay a ransom to get it back. At least the squatter is using a Canadian service provider to park the DNS for the domain. I guess that’s better than having it offshored to Moscow or something.

The combination of cheap domain registrations and “secure/private” registrations where you can hide behind a proxy make this practice possible. When I register domains, I need to go through CIRA verification, accept agreements about usage, etc… But these roaches can register other people’s names and park them for ransom. Rules (like locks) are for the honest people.

Screw you, squatter. I just went and registered darcynorman.ca – the only other variant of the domain I’d care about. Go ahead and squat on the rest, you rat bastage.

Thinking of ditching GoDaddy

The performance of my shared server at GoDaddy leaves a LOT to be desired. Pages render out of the database in several seconds, when they should be easily generated in under a second. Their tech support response was to blame images and javascript, when the actual database-based page generation itself is waaaay too slow. Even when pages are rendered OK, they may be spit out somehow triggering a file download rather than content in the browser. (you may have seen a “Download file: index.php” dialog box – I get it all the freaking time)
Comments on the Wordpress support forum pointed to perhaps the server being overwhelmed and reverting to a “safe” download behaviour.

Either way, I think it’s time to look at the options. I’m currently looking at DreamHost. Their services seem really good (use a wiki for support info, have SSH access and a bunch of other nicenesses that GoDaddy doesn’t). Are there better options? Should I be concerned about Patriot Act and DMCA implications with an American hosting provider?

I’m also wondering about what the migration process is. GoDaddy hosts the DNS as well, so how smooth is it to move that to another provider?

The performance of my shared server at GoDaddy leaves a LOT to be desired. Pages render out of the database in several seconds, when they should be easily generated in under a second. Their tech support response was to blame images and javascript, when the actual database-based page generation itself is waaaay too slow. Even when pages are rendered OK, they may be spit out somehow triggering a file download rather than content in the browser. (you may have seen a “Download file: index.php” dialog box – I get it all the freaking time)
Comments on the WordPress support forum pointed to perhaps the server being overwhelmed and reverting to a “safe” download behaviour.

Either way, I think it’s time to look at the options. I’m currently looking at DreamHost. Their services seem really good (use a wiki for support info, have SSH access and a bunch of other nicenesses that GoDaddy doesn’t). Are there better options? Should I be concerned about Patriot Act and DMCA implications with an American hosting provider?

I’m also wondering about what the migration process is. GoDaddy hosts the DNS as well, so how smooth is it to move that to another provider?

WordPress/MySQL performance issues?

Since updating this blog to WP 2.0, the WP-Cache plugin has stopped working as it had been (i.e., it’s not doing anything anymore), and the performance of either WordPress or MySQL has been incredibly sucktacular. It can take over 30 seconds to generate a page. Requests are occasionally timing out. This just ain’t right.

I thought it might be a GoDaddy issue – they’ve had database performance issues in the past. But they assure me that everything is running fine. One of the downsides of using a hosting service is that I kinda have to take them at their word.

Next, I thought perhaps I am simply hitting the database too hard, with all of the plugins that I use adding up to 130+ queries to generate the main page of this blog. So, I temporarily disabled all database-related plugins, and switched themes to the stock Kubrick theme. No joy. Still takes (up to) 30 seconds to generate a page.

I turn everything back on, and there’s no noticeable difference in page generation time. The frustrating thing is that the time to generate a page appears to vary wildly – from just over a second, to over 30 seconds. For the same page.

My gut’s telling me it’s a server load issue. The only stuff I have running on my account is WordPress 2.0 (I have a wiki, and PlanetADCE is still there for legacy purposes until I get around to dropping it – but neither of these gets any traffic).

Are there any performance issues with WordPress? Can I go back to GoDaddy and know for sure that they need to fix something?

