Making a Choice in Today's Web Hosting Market
- Dylan C. Yost
- Mar 6, 2018
- 8 min read
Over the last 15 years or so, I have tried to make sure I had some type of professional online presence to display my artwork. For most of that time, kept a site on Yahoo's web hosting servers. And for much of that time, I was okay with the results of their web hosting service and software. Over the last few years, we have all heard about Yahoo's demise as an online company, and many of us were even affected by their security breaches. Because I only had limited time to ever edit or update my art website, I never really gave much thought about the quality, or state of their web hosting services. I paid my monthly fee, and they hosted my site. It was there when I wanted to show someone my art, and life was good.
However, things changes as of recently, when I created a subsite, or subdomain, to promote my new company, "h2wildlife.com". A nature conservation awareness/ humane Wildlife Control & safe pest control service company.
I just had one problem after another, nothing would publish correctly, nothing displayed correctly when it was published. I began to notice that the included site building software hasn't really changed since I first started using it over a decade before hand, and many of the features offered looked very outdated and sloppy compared to most of today's newer, or up-to-date websites. I suppose the fact that they had not changed their software made it easier for me, as I didn't have to learn anything new in order to use their service. There was also the fact that if I were to ever switched hosting providers, and/or website building software,the site format would not be compatible with anyone else's as it was made with Yahoo's "Site Builder" software, and could only be edited with their software. But as I soon found out, this was not the only limiting factor in hosting with Yahoo. As I was saying, I began having problems with my new site....
I eventually resorted to contacting their support team, as I had tried everything I could think of, and not being the most advanced web-designer, I was worried I might be making things worse on my own. After getting absolutely nowhere with their support staff, I had no other option. I had already invested so much time, energy, and money into starting this company. I even had advertisers lined up, harassing me to start a campaign with them. So I had to take the plunge and start all over with a new company.
Though still in development, I think it was worth it (so far). I tried out a few popular site-building softwares, and researched many hosting companies and their offered plans. I eventually decided to go with Wix.com. That is not however, what this post is about. There are a lot of good companies out there, all offering something slightly different. While I could see right away that nearly all of them were far superior to what Yahoo offered, it still took time to see which one was right for me. So this is not a promo for Wix, although they do have some great features and fairly competitive pricing, Wordpress.com, or Squarespace, or many other companies might be a better choice for someone else. You just need to take the time to research whats available and decide which company meets your individual needs.
What this post is about, more to the point, is how terrible Yahoo Small Business Services and Web Hosting Services has become, and to urge everyone to stay away from them. More importantly, if you already have a site hosted with Yahoo, do yourself a huge favor and see what else is out there. I have included my last conversation with the Yahoo support staff to show everyone how lame they are, however it does not contain my first original conversations that were through a live-chat window.
Begin Excerpts from Yahoo Customer Service:
Dylan Yost•Jan 30, 2018 When I publish from site builder, images are not showing on web site. They display as "broken image". All of the older pages and images are working fine, only the newer pages that are being published to the subdomain "HummingbirdHollow" are not working. Images are "broken" when viewed in web browser, but display fine inside the sitebuilder software. This is the fourth time I have contacted support regarding this same matter. I have tried everything the support reps have advised, and still no change. I believe the directory of my site is set up correctly, as far as I can tell. It seems more like an issue with site builder, possibly not creating the correct path to the image. Although when viewed in sitebuilder the images look fine. I have tried saving the images to different folders, even to the root folder, and then re-inserting the image on sitebuilder, but nothing is fixing the problem. I have the 2.9.0 version. I even tried publishing with the firewall turned off on my PC. I have not found any helpful articles or info regarding this issue. If I were an expert web designer, I wouldnt need to use a "website builder", so I definitely need someone to thoroughly analyze my site directory, and subdirectories to see if something is out of place. Also, as of the past few days, sitebuilder has started running very slowly. I am extremely frustrated by this, and the ongoing problem with the images, and have wasted a rediculous amount of time trying to diagnose and fix the problem myself. I am seriously considering switching companies. Ive used sitebuilder for a long time and never had these problems before. The software for sitebuilder itself seems old and outdated, but I went back to it a couple years ago because I am familiar with it and knew it worked well. At least it did until recently. I have had to delay advertising for my company due to this problem, as I am embarassed at the state of my site. If your team can resolve this issue relatively soon, and either explain what went wrong or find a way to prevent it from happening again, I will happily continue with Yahoo/Aabaco. But if I just get more people wrongly guessing at what the issue is then I am canceling the service and going with another company. I really dont want to have to build my entire site from scratch, but I am totally wasting my money by paying for a service that doesnt work. Please take the time to investigate properly. You have my permission to access my account, my site, edit whatever you need to, and publish if you need to. I dont care I just want it fixed. Im sorry for the negative tone of this message but I am just so frustrated now. The pages in the root directory load fine in a browser, and I have not really made any recent changes to any of those pages or files. I am starting a new company and creating the website under the subdirectory named "HummingbirdHollow". It is the pages within this folder that are having the issue. Could it be the "site.xml" file? I dont know what that file is for. The Nav menu seems to be working. Also, the title banner on the home page seems to display fine. Any images from the same folder display as broken. Another thing to note, is that the "Site Contents" pane in sitebuilder does not show the "sitebuilder" folder in the root directory, but does display the "sitebuilder" folder inside of the "HummingbirdHollow" folder. However, when viewed in file manager the "sitebuilder" folder shows up in both the root directory and the subdirectory.
