Donato has been hosting my music & photos web site for years, and I've been happy with his service. Unfortunately, SBC has kinda screwed him over recently and he's been without a connection for over two months now, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

So in shopping for another host, I found one I liked because they don't charge for disk space or bandwidth.

Not that I need an excessive amount of either, I just have a lot of photo gallery files, some MP3s, and some video files for download, and I don't want to be docked for it. So their setup seemed OK.

But now that I've signed up with them, I've got some problems and I'm wondering if anyone here can offer advice on work arounds. I've spoken to their people and I think I've reached an impasse, and now it's up to me to either get my site working under their system, or cut bait and run. Here's the deal:

- My site is www.geekhackfilk.com . I want people to navigate to that exact URL and get all the stuff there.

- I want to use the PHP INCLUDE statement in all my web pages. So each page has a common header and footer, and so if I update the list of songs to download, I only have to change it once. (I've also tried other formats for server-side-include statements, but those aren't working for some reason.)

- Turns out that they don't allow PHP scripts on their HTML server. For that, you gotta host the pages on their CGI server, for instance, cgi.geekhackfilk.com . They deliberately maintain two separate servers, one for CGI and PHP, and a different one for HTML and other files.

- So do I have to do a META REFRESH tag to repoint people to the CGI server? And if I do that, does that mean they're all gonna see "CGI" in the location bar? I don't want that. Is there any other way around that crap on my end?

- Even if I do get stuff working that way, there's another snag. I depend upon Gallery for hosting my photos and videos. There's a little PHP script you can run that's the Gallery Host Compatibility Checker (GHCC). When I run it, it says that the host is running in SAFE MODE and that Gallery won't work that way. I tried putting my own PHP.INI file in place, but GHCC still says SAFE MODE is on. Anyone know of any way around this?

Oo, my new Roomba just arrived. Gonna go play with it...

Did they specifically tell you you'd have to have a subdomain to use the CGI/PHP server? Just get them to move your entire site to that server.

But, I'd probably not waste my time. For $120 per year (or $96 with their discount) you can find a number of other hosts without these restrictions with plenty of bandwidth and storage allocation.

Just as an example.

http://resellerpanel.com/
http://818hosting.com/features.html (this one has unlimited everything pretty much)


Bruno

You could conceivably move from a PHP Include to CSS. I think CSS will allow you to do what you want, but I might be mistaken.

CSS won't do what Tony needs to do.

I'm going to look into those two hosts you listed, Bruno, thanks.

The current host says that the money I paid for the hosting service (I paid for a year up front, thinking I'd be able to use it), is non-refundable. Bastards. That can't be legal.

I wonder how much trouble it would be to point the authorities in their direction. I don't even know who to call, exactly.

Yeah, really sorry about that. SBC still hasn't fixed it. If it weren't for the fact that I ordered another phone line and got DSL on that line, I'd still be on dial-up only. Funny thing is, SBC did that line too. I don't get it.

You might want to check http://1and1.com/ as well. They have some pretty good packages.

I think you have to be wary of hosts that offer 'unlimited' space or bandwidth, because obviously it's not possible for them to provide it.

I've been extremely satisfied with dreamhost.com recently. Someone suggested it on here a while back (TonyC i think?). With a coupon code (which i don't remember at the moment) the total came to $25 a year and it came with a free doman name registration! The package came with 5 gigs of space but they recently quadrupled everyone's space and bandwidth for no apparent reason except to be nice, so now I have 20 gigs of free space and over 1000 gigs of bandwidth per month. Your available disk space and bandwidth also automatically increases by a small amount every week.

Plus, they don't have any annoying restrictions or limitations on what you can do. Shell access is standard -- you don't have to ask or pay extra for it.

Oh yeah, they also have the best support I've ever experienced. They have active forums and a wiki with tons of info. They're custom web interface for adminstrating your account is also pretty awesome. It's way better than something like cpanel, in my opinion.

Thanks, Donato. I'm definitely not blaming you for this, of course. I'll check out 1and1 as well, but I think they've got limits. I'm looking for unlimited stuff.

