We would like to offer our most sincere apologies to our readers and listeners for the website problems we experienced today. The timing was horrendous as we were carrying a late-breaking story of interest as well as starting our #f1chat session on Twitter and supposed to record our weekly podcast. For those of you who attempted to visit the site via the #f1chat session, we are sorry for the inconvenience.
As for our loyal podcast listeners, we are mortified to tell you that it is not completed yet as I have been working on our website issues all day and night. The podcast will be recorded and posted Tuesday evening US time.
Monday afternoon we experienced an odd situation regarding www.godaddy.com. I had noticed over the past several weeks that our page-load times had really started to become long. After alerting Godaddy.com, they replied with an email explaining how our code could be really dodgy and causing the problem…in short, a form response.
I showed them another website I have on the same server with hardly any code that was behaving the same way. To their credit, a young man did dig deeper and asked for a trace route which I provided. The issue seemed to be on their end. They said that they would get back to me on the issue. Fair enough.
A few days passed and I heard nothing (which is unusual for them to be honest). I emailed a follow up today and the response was…are you ready? We changed your entire site over to a new server so please change your “A recordsâ€. Effectively a server migration with a change of IP address with no warning or word so I could alert our readers/listeners.
Actually, I can’t lie…the first email they sent was a hosting violation warning in which they were taking me to task and explaining that I was the cause of too much traffic on their server and would be put in a time out server for bad behavior until such time as I could fix my problems and they were convinced I was no longer a threat. It gave me several URL’s that were the most active traffic generators and possibly creating the issue…funny thing is, it wasn’t my domain, website or files. It was some other site I have never heard of. I think they had the wrong guy on that one.
Here is the thing folks…I have been with Godaddy.com since 2005 and they really have been a terrific company to deal with. You’ve heard me rave about them before on our podcasts etc. Their efforts to change the server for us was intended to help our page-load times and I am not bereft of that concept. I do appreciate it. The problem was it was done with brute force or what we in the technology industry call an “aggressive moveâ€. I am sure somewhere in the EULA there is something about how they can do whatever they want to the server but it betrays their normal approach to customer service.
The lack of communication with them is really an odd thing and departure from what I have come to expect all these many years. I sent an email to Mr. Parson (the owner) but in all fairness, just after sending it the site came back up at midnight US time. If you notice any oddities, please let us know as sometimes things get lost in the migration.
The outcome of this issue will be updated. As a business owner and executive in the technology industry, I understand things happen and these issues can arise. I am a fairly reasonable person when it comes to these things. I will update you as to their response so you can make informed decisions should you ever need to use a domain registration or hosting service.
As I have always said, a company’s reaction to an issue is always more important than he issue itself. Let’s see if Mr. Parsons agrees. He seems a nice enough guy and I am sure this is not how he wants his customers handled.
In closing, we apologize to all of our loyal readers and listeners and will try to alert you to any changes before we make them instead of clubbing you about the head and neck when you show up to a “internal server error†or some drivel about how the owner failed to upload files correctly. Thanks for your patience and the many emails I received letting me know the site was down…you folks are the best!
