3 days ago servage did it again(i just didn’t have time to post it up). None of my websites were loading, or they loaded and a 404(Not found) Error message popped up. Well this pissed me off and i almost started swearing, but kept it pretty cool.

Here’s my support ticket:

2008-07-07 10:39 Customer

Subject:How on earth can you be so incompetents? (wanted to put such..but because i was very pissed i put “so”)

okay this really does it, for more than a hour either my websites aren’t loading or

Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.
Servage.net Clustered Webhosting running enhanced Apache Webserver

appears

look, there’s a limit to everything and you can say that i endured quite much from servage’s messups(the most important one being servage hacked and not letting customers know about it, i had to read on a forum that the passwords were in fact reset due to a hack, and that the nice trojans that were popping up on my websites occurred also because of the same thing)

so, in max 30minutes i want to see my websites up and running without any issue

In about 2 hours i got a reply(yeah, they are bragging about 30minute support reply. the support is getting worse day by day just as the services do):

2008-07-07 12:20 Support - John

Please check it now. Your sites are loading fine now.

Kind Regards
John, Support
Servage Hosting

Yeah..this pretty much drew the line, as soon as my hosting package expires i’m getting out of there.

__________________

Check out some other “cool” posts about servage:

Some incompetents work @ servage? - April 16th, 2008

Servage has some really incompetent employees - February 22nd, 2008

Servage upgrades accounts to 510GB space and 5010GB bandwidth, but forgets about a “tiny” problem -  January 13th, 2008

SH*T Happens - servage - December 9th, 2007

Servage hosting - Problems over problems -  October 23rd, 2007

Download day will occur on the day when Firefox 3 will be launched. Till then you have the chance to pledge using your email address and you will be among the first to know the date of the official Firefox 3 launch.

Download day is Mozilla’s attempt to set a world record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. The number of downloads on the first day when Firefox 2 was launched was 1.6million, now mozilla aims for 5 million downloads in first day.

You can contribute by pledging, by hosting a firefox party, and if you have a blog by adding promotional banners to your website/blog. Of course you can help by telling your friends also about download day!

At this point here are the pledge stats:

So what are you waiting for! Go ahead and Pledge for your favorite browser!

The regular Opera browser doesn’t have any chances to take the throne from Internet Explorer(Firefox will surely dethrone IE) but its version for mobile phones named Opera Mini surely pwnes the competition!

Opera Mini 4.1 was in beta stage for quite a while and it was about time they released the final version! If you want a super fast browser on your Blackberry or new-gen mobile phone Opera Mini is the ideal solution! It will make you put away your laptop on trips and fully use your phone’s web features, meaning that you will be able to blog/IM/browse in great comfort and satisfaction.

The new version of Opera Mini features a more user friendly GUI(general user interface):

The address bar works similar to the T9 editor at phones(when writing and SMS T9 tries to complete the word reducing your writing time), so it will try to present you similar matches using your browse history and bookmarks.

Opera claims that its new version for mobile phones provides 50% faster browsing, because all the data goes trough the Opera servers.(i tried it out on a friend’s Blackberry and i was pretty impressed by the increased speed).

The new Opera Mini will let you search for text on web pages using its built-in search. This can save you a lot of time, trust me on this.

If you connect your phone with your PC using Opera Link you will be able to sync your bookmarks on the PC with the bookmarks on your mobile phone! I Love this feature, all my bookmarks got transfered within seconds to my friend’s blackberry(i deleted them after, it was just for testing).

44 Million people just can’t be wrong, if you wish to know more about this exciting new version of Opera Mini feel free to watch Catherine’s presentation

Back at the end of january i wanted to buy credits to post up a template for auction. I wanted to pay for the credits using my Paypal account and guess what?, i got a cool error message saying the system could not process my credit card(pretty hilarious considering that i selected Paypal as a payment method).

Back then i sent them a mail and check out the reply i got:

Hi

There may have been a problem with Paypal on that day or with your Paypal account - you could try another credit card with them - or you can order direct from us using a credit card.

Kind Regards,

Nonie Donald
SitePoint Support Team

Then i tried again, got the same error message so i abandoned my idea of buying credits, but now that i want to start monetizing my blog a listing there could get me some extra cash.

Same story as in January: i want to buy credits using Paypal:

eventually i get a “sexy” error message:

So this is clearly the opposite of what Nonie Donald said. I tired this yesterday and today also and faced the same issue.

In the reply to my email Nonie suggested that i directly purchase from them using my credit card. HELL NO! That’s not why i got a Paypal account. I got my Paypal account to minimize the use of my Credit Card on the internet.

If they don’t want to fix the issue its their problem, but trust me on this, till they don’t get the issue fixed i won’t buy any credits(not that its a big loss to them, but i don’t think i’m the only one feeling this way)

Google seems to have a really rough time these weeks. First the issue with the adsense payments to some of those who selected payment via western union quick cash, and now the youtube issue again.

