Some Research Into IHSystems

Some Research Into IHSystems

I originally posted this on the forums at doorhost.net, but I've copied here too. It concerns my (former) webhost Doorhost.net and the people who bought the business, IHSystem.com

I've been doing a bit of research, and thought you might like to hear the results and a little bit of speculation.

The research is incomplete, as I've a limited amount of time, but interesting nevertheless.

I thought (as you probably did) that when Atiq arrived on the forums, he was going to take over the role that Eric had, as the solver of all our problems. Well that may not be so.

Well Atiq's full name is Atiq Siddiqui, and his online name is cib3r_guy. At IHSystem he is listed as Project Co - ordinator.

Atiq likes to make some posts on this forum (there may be others)....
http://www.webhostingtalk.com

He does not make posts in threads about (say) server configurations, or resolving DNS issues. The only threads he posts in are threads where people are selling all or part of their hosting company, and Atiq, as a representative of IHSystem, is generally there ready and willing to put in an offer.

So, I'm making the assumption that he is not a techie, but an administrator.

Now when Eric was around, we all had the confidence that the person we posted our problems to would be the same person that sorted them out. This is no longer the case.

Atiq is probably (at best) a phone call away from whoever actually sorts out problems, with all the potential for mistranslation and misunderstandings that chinese whispers seem to result in.

It seemed strange to me (and probably to you too,) that someone would lay out all the money and effort to buy a previously existing webhost, and then go out of their way to annoy the clients that came with the business.

Changes are inevitable when something like this happens. even hardware problems are understandable and will be accepted as a fact of life by most of the clients. But this is only if they are kept informed of the proceedings.

And the complete refusal by IHsystem to keep the clients informed is disasterous for the clients.But it's going to be damaging to IHSystem too. And it's especially damaging to the reputation of Doorhost - which must pain Eric, considering the amount of time and effort he put into building it up.

Now the speculation.

It seems that IHSystem has been aggressively buying up small webhosting companies.

Perhaps they have overextended themselves, and no longer have the money or manpower to service everything that they now own. That would mean that Doorhost (and perhaps their other recent purchases) may well be going to be sold on again so IHSystem can get their business back under control.

Another possibility.
IHSystem is trying to build up a portfolio of seemingly healthy looking webhosting services, so that they themselves can sell the business on to a third party at some future date - and not too far in the future if their reputation suffers with others as it has at Doorhost.

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As I say this is just speculation, and there may well be other more accurate reasons.If you've got any, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear them.

Cafepress, Froogle and the PID of Doom

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I've recently been getting a few hits from Froogle - not many, 2 or 3 a day - but every little helps I thought.
But I've just been examining those links, and there's something rather curious about them.Look at this page.It's a search for the term - "Hug Me" T-shirt - on Froogle.....http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=%22Hug+Me%22+T-shirt&btnG=Search

(Note: the page is showing as I say at the time of posting - it may have changed if you're reading some time after.)

There's ten results in total.There's something from my shop in first position, and in fourth position too.

7 out of the ten results come from Cafepress,and three from elsewhere.I also show up at number one in the Froogle results at the top of a Google search....http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Hug+Me%22+T-shirt&btnG=Search

Now the interesting thing is in the links from the Froogle results to my Cafepress shop.Here's the link - I've edited out the http : // www . bit so you can see it all.....

google.com/url?q=http://www.cafepress.com/the_daily_shirt.6262524%3Fr%3Dfroogle%26pid%3DXXXXXXX%26CMP%3DOTC:froogle&e=14815&fr=AHOVNg7xgXn5SbuqMznGjiVTUSvJBAxDHIt4fHaJ7a7dAAAAAAAAAAA&sa=X&oi=froogle&ct=result&cd=1

Did you notice that there's a PID in there? (I replaced the actual PID with XXXX - but you can see the real one on Froogle - it's the same one on all the links I looked at).

This means that Google, via Froogle, is making affiliate income from the clickthrough sales it generates.

This means that if someone comes to your shop through Froogle, it will be the Froogle affiliate cookie that will be set, and it will be they who earn any affiliate income from the visit.

So if you've spent time putting together affiliate pages in your shop, and the visitor comes from Froogle, then it's wasted effort.

This might not matter, in the wider scheme of things, as we can now regard Froogle as just another competitor for affiliate income and adjust our marketing strategies accordingly, except for these lines from Froogle's FAQ page....