Update: I just got an “answer” from GoDaddy Support. They suggest that I switch to use their Web Site Tonight product – apparently either a proprietary or private label “website templating application”. Given that the “Premium” package for that product provides you with 20 pages to work with, I don’t think this support person groks wtf a blog is. 20 pages would last me a couple of weeks. And the hosting package I have specifically includes PHP and MySQL servers, which is why I switched to GoDaddy in the first place. Now, they’re trying to upsell me to a higher hosting tier rather than fixing their database performance? That just sucks. I’ve asked the support person to escalate the issue, because the only other viable option is to migrate to a different hosting provider.

Since updating this blog to WP 2.0, the WP-Cache plugin has stopped working as it had been (i.e., it’s not doing anything anymore), and the performance of either WordPress or MySQL has been incredibly sucktacular. It can take over 30 seconds to generate a page. Requests are occasionally timing out. This just ain’t right.

I thought it might be a GoDaddy issue – they’ve had database performance issues in the past. But they assure me that everything is running fine. One of the downsides of using a hosting service is that I kinda have to take them at their word.

Next, I thought perhaps I am simply hitting the database too hard, with all of the plugins that I use adding up to 130+ queries to generate the main page of this blog. So, I temporarily disabled all database-related plugins, and switched themes to the stock Kubrick theme. No joy. Still takes (up to) 30 seconds to generate a page.

I turn everything back on, and there’s no noticeable difference in page generation time. The frustrating thing is that the time to generate a page appears to vary wildly – from just over a second, to over 30 seconds. For the same page.

My gut’s telling me it’s a server load issue. The only stuff I have running on my account is WordPress 2.0 (I have a wiki, and PlanetADCE is still there for legacy purposes until I get around to dropping it – but neither of these gets any traffic).

Are there any performance issues with WordPress? Can I go back to GoDaddy and know for sure that they need to fix something?

Update: I just got an “answer” from GoDaddy Support. They suggest that I switch to use their Web Site Tonight product – apparently either a proprietary or private label “website templating application”. Given that the “Premium” package for that product provides you with 20 pages to work with, I don’t think this support person groks wtf a blog is. 20 pages would last me a couple of weeks. And the hosting package I have specifically includes PHP and MySQL servers, which is why I switched to GoDaddy in the first place. Now, they’re trying to upsell me to a higher hosting tier rather than fixing their database performance? That just sucks. I’ve asked the support person to escalate the issue, because the only other viable option is to migrate to a different hosting provider.

GoDaddy increased account limits!

Patrick just came by to ask me about my experience with GoDaddy, so I was telling him about the great deal – 25 GB of bandwidth per month and 500MB of disk space. Patrick looked at me quizzically and said “No, that’s not right… It’s 250GB and 5GB.”

Wha? So, I check my GoDaddy account, and they’ve increased the hosting account limits! It is now 250GB of bandwidth per month, and 5GB of disk space. For $5CDN/month.

GoDaddy account limits increased

GoDaddy ROCKS! I just hope they can stay in business at these rates. Now, if they hosted Ruby, I’d have a nice testbed for playing with Rails…

Patrick just came by to ask me about my experience with GoDaddy, so I was telling him about the great deal – 25 GB of bandwidth per month and 500MB of disk space. Patrick looked at me quizzically and said “No, that’s not right… It’s 250GB and 5GB.”

Wha? So, I check my GoDaddy account, and they’ve increased the hosting account limits! It is now 250GB of bandwidth per month, and 5GB of disk space. For $5CDN/month.

GoDaddy account limits increased

GoDaddy ROCKS! I just hope they can stay in business at these rates. Now, if they hosted Ruby, I’d have a nice testbed for playing with Rails…

Godaddy Database Goofup

So, it’s 4:50pm Friday afternoon. I’m about to click “Publish” on a post about the random image rotator dealie. Boom. WordPress throws up a big old “Error establishing a database connection” error screen. Crap.

