Site5 Troubles, or: Watch Me Abuse Emphasised Text
So, I signed up with a Site5 reseller account a few weeks ago. Since then I’ve had to submit three help tickets and there’s another issue I need fixed, but the issue I’m currently battling them on has made me severely doubt tech support’s reading comprehension.
First issue was that in my welcome email they sent me the wrong nameservers and they took a fairly long time to give me the actual ones after I sent in a support ticket.
Second issue was that the FTP wasn’t working for any of the accounts I had set up so the faulty nameservers wouldn’t have made a bit of difference anyway since there was no way I could upload thousands of files via file manager.
Third issue: Someone I host needs domain.com/icons/ and icons.domain.com/icons/ to show what she actually has uploaded in those directories to keep her links alive versus a listing of Apache icons (which you can see demonstrated here if you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about1). The subdomain, icons.domain.com, shows what she has uploaded to the icons directory, but domain.com/icons/ does not and neither does icons.domain.com/icons/.
I read in the Site5 Forums that they have been able to change this in a case-by-case basis. I explain very simply what is needed. I even include links. They email me to say:
Hi,
I’m able to access http://domain.com/icons/ without any problems. Are you still unable to access it? What is the error that you get?
I said nothing about errors in my original ticket. I even specifically said that when I access it it’s a directory listing of Apache icons and how that’s not what is needed.
I just ended up explaining to tech support how Apache servers work. I should be on their payroll.
I wake up this morning to this lovely message:
Hello,
What you can do is to create a symbolic link for the /icons folder. That way both icons.domain.com/icons and domain.com/icons will show the exact same content.
Please let us know if you have questions.
Dude, that’s like the exact opposite of what I want. Why would I want to do that?! I want it to display what’s actually uploaded to them, not display the exact same content2.
And why would they just say ‘create a symbolic link’? How many people emailing technical support will actually know what they mean by that? Just because I understand why /icons/ displays what it does doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll know the ins and outs of .htaccess. It mostly means that I’ve been messing around with different servers for the past eight years and have seen a lot of different hosting and server situations. It also means I am a master Google-ninja extraordinaire so if I don’t understand something, I’ll just fucking Google it before I ask questions.
Does someone have good stories about Site5 and/or Site5′s support? Because right now I’m about ready to rip out my hair and I paid for an entire year in advance to save myself $100USD and because everyone says they’re so great.
Update: Partial victory! Apparently they understood enough to enable domain.com/icons/ which is good…except for the part where I said at least three times that domain.com/icons/ could be lived without and icons.domain.com/icons/ was what we were really looking for. I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult to get that enabled, but I’m not getting my hopes up. ;)
- In that directory I actually have a file called rss.png uploaded and nothing else, but you won’t see rss.png at all, much less be able to link to it from elsewhere, like what she needs. ↩
- Which it’s already doing, technically speaking, since both are displaying ugly Apache icons used for FancyIndexing. ↩
Nothing Like High Fructose Corn Syrup to Start Your Day
Customer: You’re drinking Coke for breakfast?
Server: Yeah, I always drink Coke in the mornings. I don’t know why, but it always wakes me up and makes me hyper! But I don’t know why.
Customer: …
My mum, my brother, and me: [collectively die laughing]
Nothing to do with the amount of sugar high fructose corn syrup and caffeine, yeah?
My fifteen-year-old brother isn’t exactly the brightest crayon in box, and even he said “Oh my G-d” before banging his head on the table.
Now we go back there to get breakfast all the time just so we can eavesdrop on this girl’s conversations and get our daily dose of laughter. Perhaps stupidity is good for business?
Also, grr at Site5 for the server and FTP issues I’ve had recently. Durga, the server my sites are on, was down for several hours earlier today and FTP still isn’t working on some domains, but not others. So far, since I switched to Site5 about two or three weeks ago, it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. I hope things get straightened out so I can enjoy my escape from DreamHost.
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