Wht

K

kabe

New member
I've been gone from HD for awhile busy. I just read the thread on WHT and couldn't reply to it because of it's age so this one is an experience my husband had with them. This is not blasting WHT but just an experience my husband had there.

WHT seems to be a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly and easy to open up a can of worms with their "favorite" host posters".

Several years ago my husband had been posting on WHT for about a year and had several 100 post. He's a nice guy, never talks down to anyone and would never blast anyone or a host on a forum.

He made a post on a thread that had a guy really blasting a host. My husband said we had used them for several years with some of our clients and had never had an issue with them and would have no problem using them again. That was it, that's all he said.

One of WHT's top favorite web host posters went ballistic on my husband's post and at him. Within a few minutes about 5 people posted taking up for my husband and getting back at the host that slammed him.

Within a few minutes of that my husband's post, the WHT favorite hoster, and all the post supporting my husband just disappeared from the thread.

My husband, being the good guy he is, was going to get a corporate sponsorship on WHT that same evening, He left WHT never to return and took that pile of money a corporate sponsorship cost and did a few updates on his fishing boat and never looked back.

Not to long ago a girl that works for us that reads WHT, not a member and doesn't want to be, made a few comments about WHT.

She said it looks like the WHT good ole boy host seem to be the ones still the favorites of the moderators and not the regular posters. She said it looks like WHT is slowing down and not as popular as it use to be and if the hosters were not allowed to use their hosting company signatures WHT would probably dry up in a few weeks.

Once again this is not to bash WHT its an experience my husband had there. Personally, I like HD much better. It seems the posters on here are much nicer and want information without a bunch of yahoos talking down to us.
 
yes they have their favourites at WHT.
I posted a comment about an ex client who hosted with me and then abused me when i terminated him for non payment.

guess what i was removed/banned for WHT while this clear scammer is still an active WHT member
 
I'm still an active member on WHT with thousands of posts, but don't spend a lot of time there anymore - private messages more than anything. I also used to be a moderator on WHT, so what I saw is from both sides of the aisle, and I didn't personally see the type of favoritism like what you're talking about. I found HD when WHT got hacked and went down for a while years ago. I do agree that HD has a different flavor and style that is appealing, but we've had a few members here too that had to be banned, some just straight up spammers and others who had their feathers ruffled and couldn't contain their temper.

I believe every web hosting forum has experienced some downsizing in popularity and that's a shame because the hosting industry has so much to share.

I do think members who only post offers are missing the boat. There are so many providers out there, sometimes the one thing that separates their hosting from all the rest is how they represent themselves in these forums. Price is certainly a strong factor, but you lose business you could have otherwise won, if only you took the effort to brand yourself on these forums as an expert, such that prospects would be drawn to your firm - trusting YOU as a provider because of how you've presented yourself.

The selling mantra has always been know, like and trust. Prospects might like a price, but without knowing what's on the back end of that offer, how else can they possibly select one host over another? It's not reviews, because most of those are sour grapes, shills or are years old and not reflective of their current infrastructure.
 
I wouldn't call it favoritism so much as moderators misjudging people and their contribution, especially when it comes to tickets. I haven't had any problem in a thread per se, however the couple of times I needed to get something done via a ticket the results were appalling. Apart from not answering for a few days (God forbid you have an urgent issue) I've had an operator there talking down to me and when confronted - another moderator jumping in, explaining that this was not the case AND consequently using the same sarcastic language they were confronted about.

Apart from those unpleasant cases however, I still believe that WHT is the go-to place for both hosts and clients. I want to find other such alternatives, I really do, but all I've found were either dead or spammy forums. HD has been my #2 for a long time, but after short periods of movement, there are long times where everything is super quiet and you have only ads as new posts.

I do agree that its a pity as people still need and want to learn more about our industry. Many have gotten immense help but there is a constant influx of new clients and they have to be educated too. Owning a forum is not just fun, its a responsibility, especially when it revolves around an industry that supports so many businesses worldwide.
 
I must say I had a bust up WHT when a customer post good comments about my services and also Hawk Host.

The guy hosted a website through our CDN, which put his website on the same IP as the Corporate on in the area where WHT's staff were.

The customer also used our web-proxy (which is whitelisted on our servers and firewalls so the CSF and Cisco Firewalls allow you through if you get banned for any reason), so our access IPs were the same.

