Site Hosting Robbers

[Ghome1971]

I recently purchased Actinic and have it up and running at http://stardustkids.co.uk.

Actinic recommended Netbenefits as a suitable host for Actinic so I purchased a basic package which cost around £250. With no web experience I trusted Actinic's recommendation. Within a few weeks I started getting emails from them telling me I was close to exceeding my bandwidth of 2GB and they would charge me £40 for ever 1GB. So I upgraded to their top package which cost me a staggering £650. Then I starting receiving more emails charging me an extra £20 per GB. I had spent over £1000 in less than 6 months in hosting a small site. I felt trapped because my knowledge of web design was limited and I was scared of changing server.

Then I decided to install affliliate software from AllaffiliatePro. I needed to install some software on my server space and Netbenefits wanted to charge me an additional £200 for this software which is available for FREE! I could not bear the robbers anymore.

I ended up moving my site to AllaffiliatePro for around £150 for 5GB of compacted bandwidth. They did all the work and installed my new affiliate software.

[NormanRouxel]

Considering that the average size of a web page is 100Kb, then to use 2Gb per month you would need to serve up 20,000 pages per month. With 5Gb it would be 50,000 such pages.

Either of these is pretty heavy going for a fledgling site.

Unfortunately your URL above doesn't work so I can't look to see if your pages are unusually large.

Also 2Gb or even 5Gb for a basic package is beginning to seem a bit mean these days when basic services (like 1&1 Business) supply 20Gb bandwidth for £9 per month.

[Bob Isaac]

Clicking on the Departments reveals cgi code. Is the server setup correctly?

Bob

[dscontroller]

Geraldine,

Curiosity killed the cat - and when I saw your website had to do what the cat did. Follow the link!!

Unfortunately, when clicking on your shop links - all it turns up is your perl script and no shopping available. I would look into this immediately!

Regards,

David

[NormanRouxel]

I see that others can see your site. Weirdly it's not accessible to me (in Scotland).

[RuralWeb]

Actinic recommended Netbenefits

I have today just finished moving the last of my sites from these robbers, as you say they are unbelievably expensive. I hope Actinic are listening.

PS I can see your homepage but all your links go to code.

[newshopbloke]

Whilst im sitting here tearing my hair out over the smart template (again) I thought I would chime in on this.

Unless your site had its bandwidth hacked by someone else then the host is telling porkie pies about the bandwidth. I share your pain because I have been down the road of bad hosts before and its not a nice experience. And your pages are showing code in IE 6 like the others have said, really not sure what could be causing that.

Now back to smart tweaking.......yawn

[wjcampbe]

@Norman - can you ping him? If not try 213.133.65.182

[Mike Hughes]

Is it only me? When I click on any of his section links the perl file downloads and opens in my editor.

If that happens everytime someone visits his store I can see why her bandwidth usage is so high.

Mike

Edit: OK. reading the above posts it's not only me. Kind of explains his bandwidth problems though. Anyone know why this is happening?

Edit 2: Corrected for Gender, Sorry.

[Duncan Rounding]

Is this something to do with the 'cgi-bin' directory being called simply 'cgi' in the navigation links? I also see that this directory (http://www.stardustkids.co.uk/cgi/) index can be listed in he browser. A 'cgi-bin' directory does exist however.

It looks as if maybe some files have been manually copied over (from cgi-bin to cgi directories) and the network settings changed to suit.

Best perhaps to check the network settings and run the wizard to test them, manually delete the cgi directory, then purge and refresh the site and see if this fixes the problem.

[Mike Hughes]

I would guess this could also occur if the directory the perl scripts are in isn't set up to run the files so just serves them to the browser instead.

Mike

[Doc]

Considering that the average size of a web page is 100Kb, then to use 2Gb per month you would need to serve up 20,000 pages per month. With 5Gb it would be 50,000 such pages.

Either of these is pretty heavy going for a fledgling site.

Unfortunately your URL above doesn't work so I can't look to see if your pages are unusually large.

Also 2Gb or even 5Gb for a basic package is beginning to seem a bit mean these days when basic services (like 1&1 Business) supply 20Gb bandwidth for £9 per month.

I get 10x that bandwidth for a similar amount. How can Actinic do this to an Actinic User? They must know what is available???????
I am concerned that Actinic does not seem to care much about its users. I dont see Actinic being active in supporting the user community at all. Its only thanks to few individuals that this forum is kept running.

[wjcampbe]

I dont see Actinic being active in supporting the user community at all. Its only thanks to few individuals that this forum is kept running.

Actinic provide this space for users to talk to each other, share experience and discuss solutions.

It is their stated policy NOT to respond here unless the user is not getting an answer from the community, or one of us posts incorrect information which has to be set right.

Direct Actinic support is available by email. Peer support with Actinic overview is the aim of this forum.

[Doc]

Actinic provide this space for users to talk to each other, share experience and discuss solutions.

It is their stated policy NOT to respond here unless the user is not getting an answer from the community, or one of us posts incorrect information which has to be set right.

Direct Actinic support is available by email. Peer support with Actinic overview is the aim of this forum.

Yes, but I think you will find most will come here first for first line support

[Mike Hughes]

It does sound like netbenefit took this gal for a ride. I think she should contact actinic directly and ask them to investigate. If they can't give a reasonable account of what happened then they need to be removed as an actinic partner.

At least the code download problem now appears to be fixed.

As an aside, the non www. url for the site has no pagerank in Google whereas the www. version has a minimal amount. When setting up a website it's important to be consistent and I'd usually recommend using www. as this is what most people will use when linking to your site.

Mike

Edit: Corrected for gender, Sorry.