I Guess 1&1 Make Zero
Published June 14, 2011 | 
I don’t often do this, write a recommendation to avoid someone’s hosting services, however, this example of incompetence is so strong that I feel I need to say something.
I was helping a client migrate from shared hosting (as in shared with other unconnected businesses) on 1&1 to their own hosting solution. We moved the domain to the new solution, leaving name service pointed to the 1&1 hosting, to protect the clients active email boxes, until we could make a careful planned migration of the email, hoping to avoid interruption.
A few weeks in, 1&1 deleted the remaining hosting account. Yep.
They just deleted their customers digital property, without asking, checking anything, or keeping a back-up. Worse, they defended the action by saying we should not have moved the name registration, which demonstrates a complete failure to understand basic concepts about how name registration works. What we did, was basically the same as having a domain registered with Godaddy and hosting it somewhere else. Millions of accounts are set-up that way.
So, my client lost email service in the middle of the business day, for a whole day while we moved DNS, and lost correspondence.
All 1&1 had to do was check their logs, or name service, to see live data in the account.
Deleting your customer’s property, without contacting anyone or checking anything, then telling the customer they are in the wrong, is just horrible customer care.
I am sorry to have to say; Don’ t host with 1&1, just don’t do it. Their disrespect for this customer was frightening.
Recommended: Live Drive
Published May 24, 2011 | A technical recommendation; a long-time client just lost several months of medical data from a crashed hard-drive and has to re-enter it from printout. It will cost them $1000′s. I hate to see that.
If you are *not* running a web-driven backup solution then go set one up now; they are reasonably priced, effective and protect from exactly this problem. Here’s my favorite. I am paying about $17 a month for over 350gb of backup and online storage. There are plenty of other services, I researched quite a few, and in my assessment, this one was the best.
Live-Drive is cost-effective, easy to set-up, works on both mac and pc, and allows web-based access to files.
http://www.livedrive.com/?tid=3XJRWCF7
Once installed, it has a pretty easy to use control panel with two major services:
The briefcase service maps a web-folder to your computer as a network drive, works with mac or pc…or even FTP, so if you use Linux (like I sometimes do), you can set up a script to ftp to it as well.
Plus, there is a web interface on livedrive.com that will allow you to access, download or even view some files on-line. So, if you are ever at a client’s site, or friends, and forgot something, its there if you can get to an internet connection.
We are most interested in the back-up services. They are pretty easy to configure. At install, a wizard will walk you through set-up, and if you ever need to change settings you can open the “live drivecontrol panel” from your start menu and modify the backup settings in the services tab.
Click the “manage backup settings” you will get a file tree. To make sure that you get proper back-ups, you need to know where your various software stores the information you want to back-up. In current windows software most information is stored under the user directory under “appdata” but some older programs (like the medical billing program this client uses) store data in directories off the C:\ drive or elsewhere. You can usually find out where data is stored by looking in the software’s preferences or settings. If you have trouble, contact the vendor, or let someone like me know, who can probably find it by remote desktop if needed.
The first back-up may take several days to run, so just leave the computer on, after that, it runs small changes and goes much more quickly.
If you don’t like LiveDrive, use something, just make sure you back-up your work.
Western Folklife Center: Joomla 1.5
Published May 17, 2011 | Western Folklife Center is a long-time client. When they first approached us in 2007, they were working with a store system that couldn’t handle their orders, using a content management solution that didn’t work for their needs and had trouble making any edits to their site.
We helped them evaluate open-source alternatives, plan a project to update their web site of over 900 pages, and migrated their web management system to Joomla 1.0 with VirtueMart for their store solution. Since then, we have updated their site to Joomla 1.5 and added a wide range of resources including Google Analytics, custom web forms and custom templates for both their main and their Cowboy Poetry Gathering microsite.
The Western Folklife Center site is a good size site; over 850 pages, multiple integrated systems, 3 custom templates, photo galleries, forms systems and VirtueMart. Also, a microsite within Joomla that uses Joomla’s multiple template capabilities.
Western Folklife Center is a really cool non-profit organization; they help archive, celebrate and store the folklore of the western United States. Their site includes cowboy poetry, exhibits, artwork, podcasts, radio shows and more. Go check ‘em out! They are one of our on-going clients who has a contract with us for maintenance and management.
Posted in Portfolio | 
Google Analytics, Joomla, Web Marketing, Website Analytics, Website Tracking | 
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