This got us "temporarily suspended" for "shilling", which at first I was amused about, but looking back we should have defended ourselves more and not tried to introduce any humour to the proceedings.

We are still suspended there, so "temporary" really means "forever", which is a shame as we spent money there on a regular basis, never bad mouthed anyone, even posted scripts and plugins we had written to give away to the less gifted coders.

Also whilst I am sure HawkHost are good, I would not be wasting time singing the praises of rivals, if I didn't know their services, and we've never used Hawk-Host.

As far as I know the customer is still banned there.

So there moderators can be a little too tough, we were members for years, before our customer made this post and landed us both in "trouble".
 
We got banned because our employee forgot to switch on office VPN before accessing, and logs showed 2 different IPs, which WHT mods considered as access of 2 different people under 1 account.

Despite all our efforts, we were never able to prove this was the same person. WHT admins saw their mistake but admitting it would mean that ban was unrightful (it actually was, but who cares)

We still have several mentions of our site on WHT and some links... and people find us... We simply do not post there any more.
 
I was talking to a friend today about hosting forums and she made a comment to me about a certain forum and she called them riff raffs.

Me originally being from Russia and been here for over 15 years I had never heard that slang before so I asked my husband about it and all he would do was laugh at me.

So, I ask you guys, what is your version of a riff raff lol
I've heard more than one version of it today.
One of the most difficult things I had to deal with when I got here was the American slang words.
 
Last edited:
that's what Google told me

riff-raff
ˈrɪfraf/
noun
disreputable or undesirable people.
"I saw the sort of riff-raff that had been invited"
 
HostZealot said:
that's what Google told me

riff-raff
ˈrɪfraf/
noun
disreputable or undesirable people.
"I saw the sort of riff-raff that had been invited"
Click to expand...

What can I say. I never think about Google. Must be blonde thing. lol

Our daughters made a sign and put it on the wall next to my side of the bed so I can see it when I wake up every morning.

It says, It's a new morning mom, please don't forget you're a blonde.

That sign is priceless to me.
 
I'll give some background on my experiences with WHT:
  1. I have a dynamic IP
  2. When I signed up, I never had any previous accounts
  3. I copied my ID and sent it to them

The way my ISP works is when you have a dynamic IP - it's not a range allocated to you. They have a pool of IP's, and you're randomly assigned one whenever you log on to the Internet.
People with static IP's who want to have dynamic are the same. Their static IP is put into the pool.

Anyway, I made an account, made a post and what-not. They then claimed I was some other person as I had the same IP. I explained my case. They wanted a copy of my ID, so I sent it to them. They refuted that and merged my account with a few others using the same IP.

Naturally, I was very unhappy.

I've had to resort to having a family friend post on my behalf (twice, the first one they disabled), as for me and my company these other individuals have had very bad post history.

I do think the moderators in charge of the forum aren't the most professional. Judging by some of their comments, it's really just bad. There's also a lot of bias involved.

I don't spend too much time on forums, but I will probably never give them my money - it could be better spent elsewhere, where they actually value your money and think of you as another individual - rather than a number.

Not to bash them either. But it's not the best forum community.
 
I was talking to a web developer friend of mine recently that has a couple 100 clients and she's like us and offers turnkey everything.

She said her understanding about WHT was they blocked all unlimited host from the forum. Even though we know there is no such thing as unlimited there are some unlimited host that do a better job of managing their servers than a lot of host that don't offer unlimited.

I can just imagine how these unlimited host get slammed with spammers though and have their work cut of for them trying to keep them off their servers.
 
kabe said:
I was talking to a web developer friend of mine recently that has a couple 100 clients and she's like us and offers turnkey everything.

She said her understanding about WHT was they blocked all unlimited host from the forum. Even though we know there is no such thing as unlimited there are some unlimited host that do a better job of managing their servers than a lot of host that don't offer unlimited.

I can just imagine how these unlimited host get slammed with spammers though and have their work cut of for them trying to keep them off their servers.
Click to expand...

Indeed that was the case and there is a reason for that. You actually pointed it out yourself - offering something like Unlimited Space is plainly impossible so such an ad is misleading to the client.

Still, if I am correct, this was just recently changed and providers can again offer Unlimited, however under some special circumstances (gotta double-check the rules on that one).

