As I type this, it is now five days since all of my websites were taken offline by a large American webhosting company. They shall remain nameless, for now, as they continue to hold a gigabyte worth of my data and images, not to mention the databases which house the posts of all of the blogs I service. I will say that the technical support people for this company have been courteous and polite and they are working on getting me access to my data. My anger and disappointment is with whoever builds their servers to be so shoddy as to be unable to handle three separate Movable Type installations, and with myself, for vacating a perfectly decent webhosting company back in June just for the lure of a few extra dollars per month.
Live and learn. I've returned to 1and1 webhosting and am typing this on their servers.
I've set up two temporary blogs, so far; one for myself and one for Political Staples. He gets more traffic and comments than I do, so I figured I should give him priority. Transit Toronto is a little more complicated to set up, and it's not really a blog, so no temporary treatment for them, yet. Besides, my co-owner has control over the domain's DNS settings, and he hasn't yet changed them from their current arrangements. By the time the change sticks, I have every hope that my files and databases will be back, and normal service well on its way to being resumed.
I will post a full review of the events that have taken place so far this week, and I will be naming names. I know that, in the grand scheme of things, that this is small potatoes, but this situation still leaves me very angry and frustrated. I am appalled by the shoddy service shown to me by TWO webhosting companies, and really wonder if the whole Internet isn't just some fly-by-night operation.