DarrenBarefoot.com

I’m switching hosting providers over the next few weeks for much the same reason. My hosting company was wonderful until the original owner retired, but I’ve seen many signs of slippage since then. The final straw was when I discovered by accident that all the 404 pages on all my sites had mysteriously acquired pop-under ads and banners for a site called 4o4notfound.com, which I did not authorize, nor did my clients. It took two weeks for someone to respond to my complaint, and though they’ve fixed it now, I’m offended enough by their presumptuousness to head out the door.

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That’s not just evil — that’s guy-in-a-white-suit-with-a-fluffy-cat- and-giant-illuminated-map-of-the-world evil.

Dugg hard with a vengeance.

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http://www.baremetal.com

Domain registrars of the kickass variety. I’ve used them for literally hundreds of domains, and they are responsive, provide personal attention, Victoria-based, and cheap.

Darren, is Dotster that difficult to get out of? In most circumstances, just changing the domain protect status at your current registrar, and initiating the transfer at your new registrar, should get it done. I’ve never had the pleasure of logging into Dotster’s control panel, however….

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Darren :Shame on you to go with Dotster in the first place..

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Hey IT guy, whether all companies do this or not, it’s still a malicious practice. Plus, most non-IT guys are probably not familiar with concepts such as cnames, etc. just like how some IT guys may not have a good grasp of english grammar (see http://www.theretheir.com/).

And just like we don’t stop IT guys from using the English language, we also shouldn’t make things difficult or obscure for non-IT guys to register and host domains.

(sure, being a grammar nazi is a form of elitism but hey, you started it.)

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Holy Wick. That is terrifyingly evil.

easydns.com - I HIGHLY recommend! :-)

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Oops! my appologies. Your canadian. Should of known. Im sorry, I promise I wont waste any more of my time. You rant as well as you canadians play hockey. Maybe we can show you how to manage your domains after were done handing you your stones back in the stanley cup.

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You can request to have your domains put on an opt-out list for their DNS wildcard.

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I just had a bunch of my customers’ names dumped into Dotster from another registrar, which is a long story and I won’t go there, but I’ve found Dotster to be reasonably responsive so far. Moving a name away from them is pretty easy. Unlike some registrars which hide the link for getting an authorization code for transfer out, Dotster puts it in plain view on their DN management UI.

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One of my clients, an entrepreneur who has numerous business ventures, has over 50 domains registered with Dotster. He has long hated them for their practices and, as the domains come up for renewal, I have been slowly transferring them to GoDaddy where he has his hosting accounts. Three weeks ago he asked me to change the name servers to point to GoDaddy for one of his domains, and put the web site for that domain on his GoDaddy server. I did this, and the URL gave a server not found error page. I contacted GoDaddy to be sure I have the right name servers and had the file hierarchy set up properly, despite having done this for my client numerous times before, and they confirmed I did. They said wait 72 hours because it can take that long. After 72 hours I was getting the same error. I contacted Godaddy and was told then it is an issue with the registrar – Dotster. I called Dotster tech support line, a 24/7 line, and listened to music for almost an hour. I decided to e-mail my request instead marking it urgent because my client needed his web site up and running to show one of his clients. Two days later I received an e-mail response saying someone would get back to me in 24 hours. Three weeks later I am still waiting. Since the site was still not showing I called Dotster again and this time put them on speaker phone. I was listening to music punctuated by recordings of how much my business means to them for 178 minutes. That is 2 minutes short of three hours, at which time I received a different recording saying to call during normal business hours. This is a 24/7 help line in Washington which is an hour behind me and it was 2 pm their time on a Wednesday. What are their normal business hours? This weekend I called again and got their answering service. I explained the urgency and was told the tech on call would contact me with-in the hour. Never happened. I called back 4 more times and was told by one operator the tech had backed up but someone would return my call in the order it was received. Excuse me, I have been trying for three weeks, how many people are in front of me? I have yet to hear from anyone. I have called, I have e-mailed four times and I have received no response. I have to meet my client today because he wants answers about this so I am going to tell him to transfer the domain to GoDaddy. That will take yet another 7 days but at least I will get tech support. As for Dotster? Clint Page and Brian Unruh can go back to sleeping with al-Quiada and the other terrorist organizations they are supporting, they will not get another dime of my, or my clients’ money, if I can help it.

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