As for people being temporarily/permanently banned for using different IPs, this was also the case with us at some point. This is actually the exact ticket where the mods tried to play wise guys and have their jokes on me. I believe its a running issue and they don't seem to be bothered by it.
 
It's been a while since I discussed any of what's below about WHT.

WHT has been a kingmaker in the webhosting business for a lot of years. What makes forums like WHT survive over the years are the 'high drama' moments where you can sit back, grab some popcorn, and just watch the show.

Back in the good old days, WHT was the place that web designers would go to get referrals about who was the best host etc. At that time it wasn't owned by inet interactive either... just a dude and some buddies running a place to chat based on vBulletin. Things were VERY wild-west and high-drama was the gold standard. Many of the rules you see today were actually written in the period between 2001 and 2005ish. Hosts would pop in and out of existence making all manner of wild claims about what they could, and could not do and the rules were put in place to try to give people some confidence that what they were reading was level.

If anybody is interested to read on: I probably owe everything I have to WHT and what happened during that period. I was working for an employer who was furiously abusive and when the time came to quit that nightmare, I needed some place to go. Enter WHT. AT that time, a small business called "MCHost" was getting extremely popular reviews and was taking on customers faster than they could handle. I was hired as a systems admin and it was a good thing, too... there was little else available for work where I live at that time. MCHost grew and grew and grew... they were really one of the first businesses to offer reseller hosting with Unlimited Domains (in fact, the owner tried to trademark the term 'host unlimited domains' and made a terrible attempt at enforcing the trademark). Along the way a few others popped on the scene... Splashhost, Voxtreme are two that come to mind. Fights would break out and one would accuse the other of stealing their customer or hacking a server or whatever... one such incident was mentioned on this forum (here) . What is not commonly known is that I was the one who made the determination that it wasn't company attempting the hack the other into the ground. It was a rogue perl script that was forking uncontrollably and bringing the processor on the Splashhost server to its knees (and, guess what, I did the work for Splashhost for free). 3 months later my contract was terminated with MCHost and he used the reason that I helped out their biggest competitor (patently and provably false but whatever... it gave him a way to create a dignified end to the spat that was brewing and the PR nightmare that was bubbling right behind it ) ... were it not for that I would not have become CIO at a prominent datacenter (which is now sold), I would not have had a chance at some great startups, and I would not have been launched on the trajectory I'm on today.

There's a lot of history at that place and to understand where they are today, one kind of needs to understand where they've been. Just like we stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, so does today's WHT stand on the shoulders of everything that came before it. It's got a whole bunch of warts and scar tissue that come from having a zillion people come and go... many of whom are determined that their version of a bad idea is somehow better than when it was somebody else's bad idea a year ago... unlike many places, the entire history of WHT is document and there for the reading if you have the patience to do it. Perfect? not even close. I guess that's why there is more than one webmaster forum.
 
wh-coach said:
It's been a while since I discussed any of what's below about WHT.

WHT has been a kingmaker in the webhosting business for a lot of years. What makes forums like WHT survive over the years are the 'high drama' moments where you can sit back, grab some popcorn, and just watch the show.

Back in the good old days, WHT was the place that web designers would go to get referrals about who was the best host etc. At that time it wasn't owned by inet interactive either... just a dude and some buddies running a place to chat based on vBulletin. Things were VERY wild-west and high-drama was the gold standard. Many of the rules you see today were actually written in the period between 2001 and 2005ish. Hosts would pop in and out of existence making all manner of wild claims about what they could, and could not do and the rules were put in place to try to give people some confidence that what they were reading was level.

