sites taken down after upgrade

[brentfm]

the homepages on my sites have been replaced.

It's not the first time. It's the third time.

Each time you upgrade your servers, you overwrite the htaccess files causing our client's website's homepage to be replaced by the index.htm file.

So our client's websites have index.htm homepages instead of index.php which was their default homepage.

I have no way of knowing which sites are down. I have to wait until my clients call or email me to let me know their site is down.

This is the third time.

This sure is a great way to keep the small business owner from using your service to resell hosting plans.

[brentfm]

As I go through the sites, I'm also finding some of the sites have lost data. For example, biaug.com has apparently lost posts. Specifically the posts I wrote yesterday. -great, now I have to also have all the site owners and their own webmasters check to be sure their latest revisions have not been overwritten.

This compounds the issue greatly.

[brentfm]

also turns out that old advertising offers are popping up from two years ago.

[GatorWesley]

Hello,

Please provide a ticket number so we can look into this for you.

[brentfm]

wowtechminute.com is also down... we'll post a note to the web pro community... with adobe max approaching, this will bring hostgator some pretty solid exposure... way to go!

[brentfm]

oops, too late... max started...

[GatorWesley]

We would be more than happy to help you on this issue, but we will need a ticket number. If you do not have one already please submit this request to support@hostgator.com and reply back to this thread with the ticket ID.

[brentfm]

thanks Wesley. I've already tried to work with support. There's nothing you can do. You can't tell me which sites have been taken down. I've fixed a half dozen sites so far. I'll keep you and the community at large updated as I have time.

[GatorWesley]

I checked your ticket history and was unable to locate anything newer than August 1st under your email address listed in your profile. Please let us know what ticket number support was unable to assist you on.

[GatorDHanna]

As Wesley said, we are unable to help you unless you make an effort to contact our support team. If you're looking for support, you should email us first and then, if you can't get a resolution for some reason, post on the forums as necessary.

Having an index.htm (the Apache default) become your homepage is not site down. Are these .htaccess files in your directories actually getting overwritten? If you could send in a support ticket, we can certainly look into that.

[brentfm]

oh really? try changing your default homepage extension and see what your customers say. Technically, most website owners have no idea what you're talking about. They just know if they can "see" or "use" their website. If they can't they call and say, "my website is down."

I think you're way out of touch.

Here's what I was told, "There is simply no way we can spend the time in chat to do a fix for all the sites."

You're also complicating communication. Why don't you put the issue into an email and email it to yourself if that's what you need to give support?

You're arguing with me is not helping me or my clients.

[brentfm]

okay, so I've created a prioritized list based on traffic and guess work. I've fixed 15 of the most important sites. I'm not sure what else I can do other than wait for clients to complain. At least this isn't as scary as the first two times this happened. I suppose I should be stoked that we're still at 99.9% uptime, right?

Although, I'm not even sure all the site have been restored since the last time. I also never received the credit you promised and I asked for after the first two outages...

[GatorDHanna]

Brent,

We ask that you submit a ticket so we can have our administrators look into the issue and have a "paper trail" per say. That way, we can easily look back if a problem occurs in the future for some reason and see what went wrong. Submitting a ticket enables us to do our jobs better.

If you could private message me your primary domain name, I'll check into the credit situation. Whenever I promise a credit, I give it immediately, so perhaps there was a miscommunication.

Also, if you have submitted a ticket, please let me know what the ticket ID is and I'll make sure one of our best administrators works on it and gets it sorted out.

I apologize about the inconveniences. If you can work with me to get the issue resolved, I can certainly get you a resolution in a timely manner.

[GatorDHanna]

I am moving this to our hosting support forum. If you continue to have issues, please don't hesitate to let us know. If you do decide to submit a ticket, kindly send me the ticket ID and I will make sure it is handled promptly and correctly.