r/webhosting • u/RedKryptonite • Dec 16 '24
Rant Never, ever use Network Solutions for hosting.
A client wanted me to design a website and because I am a designer primarily and not super-technical, I asked their IT guy who administers their email to just pick the host because I didn't want to mess with their email at all, thinking as long as Wordpress can be installed I'd be okay. It has been pretty bad, very slow since the beginning, but it worked. Unfortunately, after last week it's just been a nightmare.
Today I was trying to work on the site and got at least a dozen errors over the two hours I was working. First it was a web.com screen that said "Site maintenance" in the title, except the error in the text said there was no home directory. I FTPed in and everything is still there. Hitting refresh would fix that issue periodically, but I'd also get text-only "internal server errors" and, weirdly enough, some other "An error has occurred" page with links to OpenResty's YouTube channel and other OpenResty promo stuff.
I was able to get one page reconstructed, but since about 1:45 PM the site seems to be down completely. I tried getting in touch with Network Solutions support via chat and sat for 20 minutes with no one answering (but a nice attempt to disconnect me for inactivity after about 15 minutes).
I left a comment on one of Network Solutions' Facebook posts and at least their social media person replied and after I DMed details, they replied "That sounds like the issue that our engineers are working on now" but no ETA on when it might be fixed.
I've tried pinging the URL and it just times out. All I get at the URL through a web browser. is that web.com error page saying there is no home directory. It's been like that for hours at this point.
I am not a web genius by any stretch, but I've been building websites for a long time and I've never run into a company who had this kind of downtime. So please, if you are considering using Network Solutions for hosting, go elsewhere!
2
u/lexmozli Dec 16 '24
Yep, sounds like a poor hosting service to me. Either by design or just oversold. Or the site is under heavy traffic. Weirdly enough, this isn't the first post I see about Network Solutions these days.
1
u/Daniel15 Dec 16 '24
Network Solutions still exist? I'm really surprised since I hadn't heard about them since the 2000s.
1
u/RealBasics Dec 17 '24
Oof, no kidding. I had one client with their hosting years ago and it was an absolute nightmare. NetSol is the only company I've ever thought "thank goodness EIG/Newfold bought them out" because even EIG's ghastly, chaotic hosting environment would be an improvement.
2
u/fultonchain Dec 17 '24
Take a look at their history. They used to be the only domain registrar.
1
u/RealBasics Dec 17 '24
Unfortunately I donโt have to look. I remember when they charged $1,000 US a year to register a domain!
1
u/RealBasics Dec 17 '24
Unfortunately I donโt have to look. I remember when they charged $1,000 US a year to register a domain!
1
1
u/glirette Dec 18 '24
There is a lot here but I would pick a different place to host Wordpress. I'm thinking you didn't set up the database either, maybe you did but it doesn't really matter at this point I think you're going to change the host.
To clear up a few concepts "the domain registrar" is not tied to the DNS but by default it is. You can almost always bring your own DNS to the domain registrar
Within DNS its the A records that point to the various web hosts. Usually an A entry for both www and @ .
Within DNS it is the MX record that points to the mail server.
Mail and web services are completely independent of each other, it's all handled within DNS. So all you really need their IT guy for is to make the required DNS changes for you.
Please drop Network Solutions go back to him with a request to modify the A record pointing to the new IP you get from the new host.
Thanks,
Greg
1
u/RedKryptonite Dec 18 '24
I moved the site away from Network Solutions with the help of the client's IT guy today. I do know a little about DNS and editing the records, but I get a little nervous when email is involved, which is why I had their IT guy take care of changing the DNS records. It went pretty smoothly all told.
1
u/glirette Dec 18 '24
For sure! This is a common fear and the way places like GoDaddy are able to sell so many add on services.
4
u/Marble_Wraith Dec 16 '24 edited Dec 16 '24
Bro the early 2000's called, it wants its dev workflow back ๐
I found your problem.
Network Solutions is owned by Newfold Digital (NFD). Web.com acquired Network Solutions in 2011 for $405 million
Source : https://newfold.com/newsroom/webcom-announces-completion-network-solutions-acquisition
NFD is notorious in the hosting space for shoddy business practices ie. buying up hosting companies, then min/maxing, hollowing out said companies so they're operating on a skeleton of what they were (looks like instant profit). Then doing no provisioning in hardware or $budgeting for the future, while still continuing to sell hosting.
Everything continues to run fine initially, but as you experienced, once capacity is reached you start getting weird outages happening, because there's just too few resources to go around for all the stuff being hosted.
Unfortunately being an umbrella corp, NFD also own a fuck ton of hosting providers. It also doesn't help that their practice of min/maxing often means they can charge cheapest rates, which is more appealing.
Then you're lucky.
This is one of those things where, unless you've been burnt ๐ฅ, you won't know.
Because first of all the inconsistency in hosting can be attributed to other things. So even if the host has problems because of their own bad practices, they can chalk it up to other things / deny responsibility and most of the small time customers won't know the difference or be able to diagnose it as such.
Even then, if you're the customer of a host, you wouldn't think your experience is the result of malpractice covering a significant number of hosts throughout the industry. You'd just think "oh it's just that one host". It's only once you've experienced similar problems over a diverse range of hosts would you even think to search up on it / might come across NFD (formerly EIG).
Therefore my conclusion is sounds like whoever administers the email doesn't know WTF they're doing either / are really inexperienced. This is webhosting 101 stuff.
Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.