Top Hosting Center Can’t Keep Own Website Online!
Posted on September 21, 2008
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Part of the Top Hosting Center Series - Previous in series Next in series
Given all the problems I’ve had with Top Hosting Center lately (full details coming soon) I’m in the process of moving my sites to another web host. Of course, that’s rather difficult to do when your web hosting company can’t even manage to keep their own website up and running! Check the screenshot to the left to see what I was just greeted with when visiting tophostingcenter.com
Since all of my websites are database driven I can’t move them without backing up the database. Of course, if I can’t get to the THC home page then I can’t login to my control panel. And if I can’t log in to my control panel then I can’t back up my databases. In my search for some way to contact them to fix the problem (who keeps their web hosts phone number handy?) I finally managed to back my way into their blog and click on their Online Support icon. After a few entries that started to die as well. First the “text entry” box vanished and then the entire chat system crashed as shown in these two screenshots-
Also, be sure to notice in the first screenshot that the tech claims to not even know their website is down. This has become the default for customer service at Top Hosting Center apparently. Deny the problem even exists.
Continuing to search for a way to contact them I revisited ericvanier.com which is the blog of THC’s CEO. He hasn’t posted since May and that was entirely in French so I have no idea what it says. I suppose I should be happy that my websites are still running at the moment. But since they can’t even keep their own website live, how much longer are mine going to last? And since I can’t backup the databases I have no idea what’s going to happen should they vanish. of course, if you’re reading this then that hasn’t happened yet.
Their website’s been down for 30 minutes – that I know of. Lord knows how long it was down before I even visited it. I’ll be sure to come back and update should there be any progress.
UPDATE: 1850hrs – Chat support is back up. They claim that they’re changing the IP of their website and that’s why it’s down. I guess they could no longer stand being associated with all the scummy sites they force my site to be associated with by sharing an IP. They did, however, give me a way to get into my control panel (pictured right) and doesn’t that give you a lot of faith in your web hosting company?
Part of the Top Hosting Center Series - Previous in series Next in series
The Complete Top Hosting Center Series-
- Is My Website Hosting Search Over Already?
- First Impressions of Top Hosting Center
- Kinks Working Out At Top Hosting Center
- Well THAT Sucked!
- StumbleUpon Highlights Top Hosting Center’s Weakness
- Top Hosting Center Can’t Keep Own Website Online!
- Top Hosting Center Attacks Web Hosting Customer
- Grease For My Squeaky Wheel
- Top Hosting Center STILL Can’t Keep Their Home Page Online!
- Quick Update On Top Hosting Center
- Top Hosting Center Rudolph Lifetime Web Hosting Scam Returns
Related Posts: » Filed Under: Hosting Review, Top Hosting Center
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" - Rick
If you were checking your H-Sphere control panel more often in the news section, you would have read our advisory we posted hours before our maintenance. We are working towards satisfaction of our customers and we, the people behind Top Hosting Center, are constantly working hard to give you a good hosting service. Should our maintenance schedule brought inconvenience to you, we feel sorry all the same.
@Eric Vanier, CEO THC: How often is often enough, Eric? I was there two days ago and there was no mention of it. Have you guys never considered emailing your customers? Oh wait, you did that this morning, more than 12 hours after the event occurred (and I wrote this post). You had a good thing going there, but it’s tumbled a long way down hill in the last six months.
We are facing heavy issues wilt MySql and the email now. Our websites were down since 2 days ago (5 days in total).
we cannot send/receive email last 2 days and we there is NOTHING in the news section about maintenance and issues, no info at all. Also we have no updates via email
How beautiful!
Actually that is terrible!
Welcome George!
I think it might be time for me to write another full post about THC. They still refuse to honor their uptime guarantee, but they’re currently promoting still more Rudolph hosting plans. If they can’t keep their current udolph servers online what good will it do their customers to sell even more space on them?
Where’d ya go ? Not surprised you didn’t come back after your initial post. Run, run away with your tail between your legs – coward.
Here’s the email that was sent out at 6:30 this morning, more than 12 hours after the problem began and I wrote this post:
“Dear Aahz,
Top Hosting Center has a maintenance in progress and we are changing the IP address of the domain as we always do quarterly and we are moving actually our Website from one server to another one. Our maintenance will cause our website to go down in the next hours and will take additional hours to restore online due to the new DNS information repropagation.
Please note that ONLY the main domain www.tophostingcenter.com will be down and you can still access any of its subdomains. Should you need support, you can access our live chat via our corporate blog: http://web-hosting.tophostingcenter.com or send an email to : customercare@tophostingcenter.com or open a ticket through your Control panel.
Additionally, you can login to your H-Sphere control panel
using http://login.tophostingcenter.com
NONE of our customers’ websites will be affected by the IP change of tophostingcenter.com. They still run normally online for business as usual.
Thank you very much for your forbearance.
Very truly yours,
Tech. department
TopHostingCenter.com”
At the moment, their main site is still down. Meanwhile, I managed to move my site to a new IP and a new server without any downtime at all.
