Digg

Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.

What do I do when my hosting vanishes? Please. Digg. Help. (Vizaweb Story)

spamhuntress.com — Vizaweb. Gone. It's been 24 hours. No emails. No warning (other than shoddy service in September.) I have a reseller account with around 12 websites. What do i do? Who do i contact? An amateur web guy who is just looking for some answers.... (link to only relevant blog posting I could find seeing I have no hosting to host a story atm!)

Bury

wakasm 1 year 286 days ago, made popular 1 year 285 days ago

121 diggs
digg it

wakasm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I really wish there was something more I can do than ask Digg.

I have used Vizaweb for 2 years without too many problems. The only real problems was their response time and this past September when they were hacked. I thought this time it was just another overnight downtime... but... it's been way too long. Their website is down. No one picks up the phones. Who would I even contact to complain when the company itself is just gone?

I do have a lot of things backed up. However I helped people build sites, they use my reseller account for the hosting. The amount of spent time here is not able to be repaired. Sure now I have reason to rebuild some websites that I build when I knew barely nothing and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It just seems like something should be done or could be done.

What is worse I do not even know if they are "gone". Maybe they are upgrading.

Any ideas? Anyone?
- chance1376, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I tried sending an email to info@theplanet.com so far no answer but maybe if enough people email they might give a response. It doesn't look pretty though I did a trace route on my domain and vizaweb.com. Both make it to The Planets data centers before failing. I would assume any hardware issues would be taken care of before know.
  
  The strange thing is before the September incident support actually got better. Support tickets started to get handled outside of normal 8-5 business hours and on weekends. Plus the server my site was on actually ran smoothly with little downtown. So hopefully this is something fixable or at least we can get ahold of our data. Like others I have backups but would love to have the latest data back.
mdman, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0It sucks having a bad provider.
We put all our site on www.addsite101.com these days.
They have been good to us
dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4No, VizaWeb is gone, I am relatively sure of it. They can still do the right thing, however, and help guys like you and me get our data. That is what they should do. The data is held at theplanet ... so it is not gone! Personally, I would like to get my data back. I am like you, I have some backups. Unfortunately not enough... but nothing worth committing suicide over. But worth at least a couple hundred bucks if I have to put it up and I will.

Take a look at my other post and see if you are interested in taking a pledge to get some help from somebody. I think it is a good idea. Spread the word.

http://digg.com/tech_news/Is_VizaWeb_Down_For_the_Count#c3762800

As soon as my new web site is up I will post a list of people making a pledge.

VizaWeb, if you are reading this, you are welcome to contact me also. I am sorry about what happened. There are a lot angry people and folks that are just as screwed as you think you are. People want to sue and they probably will, but if you want to contact me I would be happy to help by taking the pledge I am talking about. If there are enough of us, perhaps we can forward some cash on your behalf -- at least enough to open up the servers for a while so that we can get our data. That would make a lot of folks happy. Please contact me - I am picella.com on your service.

Thanks.
- blognc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Same here. As angry as I am, and as much as I'm thinking "Sue!", I just want my data, and will leave them completely alone if they let us get at it. I'll even settle for mostly recent backups.
- muyuu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Let me see if I'm getting this straight. Not only you're not going to sue or ask for any reparations, but you are offering them "hundreds" of dollars?
  
  Wow I want to host your site :)
speedfoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've been using VizaWeb and never had a problem. The support guy (Support always came from Rick Mueller) was always fast. Couldn't they have sent out an email saying that they were going to have an outage? or something? I just am so angry. I just recently updated my website, so it's a good thing that I have a local copy of my site, or else I would be so much angrier at them.

If someone could please contact me, that would be great.

Thank you.
thenativeraver, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Try http://www.3rror.com/
I have had a very good experience with their service.
burbankphil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It seems like this Digg story is one of the top hits when searched "vizaweb down" on google. So this will probably become homebase for disgruntled vizaweb customers out there searching for answers. Hopefully other people will find this posting and collectively we can find out what is going on with Vizaweb. First, does anyone out there have any contacts with any employees at "ThePlanet"? I'd also like to try to find Rick Mueller for some answers. If anyone wants to add me to their aim chat my screen name is "dadbalto". I think there are enough of us out there that we can get some answers quickly.
dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Here is a link to Rick's blog on MySpace... I've already tried contacting him there but you might give it a shot

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=108982822
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been with Vizaweb for a year or so and haven't been terribly disgruntled over the downtimes or lack of customer service...until now.

Before today:
My websites were down several times a day, every day...when I'm editing my sites I'll get disconnected or they just vanish from the web for several minutes at a time. Sometimes the email doesn't work, sometimes it's the websites, sometimes it's both. I've stayed with them through their server issues and didn't get upset when there was no response, at all, to my request for assistance with MySQL (several weeks worth of requests, no response).

