I immediately jumped on a support chat with HostGator (the company which hosts this server). It took me about 20 minutes to get on a chat as since HostGator has been sold they can’t seem to hire enough technicians, and it can take a while to reach someone. I finally did, and the gentleman who was running the chat was extremely friendly and as helpful as he could be. But the problem is he is the first level support person. They are great for helping you with things like email and other simple settings and issues. But in all honesty, any halfway complicated issue is beyond their knowledge and/or capabilities. Typically they will open a ticket for you or tell you to request a reboot or things like that. So then you have to wait for the next level of support to actually look at the issue and handle it.
So what I am proposing is that web hosting companies have two levels of support chats, one to handle the minor issues and then have another for the more difficult problems. And so you don’t lose a bunch of time when you have a server down or other serious issues, the first level person should pass it along to the next level on the chat, instantly. That person can actually jump in reboot, look into more serious issues, hacking etc.
This would save so much angst for web hosting clients. As with many web development firms, I have several hosting accounts, but I still have to rely on hosting vendors to manage the day to day tasks. They are the experts in the field, and they are the ones we turn to. But in today’s world we have so many more issues affecting us, and the threat of hacking is real and it’s never a question of if you’ll be hacked, it’s a question of when. So we really need help from hosting vendors.
Bottom Line: Having a two level support chat will definitely help. But we also need better handling of major outages. We have seen a few of these in the last few months, lasting as long as 9 hours or more. We are bombarded with calls, and text messages, but can’t get through to webhosting companies as they can’t handle the volume. There has to be a better way. For one thing when a server is down, there should be an immediate email blast detailing the situation so that we can pass the information along to our clients. In that email needs to be an estimate as to when the issue will be resolved as that is what our clients need to know.
A few years ago a client came to me. I won’t mention his name, but will tell you a little bit about the project. He is an artist and wanted a site to display his works. Great, I could use WordPress and one of the many gallery plugins. BUT, he had very specific needs. He really wanted to have the images speak for themselves, and didn’t want any of the normal features of most galleries (and the things most people ask for). For instance he didn’t like light-box effects. He didn’t even want any borders around his images. Make a long story short, we built him a custom theme and fulfilled all of his needs.
Problem: We really had to re-write a lot of the gallery plugin. So we really couldn’t upgrade the plugin or we’d lose all the customizations. This wasn’t an issue for a couple of years. But then changes to the WordPress core messed up the file upload. We could no longer upload 40-50 files at a time which is the main functionality we needed. Adding images one at a time wasn’t an option. So what do I do? Should I bill him for 8 additional hours to bring his site up to date? (his maintenance plan included 2 hours and the project would take 10.)
Solution: Sometimes you just have to suck it up. I didn’t want to bill the guy $1,000 dollars, and not sure that he could afford it. So, I did the work myself which required me to set up a staging area, update the plug-in and then go through the process of again customizing the functionality and CSS. Fortunately, now the plug-in is improved to the point where my customizations would be stored in a separate area that would allow me to always upgrade the plug-in as needed. So the client would be much better off for years to come.
Bottom Line: I won’t get back the 10+ hours, or make any money for my troubles. But I know I did the right thing, and karma is definitely on my side. Going the extra mile has to be your normal behavior if you are managing websites if you are to stand out in the crowd. I believe we do.
