Hostgator adding advertisments to my sites.

[garylnunn]

This morning, I noticed that on several of my newly installed Wordpress sites, that a Hostgator advertisement link was automatically added to the Wordpress footer.

When I contacted support, I was informed that Fantastico now adds these links when Wordpress is installed automatically.

Without mincing words, this is absolutely unacceptable.

1. I pay for my hosting. I expect that hosting to be AD FREE.

2. The fact that Hostgator implemented this quietly concerns me. I did NOT receive any type of notification that this advertising was going to show up on my sites.

3. The plugin that is automatically installed and activated by Fantastico, that adds this affiliate advertising link, actually changes my themes. Even when the plugin is deactivated and deleted, there's now space below my footers where the advertisement was.

4. I'm a Hostgator affiliate myself, and I don't appreciate Hostgator inserting (or allowing to be inserted) competing affiliate links on my websites, especially when I'm paying for the hosting.

The support person I spoke to made the argument that it's not actually the hosting that's adding the advertising link, but it's the Fantastico script adding it to Wordpress. Regardless of if Hostgator is adding the links or allowing Fantastico to add the link, Hostgator was aware and they allowed it to happen.

This is the last straw. Along with terminally slow web hosting and the ongoing server errors that generate 20 and 30 MEGABYTE error files, I'm ready to move to a real host.

[GatorJoshL]

garylnunn,

I apologize for the issues that you have seen with our backlink on fantastico installations. We have had issues with this and we were adding it automatically, now there is a link when the installation is finished in fantastico that says "HostGator has installed an optional footer link that can be disabled by clicking here, or by going to your WordPress admin panel." You can click this link and have it removed automatically.

Please PM me tickets for the issues with the server being slow and the error files as this is not normal and I will make sure that those issues are taken care of.

Again our apologies for any issues and I assure you we will be more than glad to work with you to make this right.

Thank you,