Egads.
I don't know if this is to whom you were referring, but in business the standard is to say that every client's account is considered crucial.

I suppose that link was better left alone anyways.

I don't know if this is to whom you were referring

Well, she's directly mentioned in the post ... she actually e-mailed me and said that she can't stand doing business with bloggers during our dispute, so ...

For what it's worth, I'm on Dale Franks' own Web Hosting service -- WebmasterDeveloper -- and it's been flawless for the year in which I've had it. On the exceedingly rare instances in which it's gone down, it's been back up before I had a chance to say anything about it.

I use Powweb for my hosting. I wouldn't say they're perfect. They do have outages and we've had a few back-and-forths over technical issues, but with them offering 5gb/day and 1gb of storage for about $8/month you really can't go wrong. I've been with them for about a year now and I feel completely comfortable in recommending them to others.

As for blog design, Mark Jaquith does a wonderful job. He set my Wordpress blog up for me and did a wonderful job of it. And his rates are very reasonable. I'm not sure if he wants to work on blogs other than Wordpress types, but anyone interested in some help should definetly drop him a line.

You have to cut and paste floridacracker's link if you want it to work. She is apparently redirecting all requests from Bill's site to Google.

Having read her post though- she shows an amazing level of ignorance regarding security. Hosting on a server or with a firm not doing business with another big name blog is a very sensible way to avoid hassles. It's common sense. If people are constantly trying to crapflood Instapundit, LGF, Kos, or whoever, not sharing a network with them is a good idea. In fact, avoiding the hosting companies that promote themselves as blog friendly is a good idea too. since blogs are such a target in general right now, staying away from them in the networking sense makes perfect sense. It's worked for me for 4+ years.

FOOTSIE!

I would hate to see Hosting Matters tarred with Tabb's brush. They are 2 completely separate entities. HM provides excellent service. However, point taken about being the conservative blogosphere's choice, it means they will get targeted for attacks before less-well-known hosters.

Hosting matters employs Ms. Tabb in a customer service capacity, individuals have complained to me about it.

I wouldn't frequent a pet store that puts a rabid dog in the window.

Interesting, Bill at INDC...

Some further information here, however, as to my response to the drech from Sekimori (who I only yesterday realized had even a tad of relationship with Hosting Matters but when I realized that, after Sekimori's crazed comments about me and about BIRD, a site of mine, I was both even more surprised at the level of crud from two 'commercial' sources and that they'd even stoop to such a level of disgruntled stalking -- as I wrote, it's stalking by disgruntled merchant[s]), anyway, more about my responses to the unprovoked and therefore even more irrational nonsense originating from Sekimori Design, whoever/whatever that actually is:

-- Sekimori.org wrote content supposedly to and about what Sekimori.org -- Hosting Matters, whoever, as I now realize -- about what she/he/they described as "a DoS attack" "against" their technical resources and then included in those comments, as if by wretched gulp, me as a person, my website and comments I'd made on my website, BIRD, about missing most of my favored websites last Friday evening, night and Saturday morning.

That is, most any responsible user of the internet would recoil and be horrified to see their website -- particularly, especially, not like Sekimori made any references to the millions of other websites and authors on the internet in relationship to what she/he/they described as "a DoS attack" but based the comments entirely in reference to what I'd written on my website and then continued on to describe me with various pejoratives of a personal nature.

I haven't the faintest idea how people wage these "DoS attacks" and I don't want to know. I gained a very, very bad impression, based upon actual written experience, of Hosting Matters based upon just such emotionally crazed writing as I found on Sekimori, but what I did after realizing I wasn't among individuals I cared to continue to do business with, was, ask for a full refund for what I'd paid to them by that time, based upon their terms and conditions published, told them that their emails were offensive and unacceptable and requested that they stop contacting me, beyond repairing their debit from my credit card (to stop all contact with me due to the objectionable [it was actually alarming] content of their emails to me -- I confronted them with published terms on their site, did not print out a copy of that page but then asked them about those terms when I later saw that they did not account for those terms in their billing practice, and the hate emails ensued to me immediately and continued on throughout a full night and morning....something like fifteen caustic emails after I asked them to stop contacting me, all recognizing/in response to me making that request).

It was, without a doubt, based upon my entire lifetime of buying, selling and otherwise interacting in commerce, among the most crazy, for lack of a better term, the most excessively strangely destructive and disturbed responses I have yet to experience, unfortunately, from and with any merchant about ANYthing.

So, who WOULD remain among such an unreliable environment? It did not a good impression make to me about their technical capabilities, and their reliability, to put it mildly.

And, again, this is just one experience, by one individual. I'd never, up to that point, even read Sekimori Design's website/s nor had anything, ANYthing, to do with that source and/or Hosting Matters. It was a mystery to me, the volume and insistence that they made and in such dramatic negative means. It was inexplicable, defied the mere inquiry I made about the initial issue. No way was I ever going to allow continued access to my credit card by such a group, nor desire any further interaction with them.

So, I asked them to stop contacting me and they continued on and on and on and the content eventually resolved to the "ladies" at HM writing to each other, discussing me, and them sending me those copies of their email exchanges as 'cc' copies...I suppose that was their squeak around, by that time, to "stop contacting me" by just sending me 'cc' versions of the personally inflammatory (and alarming) emails that they 'shared'...writing things of this nature...."we're not contacting (me) any longer but she is (this) and she is (that) and she...etc., etc., etc....it was the email stream of truly disturbed personalities, is all I can say, and it truly alarmed me, especially given that they'd been asked to stop contacting me and yet continued to do so and at what volume and frequency, whatever the games they used were.

