HostGator Comes Through Again!
As a webmaster for 10 years and registered owner of the name WorldWideFreelancer.com I feel it is important to give a little credit where credit is due today. Over the years I have used many hosting companies - at various prices and requiring varying amounts of assistance with my domains or accounts. Three years ago I found HostGator and during that time I have been slowly migrating my sites over to a few accounts I have set up with them.
One of the most important services HostGator offers their clients is free tech support - via chat, email, ticket system or phone. I generally open up a ticket when I need them and follow up the conversations between the tech team and I through email. They have always been courteous, helpful, fast — and, in truth, I”ve come to expect it.
Setting up this website has been a hassle from the start but since it is a labor of love I have forged through. I wanted to build a space online where freelancers could post their resume, some personal information if they chose, add links to their samples of work - whatever their hearts desired.
I began with Elgg. Having known of this website management script for the last year I”ve been excited to see it in action and chose it first. Hours later - ftping files, unzipping, reading documentation, performing tweaks and then deleting the FTP files, I gave up and headed back to the drawing board.
I looked at BarnRaiser. I looked at Pligg (which I do enjoy for a bookmarking plus styled site, but not for this site). I looked at a few programs with pricetags (not open source). And then I landed on the WordPress Mu (multiple user) application.
At first it made perfect sense. I was familiar with WordPress, with php, with templates, with plugins, and MySQL databases. I could handle this easily. Or so I thought.
I downloaded. I unzipped. I FTP’d. I changed file permissions. I created the database. I ran the install. I tweaked the template I”d chosen. Everything was working fine - and then I read the documentation!
That’s when all heck broke loose in our home. The documentation, and later the forums for Mu, told me to make changes to my httpd file, my Apache stuff, and some other ”geek” words that were definitely way over my head. I also remember how, 10 years ago, the words ”registrar” and ”nameservers” were way over my head - but I learned my way around anyway.
I don”t have a VPS (there’’s a long story to that one!) - in fact I only have the same type of account at HostGator that most others do. The forums said it was not feasible, not recommended, not worthwhile - to run your WordPress Mu application on anything less than a VPS (virtual private server).
For all intents and purposes I had to agree with them. But I pushed the envelope and decided that all my work to date doesn”t have to be ”lost”, I still had an ace in the hole. I still had my tech team at HostGator!
Now let’’s be clear here. The tech team at HostGator know I can be a dolt at communicating my needs. They also know that when I write to them I have no idea what I”m asking for. Furthermore they know full well that I don”t even know if my service agreement provides for them supplying me with the changes I was requesting…something about wildcards and DNS, mod-rewrites and Apache, .htaccess files and something else I can”t even remember right now.
The first two emails felt as though they were stalling me, brushing me off, and I wondered if all would be lost. I wrote one more email to them and went to bed. When I shut down my computer not one thing on my site was working.
When I awoke this Sunday morning there it was, working, allowing registrations, and creating sub-domains for my WordPress Mu all on autopilot. As if by magic. The magic of HostGator’’s tech team.
I can”t launch this website without taking one moment to thank them. To toast the company and the values it operates by. They are a breath of fresh air in an online world.
See my recommended host since 2004 and for many years to come, here: HostGator - the best host for your website.
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