I login to my Godaddy account page, hit the database manager, and PHPMyAdmin can connect. The database is there, and running. WTF. I notice my ShortStat table has ballooned to over 100MB of data. That’s insane, so I truncate it. I’ll remove the plugin. I check again – maybe I was over my DB quota or something – and it’s still no joy from WP. I try Referrer Karma – it uses the same MySQL database, and throws a scarier – but more helpful – error message. “Warning: mysql_connect(): User ‘dnorman’ has exceeded the ‘max_connections’ resource (current value: 50)”

Ahah! Something wrong with the database server. But… I haven’t added any new apps or anything, and am in a relatively low traffic load (compared to, say the week of WWDC), so my blog shouldn’t be crippling the database server.

I decide to go to the GoDaddy support page – they’ll have a “Status” section that indicates that Apache is up, MySQL is up, etc… Right? No. OK, So I fill in the email form, even though it says they won’t be able to respond to email for an estimated 10 hours. About 1 minute after clicking “Send”, I break into a cold sweat.

My blog is dead in the water. So, I call their phone support line. In the back of my head, I’m thinking “So, this is how they keep their rates so low – I’ll get gouged on long distance support, since they don’t offer a toll-free line.” At least it isn’t a 1-900 number or anything. I get connected, pass through voicemail menu hell (why does it ask me to type in my account number if the person who eventually picks up will just be asking me to repeat it anyway?). I eventually get through, and the support tech is nice enough. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, but would I mind if he put me on hold while he goes to talk to someone with a clue? Sure. The hold music doesn’t suck.

13 minutes on the phone, long distance, to GoDaddy tech support. Only to hear “oh, yeah. that’s a known issue. They’ve got their wrenches and hammers out, and are working on it. It should only be a couple of hours. Uh, yeah, your data is probably safe. Can I send you an email survey so you can let us know you were satisfied with this call?”

3 hours later, and it looks like things are back up and running. How about sending me a survey about that?

So, it’s 4:50pm Friday afternoon. I’m about to click “Publish” on a post about the random image rotator dealie. Boom. WordPress throws up a big old “Error establishing a database connection” error screen. Crap.

I login to my Godaddy account page, hit the database manager, and PHPMyAdmin can connect. The database is there, and running. WTF. I notice my ShortStat table has ballooned to over 100MB of data. That’s insane, so I truncate it. I’ll remove the plugin. I check again – maybe I was over my DB quota or something – and it’s still no joy from WP. I try Referrer Karma – it uses the same MySQL database, and throws a scarier – but more helpful – error message. “Warning: mysql_connect(): User ‘dnorman’ has exceeded the ‘max_connections’ resource (current value: 50)”

Ahah! Something wrong with the database server. But… I haven’t added any new apps or anything, and am in a relatively low traffic load (compared to, say the week of WWDC), so my blog shouldn’t be crippling the database server.

I decide to go to the GoDaddy support page – they’ll have a “Status” section that indicates that Apache is up, MySQL is up, etc… Right? No. OK, So I fill in the email form, even though it says they won’t be able to respond to email for an estimated 10 hours. About 1 minute after clicking “Send”, I break into a cold sweat.

My blog is dead in the water. So, I call their phone support line. In the back of my head, I’m thinking “So, this is how they keep their rates so low – I’ll get gouged on long distance support, since they don’t offer a toll-free line.” At least it isn’t a 1-900 number or anything. I get connected, pass through voicemail menu hell (why does it ask me to type in my account number if the person who eventually picks up will just be asking me to repeat it anyway?). I eventually get through, and the support tech is nice enough. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, but would I mind if he put me on hold while he goes to talk to someone with a clue? Sure. The hold music doesn’t suck.

13 minutes on the phone, long distance, to GoDaddy tech support. Only to hear “oh, yeah. that’s a known issue. They’ve got their wrenches and hammers out, and are working on it. It should only be a couple of hours. Uh, yeah, your data is probably safe. Can I send you an email survey so you can let us know you were satisfied with this call?”

3 hours later, and it looks like things are back up and running. How about sending me a survey about that?