Geeky rant about Internet services

I’m putting this under a cut because it’s only of interest to people who deal with their own technical issues. If you do hassle out techie stuff, you may find this of interest (and I can think of a few people on my flist who may find all this relevant!). I’m just ranting. *sigh*

OMFG, what an effing PITA. And it’s all Google’s fault. (I can blame them, they’re big enough to take it, *heh*.)

When I first got online in 1994, I signed up with AOL. After I was tired of paying per-minute connection charges, I switched briefly to AT&T Worldnet, got sick of them real fast and signed up with a local ISP named Net1plus. Well…for a number of years now, I’ve been very exasperated with Net1plus. Their customer service is awful, they have the worst website I’ve ever seen, I’ve had endless connection problems with my DSL service through them, and their rates seem comparatively high. But I felt stuck. I initially set up my vampire research website, By Light Unseen, as my free “home page” on Net1plus, and it got so well-known, it was linked and indexed all over the web with the Net1plus URL. Along with that, I used my Net1plus e-mail for just about everything, it was my primary personal e-mail. Changing it would be a bitch.

But the lack of service has been getting to be a real drag. I’m starting to wonder what’s going on with this place, really. They don’t accept e-mail service requests, and they only answer the phone during banker’s hours. When I first registered the domain for By Light Unseen Media, I registered it with Net1plus, out of brand loyalty, then I had them host it. I don’t pay the lowest hosting rate, either–it’s the second one up in the tier.

But every time I try to log into my hosted domain admin console, MSIE and Firefox go into frantic red alert mode because they say it has an “invalid certificate.” That’s gone on for three years. When I log into my customer account on Net1plus’ website, the account page comes up saying, “NOTE: This page is currrently under construction. If you usually use the account center to carry out a task that is not AVAILABLE here, please login to the old Account Center HERE.” That hasn’t changed for three years. When I do get into the admin console, it’s incredibly slow and sluggish. Why haven’t I talked to Net1plus about this? See above about the awful customer service. Nothing is ever their fault, and they never know what you can be talking about when you finally get through to someone with a problem. Most recently, I couldn’t send e-mail to a friend in the next town because his server was bouncing everything from Net1plus. I wonder why? Would you worry if your little hometown ISP was getting slapped with global IP blocks? I did!

But lately, a few things have changed.

Three years ago, I bought up a bunch of domains through GoDaddy. (I know there is, shall we say, a spectrum of opinions about GoDaddy, but at the moment, I love them.) I moved By Light Unseen to its own hosted domain with GoDaddy, including the humungous bookstore. The transition was a snap and I’ve never had a problem or downtime. It’s been there for a while now, and I’m no longer concerned about shutting down the old version, which I don’t update. Search engines can find the new domain name.

I’ve been pondering what to do about By Light Unseen Media’s website when I move up to Maine–not to mention the hassle of changing everything else over because I’ll be leaving Net1plus’ service area. It would make a lot more sense to have all my e-mail on my own hosted domains, and not be tied to a small local ISP.

And, Verizon has been after me for years to sign up with their high-speed Internet service. I’ve been very tempted. I still have land lines–in fact, I have two of them. My house is in a cell phone “dead zone” so I don’t really have a choice. I won’t deal with cable companies, period. Cable companies are Evil. I shut my cable off years ago and won’t have it in my house. Even if I wanted cable internet, the company that serves my town is a pathetic bungler that just crawled out of Chapter 11. But Verizon? I’ve had very good experiences dealing with them. Last December during the ice storm, when my power was out for three days, my phone line was down on the ground with a tree hanging on it–and I never lost phone service.

With Verizon, I can get DSL for $14 less per month than I pay Net1plus, and I can upgrade to FIOS when it’s available here. And I already have Verizon DSL because that’s what Net1plus uses–and tacks on a big surcharge to provide it to its customers. (That’s another excuse Net1plus uses: call them with any DSL problems and it’s always Verizon’s fault, nothing they can do about it.)

So how did Google add a straw to this camel’s back?

Google bought out Blogger. I have three blogs running on Blogger. I was FTPing the blogs to my own domains so they would be part of my own websites and on the same servers. Google just notifed its customers that next month, they’re eliminating the FTP service. We can change our blog to Blogspot, or we can buy a domain name just for the blog and Blogger will host it for us.

Or we can switch to a DIY WordPress blog! Bah! I need to get my CSS and xhtml skillsets up to speed, anyway! I just finished entirely recoding bylightunseenmedia.com with styles; it’s not fully xhtml-compliant yet but that’s my next step.

While I was investigating that, I realized something else. I put my author website into a subdomain of bylightunseenmedia.com and set the domain name, inannaarthen.com, to forward to that subdomain. I wasn’t really happy with that, but I wasn’t quite ready to spring for more hosting fees. I realized just last weekend (right after the ARCs of The Longer the Fall went out with inannaarthen.com and vampiresofnewengland.com all over them) that the forwarding had stopped working. If you tried to access inannaarthen.com, you just got a 404 error page. I checked the settings on GoDaddy–no problems there. I was pretty sure Net1plus must be blocking it.

So, I bought an “economy hosting” package from GoDaddy and moved inannaarthen.com/vampiresofnewengland.com onto it. Gods, did they make it easy! I was able to take advantage of a promotional discount, too. Before I did that, I made sure that it gave me MySQL features so I could install WordPress on the account. Not only does GoDaddy give you, in their cheapest package, a truckload of MySQL databases, they install WordPress for you! A couple of mouseclicks, and boom, there it is, most current version, ready to go.

Then I went to see how hard it would be to install WordPress on my hosted domain at Net1plus, so I could convert BLU Media Blog to it. Well…*snort*. I’m paying Net1plus $14.95 per month for hosting, and I’m supposed to have all these features, including MySQL. Almost everything is “disabled.” I’ll have to call them, during business hours, and plead for them to “enable” features that I’ve presumably been paying for since I signed up. I’m not even sure which department to call (sales, I think). They have WordPress listed among applications you can add, but they list really old versions. I don’t think the list has been updated for years.

So that does it, folks. It’s moving day.

But moving house in reality would almost be easier.

I’m starting out by removing the net1plus.com e-mail address from everything I can track down or remember using it for. I need to do all that before I cancel the account because in some cases, services won’t let you change your e-mail contact without sending a verification from the old e-mail address. Then I’ll empty out all the old “home page” directories. (Some of the photos linked from this LJ will disappear but I’m honestly not that fussed.) Then I’ll change the registrar for bylightunseenmedia.com so it’s not registered through Net1plus. Then I’ll set up a new hosting package and tranfer over the DNS. Then I’ll empty everything out in my Net1plus hosting account.

Then I’ll call up Verizon and set up DSL through them. I’ll try not to bask in Teh Lurv too much because they will be thrilled. Verizon definitely knows how to make you feel like a valued customer.

Then I’ll contact Net1plus and tell them so long, have a nice life, I’m shipping your modem back to you as we speak.

At least, I hope I’ll be doing all that. I won’t be surprised if I run into some snags. No solution is perfect. I may have no Internet for a short time and bylightunseenmedia.com will be down for at least as long as it takes the DNS to repopulate. But I’m going to save a chunk of change this way–around $25 per month–and the stress and aggravation factor is nothing to sneeze at, either.

But, gods. After at least 13 years of using the same e-mail address for everything, changing it is such…a…pain. This is why people stick with unsatisfactory vendors–because it’s such a time-sink and annoyance to change. The vendors count on that!

My adventures in customizing WordPress will follow. 🙂