"As with all other Google search results, Froogle ranks your results based on their
relevance to your search terms. Google does not accept payment for placement within our
actual search results, and the advertising that appears on Froogle search results pages is
always clearly identified as "Sponsored Links."

And also......

"Froogle's search results are automatically generated by our ranking software. Google
does not accept payment for inclusion of products in our search results, nor do we place
sellers' sites higher in our results if they're advertisers or offer to pay for that
placement."

Now they may not have, strictly speaking, violated those terms. It would rather depend on how
closely you want to associate the two worlds of advertising and affiliate marketing.

But it does seem a touch underhand to make money directly from click through affiliate sales,
and to keep quiet about it, especially when you're pretending that when it comes to
advertising, you're whiter than white.

As I've said before, in different words, but it's worth saying again....
Thank you Google for taking bread out of the mouths of the little people.
Do no evil?
Hmmmmm.
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There's a couple of things that should be checked up on.

If there's anyone reading this that has a Cafepress shop that's opted out of the marketplace
but is also listed on Froogle, could they check their Froogle listings and see if there's a
PID set in the links? It could be Froogle are making money from something you've opted out
of.

And the same goes for anyone with an off-site Cafepress shop listed with Froogle.
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And on a more general note, I'd noticed that affiliate income had gone down over recent
months. Now the big boys are getting involved, do you think we've hit the down slope of the
Supply/Demand curve?
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And a final thought.If Google are doing it today, Microsoft will be doing it in eighteen months time.
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A Sack Of Shit - Pugmarks.net

The website is going wrong again!

Every time there's a php include, there's an error message.

It's a sack of shit and I'm fed up to the back teeth of it.

Haven't got any work done for a month now, other than posting here on the blog.

A word of warning.

Never go to http://www.pugmarks.net/ to buy your webhosting - they're the ones that bought my old and previously good webhosts.

They are useless. They don't inform their clients what's happening. They seem to think we don't count.

I know that many people, when searching for a webhost put some thing like "webhost.com useless" or "webhost.com awful" into Google to see if anybody has anything bad to say about them.

So.......
pugmarks.net useless
pugmarks.net crap
pugmarks.net awful
pugmarks.net a sack of shit
pugmarks.net sucks

The sun has not got his hat on any more.

Website Back Online (Fingers Crossed)

The website and the designer program are now back online.
Let's hope it lasts.

The guy who used to own the hosting company who sold out to a third party, has once again been proving that he is at heart a decent guy, because he's been working hard, when he didn't have to, to help people out to get their sites back online after the datacentre move debacle.
So a big hand to Eric Leyendecker, who realised he'd dropped people in the shit, and had the decency to stick around and start shovelling.

But of course, this leaves us with trying to work out why the new hosts bothered to buy the old hosting company, as they didn't seem to be able to sort out the problems they caused (or didn't want to), and as a result clients have been leaving in droves. It sure can't be worth as much now as it was when they bought it. And the lack of communication from them doesn't bode well for the future.

Still, today is a bit of an up, rather than the downer that the last month has been.
So let's be positive.
The sun has put his hat on,
hip hip hip hooray.

More Apologies

Website still not working, but I at least know why now.

Turns out that the guy who runs the webhosting company (who used to be very good and put in time and effort beyond the call of duty) has sold the business on to a third party.

Now I can understand the reasons for not telling his clients before the sale - business confidentiality etc, but the sale went through on April 28, 2006, and it's now June and we've only just found out about it - and that was through a forum post - they hadn't bothered informing any of their clients about this by email.

And the worst of it is that the transfer of accounts to the new datacenter came without warning, and has gone horrendously wrong for an awful lot of their clients - me included. People's sites have been unavailable, partially available or full of error messages. And service has been slow to nonexistent. And I can't even access my site to make a backup so I can't even think of transferring anywhere else (not that I could afford to at the moment.)

There's been almost no access to my site in two weeks now - although people in other locations have been able to access it, which is bizarre.

If you'd like to read the apology(!) from the former webhost, then look here....
http://forum.doorhost.net/showthread.php?p=15113#post15113

I used to recommend these people to others - but guess what now?
I shall keep my recommendations to myself and avoid looking like a fool.

The ShirtBloke

Why Oh Why Oh Why....

Why do I always seem to be apologising here?
My webhosts are once again faling and the website has been full of error messages for the last 24 hours.

Sorry if things aren't working properly, but there you go.
I'm fed up too.

Bah!