I'm trying to help someone set up a non-profit website.

actually, the site already exists. its being hosted by "hostica.com", with domain name registered through Tucows. the domain is set to expire in less than 2 weeks.

the person who used to maintain the site for the non-profit, and had registered everything in their name, has essentially disappeared. in that they're not being real helpful or involved in maintenance.

the account this person set up with "hostica" has the Domain name for the non-profit in question, as well as several other domain names for other non-related sites.

i have the username/password info and can access this hostica account. i just want to extract the non-profit domain name and set it up for them, in their own name, on some other registration/hosting service

MY QUESTIONS:

is there anything i should be aware of transferring domain name from one account to another?

what is a good "one-stop" hosting/registration service with good web traffic evaluation tools

2/23/2008 6:50:22 PM

http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=11178947

If you do decide to use 1and1 please use my link if you can. I know I had to fax in a copy of my drivers license one time when I was moving a domain around, I think it was because I couldn't remember my username/pw to the old hosting place though... You should be fine.

2/23/2008 6:56:13 PM

O ... M ... F ... G

you want me to go to the absolutely worst hosting service on the internet ... ever.

http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/1and1
http://www.besthostratings.com/web-hosting/reviews/1and1-Reviews.html
http://www.cheap-web-hosting-plans.com/1and1_reviews.php
http://webhostinggeeks.com/1and1_review.html

WTF dude. do you use these guys? not only are they technically inept, they're fucking evil parasites. the question now is this:

are you purposely trying to fuck me up?

or

are you just completely clueless?

OMFG

:grr-face:

2/24/2008 5:03:52 AM

i've never had any problems out of them... ah well, sorry

2/24/2008 12:25:19 PM

sorry, man. its not personal

but I swear ive never seen so many people line up against one hosting service.

2/24/2008 12:48:06 PM

maybe, maybe not.
maybe it's just an artifact of them being the largest host in the world. Would stand to reason that even if they only satisfied 90% of their customers there would still be a lot of hateful detractors.

Choosing a webhost is kind of like choosing a cell-phone provider. Most people are ambivalent about it, and really any provider will suit their needs just fine. There is a relatively small number of very vocal critics of all providers, but they all have basically the same criticisms and wouldn't be any happier with any other service. These are also the type of people who expect an unreasonably high level of service for their specific needs (e.g. "OMG THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS CHARGED ME $1/minute WHEN I WENT OVER MY TIME LIMIT AND THEY WOULDN'T EVEN REFUND ME WHEN I UPGRADED THE NEXT MONTH!!!" akin to: "OMG THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS CHARGED ME $0.01/kB OF BANDWIDTH WHEN I GOT SLASHDOTTED ON MY $3/month plan AND THEY WOULDN'T REFUND ME!!!")
Then there is another group of people who just think it is their right to be unhappy with the provider and will complain about it, even though they have nothing specific to complain about.

As for anecdotal evidence, I've lost count of the number of sites I've started and recommended on 1and1.com. Considering I/my clients only pay anywhere from $2 to $9/month for them, i think the level of service and technology has been excellent. A couple years ago there were a few times with some downtime that bothered me, but the outages were confined to a short period of time and the problem seems to have been resolved and I have not noticed any downtime on any of my websites in a couple years. Also, if you're not trying to build a major e-commerce retailer or whatever or driving 100,000s of hits to your site per month, and you just need basic scripting and database support, who really cares? you'll get 99.9xxx% uptime, ready access to databases and webspace, as many domain names as you want on a single host account (for an additional ~$8/year each, and as long as all sites together still stay under the whole host limits), then a 1and1 (or dreamhost, or 'your big cheap webhost here) $5/month account will probably be just fine.

2/24/2008 3:44:02 PM

Thanks... I didn't feel like writing that much detail.

2/24/2008 4:02:17 PM

i dunno... i still disagree. 1and1 is pretty awful.

i've never seen so much fucked up shit coming out of one hosting service. 1and1 has class action lawsuits and the PA attorney generals office investigating. their billing/customer service has the reputation of AOL from back in the late 90's, early 00's.

you dont even begin to see a fraction of this negative press from places like BlueHost, Godaddy, Lunarpages ... even Yahoo!

and since you mentioned it... 1and1 advertises 99.99% uptime. independent monitoring shows its actually 99.5%. thats the difference between being down 45 minutes per year, and 45 /hours/

2/24/2008 9:52:40 PM