Get rid of the new default 404 pages.

[othellobloke]

I just saw one of the NEW error pages. Before it didn't have 'hosted by hostgator' etc.

This was a REAL cheap shot. Furtive and wholly unfair. I'm disgusted that a company as successful as Hostgator would have to stoop to something so low.

Take off those error pages. That's not right.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by othellobloke

Take off those error pages. That's not right.

No, whats not right is that you havent made your own.

[gtgeorge]

Originally Posted by _Sam_

No, whats not right is that you havent made your own.

And then of course shame on you when you fail to make them for all your sub domains and addon domains and parked domains...yeah everyone should have to work very hard to cover up the HG one's
I really find it amazing that other users would defend such a blatant attempt at shameless advertising by a company paid for the services received! It doesn't bother me as a dedicated user, but I still think it should not be and I refuse to come in and back HG for this act.
While HG is a great host, this is not right in my opinion, nor is it right in many, many customers opinions either.

[Momentum]

They did the same thing to my reseller account with hundreds of resold accounts. I had specified a custom 404 page and it looks like back on 7/17/2007 they modified .htaccess for all of my accounts. So instead of using my custom 404 pages, every website is using hostgator's 404 page. This is total bull. They never told me this change was being applied to my account. It was just by chance that I noticed.

Normally a 404 page is not that big of a deal but I have some sites where I rely on my custom 404 page to redirect hundreds of visitors per day back to the home page. This is why I am so irritated.

And support is now saying that they didn't make this change. "There isn't a way we could have changed all of your .htaccess files ..."

Pure baloney.

And now they are telling me that the only way to fix the situation is to restore a backup from a few weeks ago. That is just not acceptable as there have been many website modifications since then.

I don't have time to make changes to all of these accounts right now. And I am just dumbfounded that Hostgator has the gall to make changes to all of my accounts, deny making these changes and then do nothing to fix it when confronted.

Very disappointing.

[Pitrow]

Originally Posted by Momentum

They did the same thing to my reseller account with hundreds of resold accounts. I had specified a custom 404 page and it looks like back on 7/17/2007 they modified .htaccess for all of my accounts. So instead of using my custom 404 pages, every website is using hostgator's 404 page. This is total bull. They never told me this change was being applied to my account. It was just by chance that I noticed.

Normally a 404 page is not that big of a deal but I have some sites where I rely on my custom 404 page to redirect hundreds of visitors per day back to the home page. This is why I am so irritated.

And support is now saying that they didn't make this change. "There isn't a way we could have changed all of your .htaccess files ..."

Pure baloney.

And now they are telling me that the only way to fix the situation is to restore a backup from a few weeks ago. That is just not acceptable as there have been many website modifications since then.

I don't have time to make changes to all of these accounts right now. And I am just dumbfounded that Hostgator has the gall to make changes to all of my accounts, deny making these changes and then do nothing to fix it when confronted.

Very disappointing.

I agree. I had custom 404s on my domain (though not all of my resold domains) and now they're totally gone, replaced with HostGators cheap shot advertising.

I also find it laughable that people say that I need to do work to cover up something that Host Gator is doing behind the scenes. I find this very much like the situation where you go to buy a new car and they stick one of those "advertising" plaques on the back that says where you bought it at (Yes I know they use license plate frames now, but in years past they used to use actual plaques). I always told them you either take that off before I take possession, or you pay me for advertising for you. Same situation applies here. Although the fact that they destroyed the error pages I had already made and replaced them with a revenue generating advertisement for them makes it twice as bad and borders on unethical.


Update: right after I wrote this I sent an email to support about it. Within five minutes they had put my custom 404s back. Still doesn't change my feelings about them doing it in the first place.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by Pitrow

Update: right after I wrote this I sent an email to support about it. Within five minutes they had put my custom 404s back. Still doesn't change my feelings about them doing it in the first place.

Now that several people have explained that they did have custom 404s that were overwritten, I understand the irritation much better.

Perhaps Pitrow's method could help others?

[Birmingham]

I don't use htaccess and why should I have to when I've already setup a custom error page using the web interface provided.

Can we get some comment from HG staff here? Maybe it's just a bug that will be fixed soon?

[GatorPatrick]

The reason all of your 404 pages "broke" is because we were forced to make a change and move all the normal error pages off to their own server. This was suggested and implemented by our abuse team and our CTO in order to bring the load down across our servers.

Now you must use an .htaccess redirect such as:

Errordocument 404 /404.shtml

The plus side to this is you all now enjoy faster servers as it has made a significant impact on the load we're seeing during peak hours. Also, this change would not have overwritten any error pages you currently have in place, it would only make it necessary to add the htaccess lines.

We never like to cause inconvenience to our customers in any form or fashion but we feel that having a faster server to serve your sites justified this change.

[othellobloke]

Originally Posted by GatorPatrick

The reason all of your 404 pages "broke" is because we were forced to make a change and move all the normal error pages off to their own server. This was suggested and implemented by our abuse team and our CTO in order to bring the load down across our servers.

Now you must use an .htaccess redirect such as:

Errordocument 404 /404.shtml

The plus side to this is you all now enjoy faster servers as it has made a significant impact on the load we're seeing during peak hours. Also, this change would not have overwritten any error pages you currently have in place, it would only make it necessary to add the htaccess lines.

We never like to cause inconvenience to our customers in any form or fashion but we feel that having a faster server to serve your sites justified this change.

We understand about the faster server for which we are grateful. I'm quite sure everyone who's expressed disappointment, irritation or anger at Hostgator for doing this still thinks HG is an awesome host.

But it's still a cheap shot - you could have put error pages WITHOUT HG banners on there. It's not like the company is begging for revenue to justify those banners.

