Tag: web

Categories
hosting

Netfirms does not want you to quit

Beginning this year I grabbed couple of special hosting deals with Netfirms. I was attracted by low cost and ability to run PHP4, PHP5 and .NET all under same account. As I spent more and more time trying to figure out why the heck a bunch of familiar and well-worked out scripts wouldn’t run on Netfirm’s hosting platform I came to know how messed up the whole deal was. Tech support responded to my e-mail after 4 days (I already forgot I filed a ticket). Performance was iffy at best – sometimes on par with my home-run server, sometimes way slower. ASP.NET application that runs without any tweaking on my company’s internal server failed to start in seemingly similar environment on Netfirms. You think I could use their tech support? Yeah, right.

So couple of days ago, as both my domain and account were reaching expiration date, I decided to move out. Transferring domain was the easiest, so I did this as soon as I have made the decision. Canceling account, however, is a much more difficult task. First of all – there is no way you can cancel from your control panel. And, there is no way of canceling via e-mail request to support. The only way to cancel the account with Netfirms is to call their toll-free number (I don’t want this idea to really get out, but I was expecting a 900- number) between 9am and 5pm EST and request the cancellation over the phone. Let me check what year is this? Right, still 2007.

Generally, I wouldn’t go over such a routine task as canceling some online service unless there was some incentive. Well, the incentive is as follows – nowhere on Netfirms’ web site nor in their knowledge base does it say how to cancel the account. While doing the digging I stumbled upon some blogs that describe exactly same problems with Netfirms I was facing – poor service, non-existent customer service, hard-to-find cancellation procedure.

However, I don’t see anyone at Netfirms to care. They seem to be overly busy taking new sign ups.

Categories
cellular

Hurray! AT&T brings high-speed cellular link to Brooklyn!

ATT Cingular LogoIt’s been in the works for quite some time. AT&T, in fact, did announce that they are expanding their 3G/HSDPA network and other good things will come to those who wait. However, last couple of weeks I did experience some cell service outage and started thinking that moving to AT&T’s GSM network wasn’t, probably, the best idea. Today, however, I was very much surprised, when while standing on a subway platform in Brooklyn instead of regular E icon I saw 3G . This is indeed very good, since now my newsreader is able to finish downloading all the packages in no time and I can, finally, follow the links from the blogs and feeds I am reading while on the subway.
On the same note – Verizon phone was showing EVDO icon for quite some time now. I just wasn’t really paying attention to it.

Let me brag a little on how this should benefit the small businesses (one of which I am a proud owner of). First of all – it lets you justify purchasing some of those cool smartphones or PDA phones. Not iPhone though, sorry, iPhone is still on a slow EDGE. Second, you may be able to beef up your sales pitch with the help of your web site – some of our clients have been doing just that (they report that the impact is tremendous). Third – it’s cheaper to communicate via e-mail/messaging/web then through the phone, although most of us don’t realize it yet. This, actually, allows you to purchase a plan with less minutes and use data connection for messaging. I am yet to test Skype on my HTC Advantage, but I am sure it’ll work much better then on EVDO.

With all that said – I can’t wait for WiMax. Oh, and Verizon – where’s my FiOS?

Categories
blog

Migration Complete

Migration from Blogger to WordPress is complete, thanks to great importing tool in WP. Although it wasn’t easy, this is the way it worked:

  1. Create an account on WordPress.com
  2. Login, go to Manage->Import to import all posts from Blogger to that account’s blog.
  3. Assign authors. Since I am the only one author here, this was easy.
  4. Manage->Export all posts to the XML file.
  5. Login to your hosted WordPress blog.
  6. Assign authors (again!).
  7. Manage->Import from WordPress, browse for downloaded XML file.
  8. In my case – deal with Uncategorized posts (that I had the majority of), took me around couple of hours to assign them to proper categories/tags.

Last time I touched WordPress was more then a year ago, so I was glad to find out that WP looks better then ever. Number of useful (from my personal perspective) plugins is finally catching up, I was able to find, install and set them up in no time, the blog engine itself is very fast and still good looking.