However, my sites are "gone"...I can't transfer to another host because VizaWeb's FTP ports are closed...can't get to my domains (registered through another company)...there's no C-Panel, no VizaWeb site, either. There's nothing. It's all just vanished.

Now, something similar did happen a few months ago, with my site, at least. I don't know if it affected anyone else. My sites were down for about 24 hours. I emailed support. My sites were up before I heard anything from support, but they apologized for the problem and that was that. I'm not one to hold a grudge.

Then the site got hacked and the servers were down for a day or so. Could happen to anyone. They did send out emails to urge us to change our passwords, and I did. No big deal.

My site has just started to make money. No much, but it's a PROFIT! I've had to refund my advertisers, cancel subscriptions, etc. This is quite discouraging.

I'm not ready to say that VizaWeb has shut down, packed their bags and run away...but it's not looking good. No one knows anything and we are all desperate for some information, to know what's going on. I'm glad I found this forum...it feels good to be able to vent my frustrations a bit. Thank you for
e-listening.
fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4http://hostjury.com/reviews/vizaweb/

It looks like someone is doing their best at initiating a class action lawsuit against them.
With that said -- I wouldn't say they're gone just yet.. something is up though.
- KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm in the same boat, blognc. Not a tech person, no data backup.
blognc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm Nathan Weinberg, and I run the InsideGoogle and InsideMicrosoft blogs, two very popular blogs that supported me and my wife. I am a writer, not very technical, and I was never able to backup my data. If Vizaweb has cut and run, I am out of a job and livelihood. Please, if you know anything, write here or IM me (AIM: blognc).
- fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Nathan,
  
  Keep frequent backups! :(
  Never rely on a provider to do it on your behalf.
  
  If you provide me with your domain name I'll see if I can help you get into your panel to retrieve a backup.
- wakasm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1if you can do this... then help me too. This is why i went to digg. Someone here is gonna know whatever i don't. And it's appreciated.
  
  It's not that i don't back up... but with soo many websites on a reseller account, it's just not as easy as it sounds. I would just be upset if i lost my data. That isn't the case. I lost my hosting, help, all accounts, databases, statistics, and probably visitors and customers too seeing i couldn't even warn them!
- fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you can provide me with your domain name I'm fairly certain I can get something done.
- blognc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2blognewschannel.com
  
  And thanks, fac3less. I need any help I can get.
alexmm01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is crazy. I have been with Vizaweb for two or three years. Never really had a problem. This is very scary and I think they may have just cut and run like everyone seems to fear. Good thing I made a backup of my current site a week or two ago. Feels like I just dodged a bullet. Some loss is better than total loss.
dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0fac3less,

Do you work for Vizaweb ? How can you get in ?

If you can get public_html/majella and public_html/picella that would be wonderful (and all subdirs) that would be wonderful. Need full backups of SQL databases.

AIM dpicella
- fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I do not work for Vizaweb but again -- if it's a DNS issue and not some sort of hardware failure you have a few options:
  
  1. e.g. accessing cpanel via IP address -- or non-ssl version if the ssl version is down.
  2. If that doesn't work there's always options at the DC! :)
- KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Are these the IP addy's?
  
  unix1.vizaweb.com [69.93.28.162]
  and
  unix2.vizaweb.com [69.93.32.162]
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0At last check, VizaWeb's FTP ports were closed and the techs at ProHosters.com couldn't get in for me. Is there a different way to gain access?
Shadowhelm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Good luck with all of that.

All I want is my domain name. I am the admin and technical contact, but to move the domain, the current registrar has to give an Authorization Code. Of course, I can't get that right now!
- fac3less, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Doublecheck your domain via www.whois.sc -- if you notice something along the lines of 'registration sponsored by enom' or another provider you can contact them to get migrated.
- Shadowhelm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The ICANN Registrar shows as:
  
  DIRECT INFORMATION PVT LTD D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
  
  I have tried contacting them today and have gotten no response.
dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think theplanet is holding all the cards.
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Should we all email theplanet?
- dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've already called them. The only thing they can do to say that they have the vizaweb servers. They are the data center. I asked the guy at theplanet if this happens a lot and he says it does. It doesn't surprise me that hosting services go out all the time, but VizaWeb wasn't all that small (I don't think). I know they were not very big either. I always liked them. I also asked theplanet if people usually get their data back. He said he didn't know because he never gets to talk to people after they make the call. I know for a fact that there is a way to get these web sites back. They are not gone. They are at theplanet. The planet is the datacenter. As posted above, if anyone has an inside contact at theplanet that is the best option. Don't bother with FTP or trying the IP address. It is not a DNS issue. It is a blackout. Everything stops at theplanet.
  