If anybody is interested to read on: I probably owe everything I have to WHT and what happened during that period. I was working for an employer who was furiously abusive and when the time came to quit that nightmare, I needed some place to go. Enter WHT. AT that time, a small business called "MCHost" was getting extremely popular reviews and was taking on customers faster than they could handle. I was hired as a systems admin and it was a good thing, too... there was little else available for work where I live at that time. MCHost grew and grew and grew... they were really one of the first businesses to offer reseller hosting with Unlimited Domains (in fact, the owner tried to trademark the term 'host unlimited domains' and made a terrible attempt at enforcing the trademark). Along the way a few others popped on the scene... Splashhost, Voxtreme are two that come to mind. Fights would break out and one would accuse the other of stealing their customer or hacking a server or whatever... one such incident was mentioned on this forum (here) . What is not commonly known is that I was the one who made the determination that it wasn't company attempting the hack the other into the ground. It was a rogue perl script that was forking uncontrollably and bringing the processor on the Splashhost server to its knees (and, guess what, I did the work for Splashhost for free). 3 months later my contract was terminated with MCHost and he used the reason that I helped out their biggest competitor (patently and provably false but whatever... it gave him a way to create a dignified end to the spat that was brewing and the PR nightmare that was bubbling right behind it ) ... were it not for that I would not have become CIO at a prominent datacenter (which is now sold), I would not have had a chance at some great startups, and I would not have been launched on the trajectory I'm on today.

There's a lot of history at that place and to understand where they are today, one kind of needs to understand where they've been. Just like we stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, so does today's WHT stand on the shoulders of everything that came before it. It's got a whole bunch of warts and scar tissue that come from having a zillion people come and go... many of whom are determined that their version of a bad idea is somehow better than when it was somebody else's bad idea a year ago... unlike many places, the entire history of WHT is document and there for the reading if you have the patience to do it. Perfect? not even close. I guess that's why there is more than one webmaster forum.
Click to expand...

but when someone openly attacks you on the forum and abuses you then makes false stories that you can prove are false, so report this user to WHT, but they ban you for reporting the user and yet that user remains. How can that be right?
 
Like I said, sometimes you can do everything right and the wrong thing still happens. How you deal with it measures character. There is simply nothing else to do but move on.
 
wh-coach said:
Like I said, sometimes you can do everything right and the wrong thing still happens. How you deal with it measures character. There is simply nothing else to do but move on.
Click to expand...

I have even thought that same user for some reason attacks me on mywot and even told me he would DDOS me if i did not give him the passwords to my servers
 
I have even thought that same user for some reason attacks me on mywot and even told me he would DDOS me if i did not give him the passwords to my servers
Click to expand...

Welcome to doing business on the Internet. Your issue is not with WHT. The other user will be a troll on whatever board they land.
 
No doubt about it WHT is one of the more experienced hosting forums on the internet and I would certainly give them credit for that. It's nice to hear good compliments about them on this thread.

We host only our business clients, do no public hosting and have no desire to do so, so to us WHT is just another forum and we don't participate on it. We also have 100's of clients hosted with other host and not us and with the business policy we have in place to protect our clients we form our own opinion of a host. We'll not use any EIG host.

There are 1000's of host out there that couldn't give a ripping hoot about WHT and don't participate on their forum either. The ones I know tell me they don't have time to fool with WHT and it's ranters and if they've been hurt by a ranter on WHT it was so minute they didn't notice it.

One of our developers reads WHT sometimes and says there is no way she would post on their forum. She told me tonight one of our go to host has a ranter on what looks like an ego trip with all the replies he's getting. She laughed and said WHT has a lot of soap operas on it and this dude has gotten his started now.

When she told me the host he had his rant riding high on I pulled up our history with them. We started hosting clients with them in 2008 and have 85 clients with them. Since 2008 we have an average of 9 support tickets a year with them. All answered promptly and problem resolved in a short period of time. She also thinks WHT should stop a rant before it becomes a soap opera and I agree with her. I'm not the owner of WHT so our opinion means absolutely nothing to them. This host also offers unlimited hosting and we all know there is no such thing as unlimited. As long as our clients with them are happy and the host is causing them no problems then we'll certainly not move them because of their unlimited hosting. If it happens then we'll move the client or clients to another host if we can't get their problem resolved. One thing we don't like to do is to move a client or clients.

My opinion, and this is my opinion and after the issue my husband had with them, I agree they do have favorites and they should stop the soap operas so common on there. I'm not bashing WHT and here again this is my opinion they do need to do some of their own backyard cleaning. I also base this on what other developers and host friends in the industry tell me. Here again though it's "their forum" and they can well so as they please with it.

My offices wishes all you Americans out here on this forum a happy July the 4th holiday. May all of you have a blessed, fun filled and safe holiday.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum supporters

Members recently online

Total: 23

Forum statistics

Threads
80,898
Messages
248,405
Members
20,678
Latest member
hostys
Top