David Haskell's blog

I’m not really the kind of guy who gushes or throws out random ringing endorsements, I’m more likely to be the complainer that the call center gets sick of hearing from lol.

But I’m sufficiently impressed with HostGator to want to devote an entire blog topic to their company. First of all, their plans are quite reasonable, it’s even fair to say they’re service is downright cheap. And as a newbie blogger, I spent a lot of time stressing over whether I should go with such a “discount” company but I read lots of good reviews online and I ended up going with HostGator. And I am very glad that I did.

Since starting up this whole blogging adventure I’ve had a good number of problems, mostly of my own creation being so new at this whole thing, and I’ve used their live chat on numerous occasions at this point. Besides the fact that they held my hand and fixed my mistakes quickly and professionally, I have to say that their friendliness and genuine attention to good customer service is nothing short of stunning.

To put it into perspective, I worked at Disneyland in Japan for many years. And I used to think that Disney had a lock on the number one spot as the very best at superior customer service out of any company out there, big or small. But now, for the first time, I can say without question that the HostGator company matches or even exceeds Disney in terms of genuine customer care. I think that’s about as high a compliment as I can hand out, and they certainly do deserve it. Each and every time I got off the line with their service center I was tempted to send an email to the CEO asking him to give whichever staff person helped me a big raise and a bonus.

So in any case, if you’re looking for a company to host your blog or website, or considering switching out, I can not recommend HostGator enough Just for the record, this isn’t a “paid endorsement” or anything like that (I know such endorsements for pay do show up on blogs from time to time), just an honest review from a very satisfied customer.

Well, I’m writing a quick blog post this evening because I’m in the midst of yet another crisis over on my other site, UpbeatRhythms.com, which I thought would be my easiest effort but has turned out instead to be far and away the most troublesome and time consuming of my three sites thus far.

I mentioned the possibility of Drupalizing the place, that sort of petered out when I realized I’d need a college education in computer science to make it work. So I decided to try and max it out wordpress-wise as much as I could. Thinking I’d be all smart about it, I changed my settings around to allow multi-user, multi-blogging, though I have neither multiple users nor the need for multiple blogs. It was just the easiest way, I thought, to allow myself the flexibility to change around the page themes throughout the site.

Hasn’t worked out as planned. I’m getting error messages and it seems unable to accept files or “write” whatever it needs to. Tried to head it off at the pass by directly FTPing my files (any bloggers reading this can understand and sympathize with my plight, I’m sure), and it seems as though my folders are claiming that I’m storing hundreds of gigabites of crap when I know full well all I have is a couple dozen low resolution images in there.

I guess my next step will be to contact the host, again, although I’m not really in the mood and I’m starting to feel like a real moron for not being able to work this stuff out for myself. I guess I got spoiled with Apple products, there just doesn’t seem to be any of these kinds of issues but going to the server and the host and all that is bringing up all kinds of windows nightmares form my former life as a PC user. I am SO glad I gave that all up, now they just have to invent internet hosting the Apple way, somehow.

Or else maybe I’m just a complete idiot. Sure feels that way.

Back to the drawing board. Again.