Youtube is down for more than a hour now, and yet again no one knows the reason. On 24th february Youtube was down for a few hours worldwide because of Pakistan’s attempt to block access to its population:

Ricardo Reyes(youtube spokesman)

“Many users around the world could not access our site. We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again”

I wonder what caused the downtime, and can’t wait for it to be back up again and see a spokesman’s statement regarding today’s downtime.

As usual i used Internetsupervision to check if youtube is down worldwide and that the issue isn’t on my side:

(click to enlarge) - Click here to check youtube

There’s nothing we can do, but wait till its back up, if your bored and want to watch some vids online till youtube is back visit Metacafe.

————————-

You may have noticed that this page loaded very very slow(30 seconds). This slow load time is because the guys at servage messed up something again and the connection to the mysql clusters is slower than a snail. I argued with Scott(servage support) for a while, and got to this conclusion:

i highly doubt that this issue is affecting only my account and that its not fixable

one thing is certain, that the issue is on servage’s side and that i tried what i could to get the issue fixed. From this point the duty to fix the issue is the technical teams @ servage.

cheers,
Tom

Scott offered to move my account to a new cluster, but said that all my websites will be unaccessible for about 24 hours, so i told him what i wrote above. If the issue persists il start getting grumpy and most probably will have a chat with an admin at servage(again).

Exactly 2 months ago(on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 8:19 pm ) i blogged about the first PR update that hit my blog . Finally my homepage got the appreciation it deserves and got attributed Pagerank 5(iwebtool predicted PR 6, but who can trust it?)

Remember what i said in the first pr update post:

I really hope that on next pagerank update my main page will also get pagerank 4-5. The only problem is that i will have to work my ass off to get it:).

Now i can start monetizing my blog(i currently make about 120$/month from affiliate programs earnings), don’t worry i won’t fill every inch of your screen with ads. You won’t sense the difference, because there won’t be any, except the banners will change.

Once again i used the Google Pagerank checker tool made by SEO Junkie , and here are the stats:

(click image to see full stats)

In the stats picture i didn’t include the pages which didn’t get any pagerank value attributed, if you wish to see the full stats visit the stats page.

Releasing themes really got me a great value of IBLs(inbound links) which contributed to the high value of the index’s pagerank. Now the only thing that i have to do is to manage to keep it.

Technorati

Over at technorati thaslayer.com has 760 authority value and a rank of 5,251 with 847 blog reactions

——————

In other news Google still didn’t send the payment to those publishers who had their payments canceled due to a deposit payment technical error, and 10th may is arriving faster than the french TGV.

Today a friend asked my opinion about IX Web hosting. He told me that he saw a hosting package for $4.95/month which will give him UNLIMITED disk space and UNLIMITED bandwith along with 500$ worth of marketing tools and credits.

I told him that i have to check it out before i say my opinion.

The first things that got to my eyes were the following lines: Unlimited Domains Unlimited Data Transfer Unlimited Web Space.

I’m fine with Unlimited Domains, but Unlimited data transfer and Unlimited Web space sounds pretty fishy to me. I saw IX web Hosting’s offer last year, but back then they had normal values at the Web space and the Bandwith.

At this point i said to myself: “uuu…let’s chat a little with someone at live support”, what i did, and believe me i laughed a lot during my “small” chat with a Support representative. The most annoying thing was that Karina(the support representative) replied to my questions within minutes like she was working on something rather than chatting with me.

Here’s the chat:

Chat InformationPlease wait for a site operator to respond.

Chat InformationYou are now chatting with ‘Karina Zalavskaya’

Karina Zalavskaya: Welcome, this is Karina, how can I help you?
you: Hey Karina,
you: i have just one pre-sale question
you: How can you offer UNLIMITED disk space and UNLIMITED transfer?
Karina Zalavskaya: What do you mean?
you: Business plus plan
you: Unlimited Data Transfer Unlimited Web Space
you: unlimited doesn’t actually exist
you: Karina? Are you still there?
Karina Zalavskaya: Yes.
Karina Zalavskaya: But we realy provide unlimited webspace.
you: i get that
you: for example
you: if i make an image hosting website and fill up 400gigs of space and use 50TB of band width each month won’t that be a problem?
Karina Zalavskaya: You have to understand that we provide shared hostimg and then servers have limits.
you: i understand
you: but with the above sentence you just said the opposite of what you said before
you: Karina Zalavskaya: But we realy provide unlimited webspace.

I waited about 5 minutes and because she didn’t respond i just closed the chat. I have a feeling that all the unlimited disk space and band width thingy is just a marketing tool to gain new newbie webmasters to sign up who are tempted by all the Unlimited words that they see on the packages page.