It's simply an underhand shot. I'm hoping HG will realise they made a boo-boo... admit to it, apologise and put back a generic error page.

[J.Buesking]

Originally Posted by othellobloke

It's simply an underhand shot. I'm hoping HG will realise they made a boo-boo... admit to it, apologise and put back a generic error page.

Exactly..I'd expect this from a free host but not a payed one.

To many fish in the sea to take this from an alligator.....

Sugar coating it by saying we enjoy faster server's is just that...Sugar coating it.

I'll admit I've never noticed a speed problem before or after and I know that's what makes you guy's a good host but still....

I'd rather pay $10 a month than have to worry about things like this sneaking up on me. Funny thing is as soon as I made my .htaccess redirect for me Im getting twice the hits...

We should have recieved an email atleast....

[Dwight]

It looks like HG has put the 'old' new error page back.. with the Google stuff but without any reference to HG..

Also, I just submitted a support request asking them to add the line to my .htaccess file so my custom pages would work again. It took all of 8 minutes. Thank you support!

My question for the forum: If I add a .htaccess file to my skeleton directory along with my custom 404 page, this will be taken care of in all new sites?

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Dwight

My question for the forum: If I add a .htaccess file to my skeleton directory along with my custom 404 page, this will be taken care of in all new sites?

Yes, that will make custom error pages work on your new clients accounts that are created

[Dwight]

Originally Posted by _Sam_

Yes, that will make custom error pages work on your new clients accounts that are created

Thanks Sam.. I thought as much but didn't want to run into a problem down the road..

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by Dwight

It looks like HG has put the 'old' new error page back.. with the Google stuff but without any reference to HG..

Reseller servers use the ones without HG references but with google ads, shared servers get the HG name in theirs (at least that's how it was last time I asked).

[gtgeorge]

Originally Posted by Dwight

My question for the forum: If I add a .htaccess file to my skeleton directory along with my custom 404 page, this will be taken care of in all new sites?

But I don't think that will take care of created subdomains, so they will still end up with whatever HG decides to use. That is, unless they set up custom pages for subdomains also. I am sure there is a way to get them added upon subsomain creation as the cgi-bin folder is added

[jojoyohan]

Originally Posted by slapshotw

Reseller servers use the ones without HG references but with google ads, shared servers get the HG name in theirs (at least that's how it was last time I asked).

Yup. We get their logo, name, "This Site is hosted by Hostgator" text, and a coupon code in the 404 pages. Complete BS if you ask me.

[Dwight]

Originally Posted by jojoyohan

Yup. We get their logo, name, "This Site is hosted by Hostgator" text, and a coupon code in the 404 pages. Complete BS if you ask me.

Hmm... So what is the problem about having it on your shared hosting? If you aren't reselling, what's the big deal if someone knows what host you are using? The ads aren't on your website, only on your error page, and if you put your own error page up, then not even then. I'll bet every one of you are wearing shoes and t-shirts with other company ads on them.. and you paid for those too... I do agree HG should have posted in the forum, "By the way, we are changing our error page, if you don't like it, make your own", but besides that, what's the harm?

Please note I'm using the collective 'you', and not directing my remarks at jojoyohan in particular.

[othellobloke]

I'm still not happy about the HG version of a generic error page... but the good thing is HG switched back to the previous instead of the 'hosted with' thing in there. So thanks HG for listening to customers

Course, most people wouldn't have this problem if you used Wordpress to build your sites. Other scripts take care of the errors, but there's nothing like wordpress

[othellobloke]

Originally Posted by Dwight

My question for the forum: If I add a .htaccess file to my skeleton directory along with my custom 404 page, this will be taken care of in all new sites?

How d'ya do that?

[Sam]

Originally Posted by othellobloke

How d'ya do that?

You need a reseller account.. and you put the .htaccess & pages in /home/username/cpanel3-skel/public_html/

[J.Buesking]

I don't care if people know I use hostgator. For the last two years I've always recommend them. Support is good and uptime is damn near perfect. Hell once I got some decent traffic coming i'd become an HG affiliate and put a banner in the footer.

My gripe is that my error pages redirected to the sites homepage and even at one time I had my own custom page letting user's know they have reached an unavailable page.

They made these changes without telling anyone and I had to find out months down the road by shear luck.

Should I bookmark a dead link to my site and check it every morning making sure it's forwarding properly? I'd hope not but now I am obviously paranoid about it.

Im fine with the way it's setup now because I obvisouly use custom pages. My gripe is with the way it done without any notice.

Is there not an email list I can join so every time HG makes a server configuration change that my affect my website i can know?

Didn't they surprise al ot of customer's with there PHPSuEXEC migration?

[Dwight]

Originally Posted by J.Buesking

Didn't they surprise al ot of customer's with there PHPSuEXEC migration?

Not the ones that bother to read the forums... it's been talked about for over a year..

[J.Buesking]

Well it took this subject to get me to register and voice my opinion.

You shouldnt have to check this forum for updates. Can you subscribe to the entire announcement section?

It wouldnt matter in this case because there's nothing suggesting the change anywhere other than these couple complaint threads.

I've totally enjoyed my time being hosted with them. Im just trying to improve there service. That's All

[Sam]

Originally Posted by J.Buesking

Can you subscribe to the entire announcement section?

http://forums.hostgator.com/subscrip...bscription&f=9

[-S-]

Would someone please detail the steps to implement one's own "custom" Error Page(s) for shared hosting with Addon Domains pointing to Subdomains (currently all identical), as I would like to do this, without breaking otherwise working sites. I tried messing around with cPanel's Error Pages settings, but alas.... Thanks folks!