Since Activewebhosting said the amount I paid is non-refundable, I've disputed the charge that they made on my card, and I'm putting this form in the mailbox right now. The guy at Activewebhosting is being very threatening, saying he'll make it go to collections and such. Can they really do that?

I'd be hesitant to sign up anyone advertising unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Obviously their are limits to their bandwidth and disk space. If flickr (to pick a high volume/bandwidth/storage site) paid them $100 for the year to host their site, they'd quickly find a loophole to get out. Find some place that's logically priced, and you'll probably find a place that's reasonable to deal with.

Matthew

The unlimited-bandwidth places I've looked at mostly have ways of dealing with it. Reducing the amount of bandwidth to bad-boy sites, for example. I was fine with those restrictions. I just needed the PHP code to work normally instead of having to jump through hoops.

Honestly, the best solution was having Donato hosting it for me. He is great to work with, always helpful when I needed his help, generally a stand-up guy. It's too bad the problem with SBC came up, because the best solution, to me, would be to have his web server magically reappear and I just keep using it. Wish that could happen.

Call your credit card company and tell them this hosting company isn't refunding your money. Press them if you have to. When you get your way they'll referve the charges oon the hosting company. Not usually something cool to do to someone, but they've come short on their service, so you're within your rights to get your money back.

Bruno

Personally, I think it's bad business practice to not refund someone's money after a few days for a service like this, but at the same time, it's not their fault that Tony didn't research their services properly. It clearly states two clicks off of their home page:

Quote:
To use PHP, you need to first have a CGI account set up. You can not use .php pages on your normal web server.

It also clearly lists the two pieces of photo gallery software they support, one click off of their home page, neither of which are Gallery.

So unless they communicated something to you on a personal level that was a lie, suck it up, pay the money, and learn to do your research better next time.

Javascript puts the demand on the client-side...

From the line you quoted I would not assume that I would be stuck with the problems Tony is having. I'm sorry, it's the fault of the merchant for not having a pro-rated refund policy or a short-term grace period. Compete or die. They'll know better next time.

Bruno

"You cannot use .php pages on your normal web server" isn't a good enough way to say ... ummm ... "you cannot use PHP on your normal web server"?

The Web server isn't Tony's, so that whole mess of a disclaimer is misleading. The hosting account is. They don't say you cannot seamlessly use whetever servers they have within their service together. But that's all besides the point. If you haven't used the service, get your money back. Paying for what you've used is fine, but not for what you haven't used.

Bruno

Like I say, bad business practice, but also caveat emptor.

Again, I agree with you on that point. I certainly won't do business with them.

Sorry to hear about the trouble, Donato. I hope that all gets sorted out. I've been so lazy I haven't even bothered to migrate my site anywhere

They can't send your "debt" to a collection agency if you have your credit card do a chargeback. And if they think they can, they're in for one hell of a surprise. Haha. They're definitely novices. You may also want to call your credit card company and tell them about this "threat."

Hey, let the money go if you want. I just think you're right and they're wrong.

Bruno

The web host's response was, if I did that, they'd send me into collections.


And your response to that is:

Please send me the names of your corporate officers and your physical address, so that I may initiate legal proceedings against you after your collection agency has failed to prevail in small claims court.

I will be seeking restitution from you for the damages your ill-advised and reckless actions have caused to my credit rating and my good name. This suit will be filed in the consumer-friendly courts of California where I am a property owner, and at the very least will be quite inconvenient to you, and at worst will prove massively expensive.

I am currently between jobs, and have plenty of free time to devote to this (to me) novel and entertaining project.

Best Regards
Tony Fabris

tanstaafl.

I'm sorry about your dilmna. I have been using hostrocket.com for my hosting and haven't had those problems. PLus they have a shell interface you can use.

As for the includes, I would use a Javascript include that pointed to the php server that would contain a bunch of document.writes in it. As long as you had the document.domain set, you could do it across servers

Thanks.

JBjorgen has me hosted now. He's been quite helpful. Thanks everyone!