ankit.pawar•Feb 1, 2018
Hello Dylan,
We understand that images on your sub-domain is not visible where as those are visible when checked with sub-directory. We regret the inconvenience that you have experienced. We will try to provide you the best possible assistance.
I would like to inform you that when you pull up the site using subdirectory. The images link is redirected to the site builder folder in the root directory.
Example, http://dyostart.com/sitebuilder/images/HomePageArt-740x369-600x299.png which is visible.
Where as when pulling up website with sub-domain. The image link will become http://hummingbirdhollow.dyostart.com/sitebuilder/images/HomePageArt-740x369-600x299.png which is not a actual location.
Hence the resolution to this would be to directly update the broken image link of the sub-domain. It can be done from SiteBuilder or from file manager. Or you can move the image files to that particular location.
Please let us know if you need further assistance. We would be glad to help you.
Regards,
Ankit
Dylan Yost•Feb 2, 2018 Ankit, can you please elaborate? I think I might understand what you mean, but the sitebuilder software is not acknowledging that there is a sitebuilder folder in the root directory when there clearly is one. So I dont have the option of linking or referencing anything to that folder from sitebuilder.
Dylan Yost•Feb 2, 2018
Also, the image files are already in the subdomain. it doesn't make a difference where they are. still not visible. and sitebuilder software always used to automatically save the image for you after resizing but now it doesnt.
Hi,
I understand that the Sitebuilder is not recognizing the website into the root folder even after it is there and the images are also not getting resize automatically. We regret the inconvenience caused and will surely help you in getting this resolved.
While reviewing your records, I found that your domain is currently pointing towards a different provider because of what we are unable to replicate the issue.
Please change the Name servers of your website towards Yahoo so that we can replicate the issue and help you on this.
Please find the steps below to change the Name servers.
Change your domain name servers
https://help.smallbusiness.yahoo.net/s/article/SLN17904
We appreciate your business and look forward to assisting you in the future.
Regards,
Bari
Dylan Yost•Feb 27, 2018
Yes, it is pointing to a new server because I am changing my hosting provider. I have been with Yahoo for a long time, like over 10 years. When I first started with Yahoo, they offered a decent website builder software and had a lot of options. Now, over a decade later, they still offer the same software, with almost no relevant updates or modernization, and my experience with your customer service department has steadily gone from being acceptable, to terrible. It is obvious that the support team is almost completely outsourced from india or somewhere outside the US. it takes days, and in some cases weeks to hear back from anyone, and when I do hear back from someone they have honestly been of no help. The last time I contacted Support about an ongoing problem I made my frustration and disappointment very clear and also warned that if it was not resolved I would be looking for another company for my web hosting needs. Since nobody even bothered to reply to that last message I have tried multiple softwares and hosting products and I honestly am really amazed at how outdated Yahoo small business has become. Despite the painstaking process of rebuilding my site entirely from scratch (actually 2 websites) and paying the extra money to do so, it is your terrible customer service and outdated software that have forced me to this point, leaving me with no option but to find another provider in which to build my websites and subsequent business upon. You have become yet another entity that represents all that is wrong in the world, trading quality care and customer retention for the almighty dollar and short lived profit margin. I really hoped that if I waited it out, that maybe Yahoo would bounce back, and actually compete in this market by offering new and relevant service and support. Especially since I heard that you were bought out by Verizon, I really expected to see some type of overhaul in your site and scope of service. Unfortunately if that day ever does come, it will be too late to save me as a customer.
By the way "Bari01", you should not mark a support case as "resolved", unless you confirm with the customer that their problem is resolved. This is just another obvious indication of how unprofessional and understaffed your customer support team is. The reality is that over the course of about 2 months, through multiple direct conversations, and also multiple back and forth messaging, I have spoken with at least 4 different customer support members, none of which were able to resolve my problem, or answer my questions. I don't believe any of them fully read or understood the question, or that English was their native speaking language. Goodbye Yahoo, and good riddance.
-D. Yost 2/27/18
Update:3/5/18
Working on transferring registration of Domain Names to Wix.com servers, where my sites are currently being hosted. I will be able to cancel Yahoo very soon!
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