  AIM: dpicella
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0A friend of mine just clicked one of my links on her site and she said it came up. There were some graphics missing, but it was there for a few minutes and then it vanished. I don't know if this is "good news", but a site that has been gone for more than 24 hours was there for a few minutes. Maybe they're working on this?
- Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It could have been in her browser's cache.
- dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Gotta be cache...
Tengaport, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm another one in the same boat. The website I hosted at VizaWeb was our family's blog so it's not a mission critical site, and data backup isn't necessary. More than anything I would just love to have the domain back ( www.miltonhilton.com) as it's a fond tribute to my late grandfather.

I haven't had any complaints (aside from the annoying down time) for VizaWeb until now. Going to call my credit card company and stop all charges.
wakasm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Just spoke to a rep at The Planet. They are not the back-up to VizaWeb.com, they just rent out servers to companies like Vizaweb and it’s all on Vizaweb how they handle the servers from there.

The Planet does not have a back-up of anything that was hosted by vizaweb.com

Are we scewed? We might be. But Vizaweb will be big time screwed when the lawyers get through with them. "

Just a comment from the blog. I don't think he knew of the digg story.
Streyeder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Throwing my hat in the rink. I have my personal site and my parent's business site with them. Ugh....
efarrell07, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0All I want is our domain name, www.nlclassics.com, but cannot transfer with contacting vizaweb.
phylo, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0Maybe they got tired of you stealing peoples designs for profit of your own ???
- Matty2Jay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, that's why Vizaweb is gone. Grow up kiddo.
dasunst3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had this problem with HostingWired. All my blog posts and stuff were wiped out just like that.
Wreckk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is awesome...

I run Gearcritech.com so well over 1000 posts, tons of reviews and not to mention the insane damage that all this down time is doing to our traffic...

THANKS VIZAWEB!!!!
videogamebuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Damn it. Come on Vizaweb, don't do us wrong like this.
ajaydsouza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I haven't used Vizaweb, so I can't comment on it, but you can visit http://webhostingtalk.com forums to search for a decent hosting solution.

That is where I usually go if I am looking for hosting.

It takes a while to research, but is well worth it.
writeman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0On my blog I was getting a healthy 1,500 unique visitors a day. That was in September. Then Vizaweb had its meltdown and by the time it was over, over half my readership was gone. I'm just starting to build up readership again and bam, Vizaweb is down again.

Thanks guys. Thanks so much. Had I not been in the middle of a giant rewrite, I would have switched providers in a heartbeat. Now it may be too late.
- Wreckk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had the same exact situation.. I was in the area of 3-4k a day... after the sept incident I was down like 1200-900 a day.... and now this....
  
  Talk about learning a lesson... I can somehow some way get some back ups.
- blognc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I make a living blogging. I have a wife, and we support ourselves from my site. I made good money, so I can survive a few months, but I can't rebuild my audience, regain rss readers and backlinks. I need this back, or I'm completely screwed. I'm an idiot for not learning more about the backend and how to do regular backups, and for being too afraid to switch hosts, and now I'm afraid we're all paying for it. I don't care what happened, there is a solution for it, but we're all relying on this Rick guy to do the right thing.
- Wreckk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1*if i can somehow some way get some backups, it won't be as bad...
  is what i meant....
  
  It was down for longer the last time in Sept, at least for me... hopefully the servers will be back up....
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've read about longer VizaWeb downtimes than this (so far) on other forums. There's still hope that this will be resolved. I don't think Rick would just walk away from it - this is how he makes a living.
DasPitchfork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm another victim. This is ridiculous. Vizaweb's main site is still down and they're not answering emails or phone calls (on two different customer support lines -- one of which is apparently a cell phone). Worse still, it's more or less impossible to get your domain name back since it's technically the property of Vizaweb.

What awful business practices. What Vizaweb's doing doing is inexcusable -- at best. At worst, it's criminal.

What burns me up most is the fact that it came completely without warning. All of a sudden, Vizaweb and everything on its servers gets vaporized. No heads-up, no explaination -- and anybody who could be held accountable or answer questions is already long gone.

I've given up hope of the servers going back up. What I'm hoping for now is somebody to track down Vizaweb's proprietor and initiate a class-action lawsuit. He simply cannot be allowed to get away with this.
- blognc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1VizaWeb Inc
  Rick Mueller (domains@vizaweb.com)
  6380 Tahoe Rd
  Woodbury
  MN,55125
  
  DasPitchFork, if I don't hear from him soon, and get my backups, I'm in.
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0Don't mean to get off topic, and I searched the FAQ's here...but what does the + and - beside the word "digg" mean in this forum? Some have +1, -1, +2, etc...
- jamesspelt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7The negative number corresponds to how stupid you are.
blognc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Okay, everyone, I have been doing a lot of digging with some smarter bloggers, and there's this great program called Warrick that trolls the Google/Yahoo/MSN caches and the Internet Archive, and rebuilds your entire site structure on your hard drive. It is by no means a perfect solution, but if you have no good backups, it is your only solution. It runs under Windows or Linux, is relatively easy, and has been very effective for me the last few hours. I'm still holding out hope Rick is just avoiding calls while he fixes technical problems, but if he isn't, you want to do whatever you can.

