Giving up on Net Identity

For those of you who haven't been following my adventures with Net Identity and whomever they sold their web hosting to let me summarize.

Net Identity was a service that allows you to sign up to use a sub-domain thereby getting a personalized email address and URL. I have (had?) www.joseph.hewitt.org with a matching email address. I generally used it as a resume site while looking for work after Westwood Studios was closed. Lately it just points to this blog and I have just been using the space to store pictures and files that I link to on this blog, but I thought it was still worth paying for in case I wanted to do something with it in the future.

Tucows bought Net Identity a few years ago. They upgraded some stuff, re-vamped their web based email program, had a few growing pains. All-in-all nothing really too bad.

Tucows decided it didn't want to be in the web hosting business anymore and sold that part of the company to somebody else. They claimed we would get an email from that company with all sorts of update news and information. No email was ever received. At one point my site and all its content vanished. I made lots of complaints and never got an answer.

Ross Radar, from Tucows must have been ego searching and stumbled across my blog. He had always been in the forefront of getting information out before and somehow got me the attention of somebody at this new company. They restored my website from a back up. Only they left what appears to be the compressed file they transfered over from the back up on my site. This caused me to go over my storage limit. They attempted to bill me for this... twice. No correspondence from me to them about this have been answered to this day.

I have attempted to remove the file myself but don't seem to have FTP access to my site. I just tried to update my resume HTML and Word Document now that I was promoted to Creative Director at Interzone, but I still can't FTP into the site to upload the new versions.

I am paid up to March of next year but I've had it. I don't care so much about the website, but at least having the email address was nice. I have updated just my account across the web to the yahoo email address.

The way the original announcement was made I was thinking maybe Tucows still has the email part and its only the web hosting that the other company now controls. I don't know, I am just tired of all the hassle. Over Christmas break I am going to reconstruct all the content that is stored there either as blog posts here or store them elsewhere.

Website Hosting Fun Continues...

I get an email telling me that my website should be fully restored, but no information about this switch over, nothing... oh except this that arrived the day after that email:

on Aug 17, 2008, support@netidentityhosting.com wrote:

Web Disk Space / Storage Quota Warning (100%)

Domain: joseph.hewitt.org

If you exceed 100% of your quota you will be billed for overages at the end of the month. You may want to consider upgrading to a higher package level if your regular usage levels have increased.

If you have any questions please contact us.

Thank you,
Net Identity Hosting

Toll Free (U.S.A./Canada) 1-888-390-1242
support@netidentityhosting.com
www.netidentityhosting.com

Well, at first guess I am thinking maybe this overage is caused by the 47.6 meg file sitting in the root directory. It appears to be some sort of archive file containing my entire website. Another guess would be that this is the file that they used to restore my website the day before. Without that file the space I am using is almost halved.

Do I really need the www.joseph.hewitt.org site? Is it worth this frustration? It basically has the ruined remains of my old resume site from 5-6 years ago and a few pictures and my resume and history html files that are linked over on the right. I've just always thought that maybe I would do something with it in the future.

It's Back!

Haven't actually gotten an email back from the second customer service guy, but it does appear that the site and all the files are back. I'll have to check when I wake up.

I'm actually still sleeping, its just that I think I hurt my back sleeping or something so I got up to stretch and take some aspirin. Yes, you heard me, "hurt it sleeping." I am a serious sleeper!

I saw a t-shirt a few weeks ago that said, "Damn right i am good in bed, I can sleep for days!"

It appears to be getting worse...

Now all the graphics that were hosted on my site are gone. It didn't even occur to me that even though the site was down and I couldn't link to the sub-pages, that the graphics that were hosted there were still showing. It's pretty scary to see them vanish. You know, there were some files there that I don't know if I even have copies of on this machine.

I got that domain and email address because I knew I would be moving about the country (and as it turns out, the world) and I wanted some place where I could store stuff and know that I always had a permanent and professional looking email address.

Who is Screwing me and WHERE IS MY WEBSITE!?

Web site still missing.

Got a message back from Domain Direct / ItsYourDomain / Netidentity Customer Service.

Hello,
Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to assist you with your issue because we no longer provide hosting services for domains. You will need to contact Domain Direct Hosting at 1-888-390-1240, support@domaindirecthosting.com or access your account through domaindirecthosting.com.

Scott
Domain Direct / ItsYourDomain / Netidentity Customer Service

This reminded me that I did get some email about hosting changes. I dig back through my email inbox and found a letter from Ross Rader, General Manager of Tucows Retail services on May 7th saying Hostopia is taking over all their web hosting, that our accounts were being transfered, and Hostopia would contact us. I haven't heard anything since.

What really gets me is that Scott there in Customer Service should damn well know about the hosting changes, but his email comes off with a "not our problem dude" tone to it. Guess I should just be happy he actually answered the question I asked and didn't just copy/paste a completely unrelated answer into his reply like what happens with all the other customer support emails I've gotten in the last few years.

Reading several announcements and press releases I can't help but notice the lack of any helpful information. Nothing about if my account is now split? What about the money I paid NetIdentity, again in May, for a years email, website, and extra storage space? I guess that was supposed to be in the transition package I never received from Hostopia. And I will admit that it is entirely possible I received the transition package email from Hostopia and deleted it thinking it was spam. I get a lot of spam and useless game industry recruiter mail at that address that I just delete in bulk.

Now, you'll notice there is some name confusion. It appears from Scott's email from no-reply@domaindirect.com that Domain Direct does not equal Domain Direct Hosting? But Domain Direct Hosting does equal Hostopia? Except that www.domaindirecthosting.com has a logo that just says Domain Direct. But nothing else I have read apart from Ross's email makes any mention of Hostopia at all.

I did manage to login to www.domaindirecthosting.com which has logins for the different services dumped by Tucows, but it shows 0 of 50 megs up and no sign of my website. There was a FAQ link that took me to http://domaindirecthosting.com/support/ which comes up as 404 File Not Found Page. I also notice some of the URLs inside the site are still associated with Netidentity. What is really going on?

My Web Site is Gone

Just found out that www.joseph.hewitt.org is coming up as "This site is under construction." It's really bad too, because the graphic they used looks like it was drawn to be displayed on a white background and the page is black.

The site used to be my resume website but I changed the main URL to say that I have a blog now and point to here. But I do host some things there, like some pictures and the Resume and History link on the menu down the right. They both come up as page not found. I just updated the resume and was in the process of updating the Personal History so I know it was working last week. The email address I host there still works and my account shows it isn't due until the middle of next year.

Maybe the Hampster running the server is just taking a breather. I originally got the site through Net Identity, but they are now owned by TuCows. Its going to be UnCow if all the stuff I had up on their server is gone because I'm going to have a cow. Anyway, I put in a customer service ticket and I apologize if any pictures or links from the blog are now not working.