I had no idea that Sekimori is related, in any way, with HM. I've never returned to HM for any reason nor never will, based upon what I experienced with them. So, up to that point, it was very strange to read Sekimori denigrating me as a person and my website by URL and reference (she has since removed her Trackback to BIRD, but after I complained to her I.S.P. about the objectionable and defamatory content written by Sekimori.org), and doing so in relationship to what was described as "a DoS attack," about which I know nothing and don't want to know anything.

Obviously, and however, to conclude this, people of that nature can and do write whatever is convenient to support their fragile psychology and can write whatever they want to cast further blame and aspersion upon those that they target for whatever reasons. Who knows what HMs problems are and were that particular night (Friday/Saturday morning), but, I can share here that I would not place one tad of credibility at this point, on anything that was written by certain authors.

I did complain to Sekimori.org's I.S.P. and to Sekimori as source and made known to them that their content was objectionable and defamatory and that they were requested to remove the content by 8 a.m. tomorrow or else be held liable for damages. I saved screencaptures of all offending trails and am still considering filing a complaint.

But, yes, the ongoing reliance by sekimori.org on sarcastic "honey" and such is even more offensive. It's someone just spitting through their teeth, clenched jaw and all. The language of someone who seems to be in true pain, if you want my honest opinion.

Interesting, however, having just reread the other comments here...my one and my only original comment on my blog was that I missed a group of blogs all down at the same time hosted on the same place and that it was worth considering that some of them host elsewhere.

All "bunched up" together means that an outtage on their host puts them all in the dark. That was all that I wrote.

Sekimori went into her crazy space about that and then leaped into combining references to "a DoS attack" against HM and me and my website, all rolled up into one volume of nonsense, such that the content alluded to terrible and terribly dishonest suggestions.

And, I still fail to see how me suggesting that certain higher profile blogs not host together, on my set of servers by one organization, I fail to see how that's so stupid and awful and outrageous an idea. Seems just reasonable a counter to traffic and technical problems that the internet is fraught with. And which is why I searched for my webhost by private means without asking for comments and such, just read up on articles and ratings and then called several and based my choice upon an instinctual response to very competent commercial features and customer service. The real kind.

Another (last, sorry) thing is that part of the objectionable and defaming stuff written by sekimori.org about me was that I was "a right-wing [sic] blog" and other things.

It seems quite politically motivated, unfortunately. So, it only adds to the oddness of the HM situation by the many conservative blogs, what with me being denigrated for being "popular" and "a right-wing" author/person/webblog author suggested by Sekimori.org to be fitted with "a tin foil hat" and such.

All that just because I suggested that the most popular webblogs consider branching out to other servers, such that when HM goes dark, they don't all go dark along with it. I'd make the same suggestion whether it was HM or any other hosting service, was not an aspersion about HM I suggested, just that the relationship was undesirable as to location and colocation, given the circumstances. Whatever they were.

But, that "DoS attack" still remains unexplained...such that, it seems even more cryptic that sekimori.org would at least define that technical cauase and refer to me and my blog all in one large gasp and yet continue on to never explain or substantiate any "DoS attack" itself. It seems that the "attack" was by HM and Sekimori.org, when you examine the stream of information. Saved and available in screen captures.

I'm not sure I understand most of what you just wrote, I gotta be honest. But let me try: Apparently you did business with Hosting Matters, thought better of it, asked for your money back and they demanded payment and harassed you in personal terms?

Stacy Tabb IS Sekimori. She works for HM, and I wouldn't be surprised if she is one of the ladies you mention using caustic, personal language in e-mails.

I've seen Hosting Matters tech support at work, and I've generally been impressed.

But they have been knocked off the air a number of times by DDoS attacks, and this clearly is a reasonable concern for prospective customers.

Stacy's dismissal of this concern as "paranoid" and "simply stupid" is simply stupid.

Here's what I mean and how I define "customer service": it isn't a personality fest of and about who knows who, who is 'in' with whom and who isn't, it's just a level of service, it's a task, it's a technology. You do a job, you serve with information through to a resolution, or you do not.

It doesn't mean you are subservient, less 'in', less anything to serve, to provide customer service, it is a task oriented level of work. The people, unfortunately, who use "customer service" to ream people about personal characteristics and such, are not doing the tasks of customer support -- they are only inflicting social animosities of the unfair and extraordinarily disturbed kind. Meaning, they perceive opportunities to inflict harms to and about others when they are privy to situations in which they are attempted to be relied upon to provide a solution to customers.

This is the behavior that makes or breaks companies, ANY company. Little "snacks" here and there, little cursories here and there, little nasties here and there and presto, you lose business.

Some people need to lose business, unfortunately, until they understand that customer service isn't a means by which you add to someone's problems, but try to alleviate them, in relationship to a business/service.

But, about the "DoS attack" that's made certain headlines with certain folks recently, I have this to add: I wouldn't place a lot of credibility on anyone who continues to pose as a WEB HOST PROVIDER who uses the "it was a DoS attack" retort whenever their services are unavailable. One "attack," it's likely. Ongoing, recurring "attacks" of that nature, there are other problems.

And, after attempting to make a request of the I.S.P. involved in the "snacking" by a certain irreverant person, they win the Without A Doubt Most Offensive and Irrational I.S.P. Award ever.

I have never, never had the misfortune of coming into contact with just such a swarm of unpleasant personalities as is associated with this entire crew.

And, experience sells.

Just saying, it's niceness and courtesy that wins the day. And the polar opposites win nothing. I am just glad, as a consumer, that I can make other selections from a myriad of great hosting providers and Service Providers, such that I never have to cross the dark path of this group again (not you, Bill, not at all) (reference is to those of issue here, not the comments, not Bill and site, but to and about issue only).