I got that email message as well earlier today. Although I read the advisory on H-Sphere control panel about the upcoming downtime, I feel THC has encountered some sort of issue when they changed their IP address because they decided to move the site to a new server. I guess I will just be patient, it will come back for sure as they are in business. The thing is that my sites are still running great and completely UNAFFECTED by their maintenance downtime.
@John Raul Joven II: Ya know, John, I’m all for people sharing their own personal experiences. That’s what makes the internet great. But I was a bit surprised when you so vehemently attacked me on your blog this morning. But then I figured it out – you work for THC! Or would it be more accurate to say that you’re a part owner? Why haven’t you disclosed this information either here or in your own blog where you defend them so strongly while attacking me?
We all know Eric’s the CEO, I even mention that in this post. He also freely links back to the company with his comment. Why do you feel the need to hide your association?
Top hosting center: mail server issue persists more than seven days now.
Unable to work with emails.
I am sorry THC, that is too bad
believe me, I understand your pain. I finally moved all of my site’s off their servers but one which doesn’t really matter. I’d prefer to be completely done with them, but they refuse to honor their “guarantee” and give me any sort of compensation. So, until they live up to their word (or fix their problems) I’ll continue to write about the Top Hosting Center scam, and hopefully others will be forewarned about the constant problems at THC.
Well, mail server issue is finally solved and works ok last (couple of) days.. We’ll see..
Glad to hear it George! If you’re interested in it staying up you might really want to look at moving to another web host. Ask for them to honor their uptime guarantee and give you some compensation on your way out. Maybe if enough of us ask, they’ll finally start honoring it.
As of now I am facing 4 issues with THC suppport that are moving me to abandon them. I also was hit with that ‘quarterly IP change’ (I still do not understand why would they do this), but my main problem has been DNS unreliability.
Test it yourselves: Go to http://www.tumblr.com/check_domain and enter costa.rica.cr as the domain. Click several times on the Check Domain button and you will see the answer change from correctly to incorrectly configured. This has been like this for months and had led to unexistent pages to be listed in Google’s index.
Costa Ricas last blog post..Tourist 2 million stayed and toured Costa Rica for free
And here we are AGAIN!..
Top Hosting Center strikes back.
All our win hosted web sites are down last 36-40 hours and an “Under Construcion” message appears where our webdites’ HP was before!!!
Apparently, they say, there is an IIS issue after moving all Windows accounts hosted from the actual server to a new one, for “imminent hardware failure reason”.
So frustrating ..especially when we lose money and clients, as we do now!
Hi,
Yes true, my website was down for 24 hours and now it is up, lucky me !!
I have to say that actually so far , my website is loading 2 x times faster then before, I think this change is pretty good for us if you are patient.
After 3 days down my sites are up (finally), but they are loading 5 times *slower* at the moment!
Is there anything else (bad) to see with Top Hosting Center?
..and here it goes *again*…
our sites are down now!
Apparently there must be a data base issue this time
That is the 5-6th day of issues..
Is there anything more (worst) we could expect from Top Hosting Center?
So frustrating.
I received the note that the site was “up” at midnight tonight, and when asking why I entered my site and it was still not working, I still get the innocent “working from our end” answers.
They’ve left behind things as simple as the default new web website index.html. Maybe they thought that’s my website’s homepage?
I can only say that one’s suppliers are tested when they get in trouble, and as much as I have been patient and tried to ride along, my sites are still down and I am correcting them, finishing what they should have done and wasting MY time to fix what they broke.
FAIL!
Let me publicly ask this.
THC: do you plan to run a post mortem of this shameful event? After 3 days down a I believe we deserve an explanation of what happenned and what do you plan to do to avoid it from happening again.
We are also in support of a public post mortem.
And visitors to this page: I strongly urge you so suggest us alternate hosting services that can provide similar features at similar price but having a support team that tries to solve problems at the first ticket, does not priorizite closing ticket after ticket in a hurry instead of definitely solving the problem being repeatedly reported, knows how to solve things and are attentive to details when a delicate setting is being discussed.
GetGoogleChromes last blog post..Dev update: Fixes Right-click Copy and "Confirm Form Submission"
The amount of issues we have had with this hosting has been enough. We’re moving to HostGator.
Just today the complete site has been deleted 4 times, and we’ve spent the whole day recreating it every time. Gone my DNS and mail settings – all set to default every time.
Yes the amount of issues we have with Top Hosting Center is huge.
Site down. They are unable to prevent any potential issue which is happening regularly after!
Top Hosting Center: Probably the worst hosting experience we ever had!
They only beat ..themselves. Easily.
We are down again…
..and again and all over again… Our website came back on line for a few hours and went down again right now!
Top Hosting Center is such a big pain…
They are dangerous!..
We have to move away the soonest..
The worst webhosting ever. My site has been down for almost a week. Can’t add a new domain. Can’t delete a domain. Just loops. How hard is it to keep your webserver running properly.
thanks for sharing i always check updated of your blog your posts always very informatics