If an experienced web master sees the packages page he will surely close the tab and go search for an other web host. As you can see in the chat UNLIMITED bandwidth and web space doesn’t exist. It’s true that in the chat i said a rough example which is almost at the edge but still they wouldn’t have the right to suspend my account if i would reach those levels.

I didn’t even look at the marketing tools(they most probably offer vouchers and stuff), i just closed the tab and told my friend: DON’T be an idiot. Go search a little more, and after you find a web host search for reviews before asking my opinion.

Here’s a quote from Findhosts.com

Reviewer: Anonymous 02-06-2007
I have websites hosted by expensive apollohosting, poor control panel bluehost and Cheap Easy Setup Ixwebhosting. While I have minor problems with the first two, IX is PATHETIC. In less than 1month, IX has been down for nearly 12hours in total. Right now as I type, my ecommerce site is down, my newly launched news site is down and IX is unreachable. A complete WASTE of my money!

I’m a member at smorty for quite a while(although i don’t really use it) and during this period i’ve seen improvements and fall backs.

Improvements:

One of the best features they implemented is Post Exchange(BETA):

Post exchange is all about writing positive posts about each others blogs. Bloggers from the same category and related star ratings will have the opportunity to review each others blogs. It works in the same way as a sponsored review, however this is completely free.

For every post you write for a fellow blogger, a different blogger will write a post for you. This means relevant traffic can be passed between similar blogs and a strong community can be built by helping each other.

Alright, this is a great feature, but we all know how many webmasters are: they will write a post and link t you and after a while they will remove the backlink from the post to gain IBL(inblound links). This is some pretty messed up stuff, especially if you will exchange posts with a guy like the one mentioned above.

I’m waiting for this feature to get out of beta, and i will write a complete review then.

The User panel

The user panel was greatly improved and offers a easy navigation system and a clean design(the main website could also use a new design, i suggested this but it seems that the admins don’t even want to hear about it.

Trust

Smorty gained a lot of trust by paying its publishers on time, and offering pretty good support to both publishers and advertisers. In some time it could become a terrifying contender for Reviewme and Payperpost.

Fall Backs:

Paid Post offers:

To be honest the advertising tasks SUCK. 90% of the paid post offers are either mortage or insurance or casinos or Bad Credit Loans or Shopping cart systems related.

And the stupid part is that you can’t decline them.

Here’s a suggestion for smorty admins:

Implement a feature where the publishers can select the niche they want to blog about, and implement a damn DECLINE button for post offers.

Standard banner sizes

Alright now this is really annoying, check out some of the banner sizes they offer in the Referral Program:

300×30, 125×55, 200×100, 468×60, 125×400

I don’t get this…why couldn’t they use standard sizes like 250×250, or 125×125? They probably taught that by making banners in some different sizes people will like them more. NOT!.

I’m pretty eager to see what will turn out eventually  and what the future brings for smorty. It will either have a great success and become a serious competitor on the niche of paid review or it will fall.

Entrecard earlier today changed the credit system. To be honest they did a huge mistake because this is just dumb.

Here’s how the new system works:

With some delay Wordpress 2.5 was finally launched yesterday. This is a long waited version and it features lots and lots of new features and even more flexibility.

The whole admin panel got a facelift, good bye old theme, welcome new web 2.0 theme. As you can see the most commonly used features are way more highlighted than the less commonly used features(like plugins for example: you activate the plugins once and you won’t have to use the plugins tab till you upload a new plugin.

The use of widgets also invaded the admin panel! The dashboard contains a series of widgets which you can easily edit.

Along with the new release wordpress achieved a great milestone and wordpress.org also got a facelift. It was about time you guys!

The new wordpress admin panel has some really neat features, but the thing that i like the most is that it’s organized and even more simple to navigate and manage your blog.

The boxes are completely reordered which are like a STEP-BY-STEP guide on how to write your posts.

For example:

- you start with writing the post

- after which you add tags

- you select the categories

- use custom fields

-set commenting/trackback settings

- select author

When writing a post the permalink is generated and shown, which you can edit in real time at a simple push of a button:

You can instantly add and delete tags without reloading the page using the Tags box features:

Adding pictures/videos/audio/media/ is just one click away using the Add Media feature:

Also the WYSIWYG editor got a new look, and the newest feature that i love is the REDO button, because sometimes when i messed up something i pressed Ctrl+Z by reflex and couldn’t redo it

Wordpress 2.5 is truly a revelation. It gives you the flexibility you need and the feeling that your using a very advanced CMS with all the settings at the tip of your fingertips.

Upgrading to wordpress 2.5 won’t really affect your blog, because 2.5 supports themes and plugins made for older versions of wordpress, although as i saw there are a few plugins that are incompatible with 2.5.

Currently i’m at college(damn…some classes are just way too boring), but tomorrow i will try to make a video overview of wordpress 2.5.

Till then here are some helpful links for you:

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-brecker/

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/