Actually, there is a way around the dns issue.
I have been using 1and1 for a while and have had no problems.
I don't have a big site or pay lots of attention to it though.
Normally a 1and1 site starts with a subdomain like xxx.onlinehome.us while
the site is setup. I don't find that address to be particularly useful for
others to see, but it does get around the chicken and egg problem Paul
described.
My 2 cents....
Bruce
On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com>wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 10:11:31AM -0500, Dennis Devine, San Antonio wrote:
>
> > 1and1 provides Linux hosting, although it is not local. Access is
> > good and the price is right. This is a national and international
> company.
> > Domain included.
>
> There is one problem with 1and1.com: You can't access your site until
> the registrar cycles the nameservers. Here's how this works:
>
> You have a customer site at, say, hostica. You decide to move it, so you
> go to the registrar and tell them to switch the nameservers over to
> 1and1.com. You then proceed to set up the account at 1and1. Now, we
> assume you want the customer site to have uninterrupted visibility.
> Since you can't predict when the registrar will cycle the nameservers,
> you want the site to be visible at 1and1.com as soon as the nameservers
> cycle. Ergo, uninterrupted access. Now, normally when you set up a site
> at a hosting company (like 1and1), they give you an FTP addess to upload
> content. That FTP address is normally something like ftp.newsite.com.
> The problem is that until the nameservers cycle, that FTP address is
> probably pointing to the old hosting company. You see the problem? There
> has to be a back door to upload your content at 1and1 *before* the
> nameservers cycle, in order to maintain uninterrupted site visibility.
>
> At 1and1.com there is no such facility. There is at glowhost.com. There
> is at dreamhost.com. There isn't at 1and1.com. This is all fine if it's
> a *new* site-- you just wait until the nameservers click over, and then
> upload your stuff via your FTP address. No one's seen the site before
> (it's new), so there's no interruption. But if it's an existing site and
> you move it to 1and1.com, the old site will be visible until the
> nameservers change. Then there will be nothing until you notice the
> nameservers change over to 1and1.com, and upload content via your new
> FTP address.
>
> While I'm talking about hosting companies, dreamhost has good pricing
> and generous hosting specs. But you'll need to prepare yourself for
> lunacy. These guys are very quirky. Their monthly newsletter leads me to
> believe there are probably bongs on everyone's desk there. They seem to
> do a good job and they're always introducing new features, and they
> treat the hosting customers like family. It's just that the guys who run
> the place are very odd characters. Their front end is one of their own
> making, which works pretty well.
>
> Glowhost.com is another decently priced solution with less generous
> specs. They have a variety of techs, but only really one guy who's their
> main tech. If you ever get him on the phone (or via email), you'll find
> that he's incredibly bored with the whole thing and always assumes he's
> right, even when he's not. Fortunately, he generally knows more than I
> do about these things. They use cPanel as their front end.
>
> Rapidsys is a local company which does hosting but whose main line is
> ISP work (the internet connection, not the hosting). Do not use them.
> They really don't know what they're doing with regard to hosting. We've
> had to consistently wait many many minutes just to have an FTP
> connection go through, and hours to download the least amount of
> content. I believe this is because they use Windows servers.
>
> Godaddy.com is the most horrible hosting company I've every seen. I just
> had a customer set up a hosting account with them, and it took hours to
> upload a few megs worth of content from their old site to their new site
> on godaddy. Turns out they had hosted the guy on a Windows box. We got
> him to insist on changing to Linux servers, and the problem went away.
> Godaddy's site is, I believe, run on Windows machines. And their site
> does not operate properly on any browser other than Windows IE. This is
> the company that agreed a few years ago to switch all their "parked"
> domains over to Windows machines after being paid a chunk of change by
> Microsoft. The point of that exercise was to bump up Microsoft's ratings
> at Netcraft. And I don't think I've every seen a more cluttered site in
> the world. Everything you need to do there (like renewing a site)
> involves a ton of irrelevant screens which try to entice you to buy
> endless add-ons for what you want. Ugh.
>
> </rant>
>
> Paul
>
> --
> Paul M. Foster
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