Category: hosting

StructuredWeb Is Anything But Structured

I just found a hilarious email I got at my old job about the web hosting company they used….
”
Ok, I know we both know much Structured Web sucks ass, but I found a real problem with their system.

Scenario
· So everything on structured web uses the root domain name of www.StructuredWeb.com
· Every customer they have just acts as an alias on their system
· This really confused me when I was working with our Live/Test site setup because I couldn’t understand how it was configured
· I was searching for some customer satisfaction policy at SW, so I Googled “customer satisfaction site:structuredweb.com”
· One of the hits took me to this Page
· After reading it for a second, I thought it looked very out of place
· So I was trying to figure out what page this came from, which is very difficult because SW uses their own crappy CMS for their site also
· But then I tried something:
o I looked up another SW customer “Integrated Supply Consultants”
o I grabbed the CMS URL following the end of the domain name from what I found on that hit (see above): sw/common/custom/internet/custompage.asp/SETSESS/1/ASE/74/MSE/0/USE/1/TSE/1/LSE/1/SSE/4071/OSE/1/SWID/1
o I tagged that to the end of Integrated Supply Consultants Site: ISC + CMS URL INFO
· Look at that….
· Using that same example:
o Integrated Supply Consultants
o Enterprise Systems Group
o Structured Web
o XXXXXX !!! AND even on our NEW SITE
· This is our Current Contact Us Page. I can easily map that onto another site’s URL, Template, etc.
o Enterprise Systems Group
o Structured Web
· And my personal favorite, our About Us Page:
o Enterprise Systems Group
o Structured Web
o Centratel
o Mpire Telecom

The CMS system doesn’t care what site (or Account) the content actually belongs to and will display it on any site they host.
Google is also indexing files that are stored in the customer center, even if they aren’t linked on any page. And it’s being indexed as coming from www.structuredweb.com, not the appropriate site/account who uploaded the file as demonstrated Here.
I can’t believe they sell a “complete turn-key system” that has such a major flaw and expect people to run their entire business off it.
”

What a piece of Structured CRAP!

MediaTemple Complaint

We understand that backups are critical to any hosting service and we look forward to providing you with a stellar solution that will ensure trouble-free backups.I contacted support (Support ID#  319596) on January 4, 2008 to find out the status of the backup feature and was told a new backup feature would be coming in the next few months.

This is the complaint I sent to MediaTemple about their lack of service:

 

 

Attn: Media Temple Customer Service

     Starting late in Q4 of 2007 and all through Q1 of 2008, I have experienced a number of difficulties with Media Temple’s (gs) service. First, I have had a great deal of sporadic and domain wide downtime. At any given time, all services (Web, FTP, SSH, MySQL, etc) all become unavailable for up to 8 minutes. I have been relying on Media Temple to deliver excellent service but there has been a real lack of that in the last 6 months. At first I thought the issue was somehow only related to my hosting service but after reviewing the Media Temple Support Forums and other online forums I found many other users who were experiencing similar issues. The was the response to my most recent communication with support (Support ID#355346):

Support response: 2008/03/18 10:53
We are aware that at times you have been seeing slow response, and at times, no response at all from your server. We are continuing to work on our system that dynamically isolates and allocates server resources among our (gs)Grid Service customers. This system is intended to keep your site running smoothly even when other customers have surges in their traffic causing an unusual server load. This works both ways. If you have a surge in traffic, we want to make sure your pages continue to be served without delays or slowness. 

If the capabilities of the SmartPool v.2 shared MySQL server are not adequate for your site, you can purchase a MySQL Container to have your own dedicated MySQL server. You can do this in the Account Center, by rolling over the Domains tab, clicking on your primary domain, then clicking on Manage Databases. From that page, click on the MySQL Container tab on the right of the page, then click Enable Container. Once the Container is enabled, you can use the Query Analyzer and MySQL report on the Container tab as well as phpMyAdmin to get some performance information. The Repair Tables link on this page can also help improve performance by recreating indexes for all of your databases.

We appreciate your feedback and comments as we work to improve this system.

Best Regards,

Sean O’Brien
Customer Support
(mt) Media Temple
<v> 877-578-4000
<f> 310-564-2007

In a later conversation with the support team, I was directed to this page: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/category/system-incidents/gs-grid-service-cluster1-service-availability/ to keep track of the availability of the system. Notice this particular blog entry was opened in late February and lasted nearly a month in the system, only to be marked resolved and link to another issue that is still open. I use websites to present projects for classes and other academic projects and during 3 of the last 5 presentations I have given, the site has gone down during the presentation and embarrassed me, my team mates and our faculty sponsors. Even at this moment I am not able to access phpMyAdmin to administer my MySQL databases.
      Second is the lack of a backup feature. One of the reasons I signed up with media temple was the to automate the backup process for my sites. This feature has been "Unavailable" on the control panel for more than 4 months now. The following message has been posted on the site since the feature was taken offline:
Our backup component is unavailable at this time. We are currently developing a new "Data Backups" tool which will offer all the functionality we had previously, plus some new features. We have received a lot of feedback from our customers and cannot wait to show you what we have in store. We plan on launching the new tool in the Q1 2008. We understand that backups are critical to any hosting service and we look forward to providing you with a stellar solution that will ensure trouble-free backups.
I contacted support (Support ID#  319596) on January 4, 2008 to find out the status of the backup feature and was told a new backup feature would be coming in the next few months. As I’m sure you know, we are now in Q2 of 2008 and after checking the page just now I see the feature is still unavailable. As you state, "…backups are critical to any hosting service…" and yet there is no backup feature. 
      Finally, I am a bit unhappy with the domain renewal service offered by Media Temple. Regarding Support ID 323602, you can see that I requested one of my domains not be renewed. After talking to the support rep, I discovered that the renewal had already been processed, even though the domain had not expired. I found the reminder/notification of expiration email that was automatically sent out to be vague, confusing and inaccurate. The email should indicate that MT will automatically start processing the renewal and state the deadline to cancel the renewal. 
  For these reasons I would like to request to cancel my service with Media Temple and request a refund for the annual Grid Service that was renewed on January 16, 2008.