http://www.cs.odu.edu/~fmccown/research/lazy/warrick.html

Also, simple instructions for running Warrick under Windows:

http://www.cs.odu.edu/~fmccown/research/lazy/warrick-windows-install.html

Finally, location where you can get the Google API key you'll need to avoid getting your IP blocked:

http://api.google.com/createkey

Please, do whatever you can to save your data, and post any solutions that work here. I suggest we all keep coming back to this page to trade info and plans.
Aiwanei, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4My girlfriend signed up for VizaWeb after seeing Leo Laporte touting it, when his sites used to be with them. Upto recently even, Leo was sponsored on their site about being a supporter (probably was past comments.) So I feel if Vizaweb did let us down, Leo let us down :( Also once Leo did promote it, is when I heard vizaweb really went down hill since their customer base grew ten fold. Here is to hoping viza web either comes back, or gets us the backups.
KnockKnock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks jamesspelt...I just dugg you + ;)
xfile384, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am in the same boat guys. My site is also hosted with them. I think that it is VERY unprofessional to run your business like this. If they were in any financial trouble or anything they need to have at least warned us all of a possible outage.
- blognc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My data is important and valuable enough to me that if they were in financial trouble I would have bailed them out!
knighttime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even if VizaWeb do get going again, I will definately be moving web hosts.
Neilyos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would recommend canceling and moving to GoDaddy. their service is superb, 24/7. (I wouldn't recommend if I didn't personally use their hosting)
Matty2Jay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How come this isn't on the main page?
macinnesm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You can try to get some of the HTML back by searching http://www.archive.org/web/web.php or even look at Google's cache?

Not great I know... but maybe usefull for getting blog text back etc..
nicktripp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm in the same boat as everyone else except that, back in the day, when Leo was pitching this site, I talked several friends into signing up with them. So now, not only is my site gone, six of my friends' sites and data are gone as well.

It's not so much my thee year old blog and all of that data that I want back as it is access to my email address, which was my primary. I mean, being able to transfer my domain would be nice too, but it's the email that's killing me right now.

I'm going to start blogging about this and I don't plan to stop searching and working until I get an answer. Here's the link, if anyone's interested in keeping up with it: http://guardyourpants.blogspot.com/

I'll also try to keep posting here as well.
nicktripp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Did anyone else notice this story isn't showing up on digg searches for "vizaweb"? Hmm.
- spectech, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Yes, what is going on Hmmmmmmmmm? Let everyone say Hmmmmmmm
Lostcosmos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Buried!!
http://digg.com/search?area=all&age=7&sort=new&search-buried=1&s=vizaweb&submit=Search
pengas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i guess it's high time to emphasize how important a backup is.
no one can imagine their hosting service going out of business and not notifying their clients.. if your Internet business is large enough, u have implemented a disaster recovery plan and a backup policy. otherwise - you are f***ed...

ouch
chance1376, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I can get back into my site right now as of 10:30 am Eastern Time. Downloading current DB as we speak :)
YupRules, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's back up it's back up!
- dangerboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Its back. I am packing my bags and looking for a more reliable webhost or one that atleast has a phone number to call and get an answer when a problem arises. This is totally unprofessional - how can you have no contact with them for over 48 hours while you sit and spin?
  
  I imagine many others are going to do the same. Get out while you can before it goes down for go with no explaination as always.
chance1376, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hmmmm...think we can get a group rate at a new host.
Wreckk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1BACK! and BACKING UP and BACKING OUT!
woohhaa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0One word my friend....

Claymores
hensleyjh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yep, backing up all my stuff right now and moving to netfirms. I was planning this move already just not until next month.

I'm outta here.
burbankphil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here's a question I hope someone can help me answer. My Domain name is also registered with Vizaweb. After this latest fiasco with Vizaweb I'm moving hosts, but can I move my domain off these guys too?
- hensleyjh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you go to another registrar and request a transfer, they'll send a confirmation email to the address in the whois... provided that you can get to your email to accept the confirmation and you don't have domain lock turned on, you should have no problem transferring.
  
  Worked for me.
dpicella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Please help! I just spoke with GodDaddy I want to do a transfer from vizaweb. They said that my domain names were recently updated and they are not available for transfer for 60 days. Is this the "lock" you are talking about. What to I do now?

Thanks!
Show 51 - 56 of 56 discussions
Login or register to add a comment

Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.

What do I do when my hosting vanishes? Please. Digg. Help. (Vizaweb Story)

Login or register to add a comment