Vidahost 'world-class disappointment'?

[kulture]

Well said. It is also sensible to discus the detail between the two of you in the proper place, namely your own support system.

 

[KM-Tiger]

We spend hours every day on items which, strictly speaking, are web development, but the alternative would be a broken website and a client who then doesn't know what to do

That's a tricky area, particularly when you are the sort of company that will go the extra mile for a client. It easily becomes the expectation rather than a bonus.

The better clients will always accept responsibility for there own actions and shortcomings, and be grateful when you step over the line on their behalf.

But unfortunately there are those that think support includes doing their job for them, and you can never win with them.

 

[beasty]

As Robbie Williams said there are 3 sides to every story, yours, mine, and the truth

I read this and liked it, but cannot find it in my being to give a thumbs up to Robbie Williams

 

[spiritusuk]

In fairness to the OP I have to agree with Vidahost's decline in customer service.

I have had hosting with them for a number of years and in the early days their service was A+(friendly, fast, efficient).

However, some time last year I noticed one of my sites had been hacked. I informed Vidahost and was basically fobbed off.

Although I tried to do what I could to secure my sites further I discovered over time that more and more sites were being infiltrated.

It was only a few months later that I got a reply from a different guy at Vidahost who reacted in a totally different way to his colleagues and said that if my sites were infiltrated then this is a serious security breach and I should have told them immediately !

The precursor to this was one of my sites exceeding it's bandwidth and me only realising that my site was no longer visible when I tried to visit it.

Vidahost exchanged several emails with me declaring that they had warned me via email that my site was nearing it's limit but only after my continued insistence that I had received no such email that they finally realised they had made a mistake with the email address they had sent the warning message to.

Used to be such a great company and probably still is unless something goes wrong.

What prompted me to resurrect this thread after such a long time is I have noticed that Vidahost are flagging up as a security certificate issue when I try to click on their link from Google so looks like security issues are there again

 

[smo]

I dont use Vidahost, but I use their sister company TSOHost - all support etc. is from the same place by the same people and in 10 years i've never had a sinlge problem with them.

I've had answers at 2am relating to coding problems not hosting problems - they ALWAYS answer quickly and politely. Just a month back I had an issue with a report on my PCI compliance and they offered assistance if I could send the report over, I did and they sorted it all for me and gave me advice on other "issues" raised in the report.

Adam, Seb, Darren & Dom have all worked very hard to build a great company(s) (in my opinion) and have a superb team of techies providing support and help way beyond the requirements of any normal host.

 

[JonathanSEO]

Troll thread this, half the complaints don't make sense. The original poster clearly shouldn't be allowed unsupervised Internet access.

 

[Jheath]

All I can say is from our experience over the last 3 or so years is that Vidahost = Top Banana. Never had a serious problem but if we did I'm confident they would move heaven & earth to sort it for us. Quality service, reasonable price and always one step ahead of the curve. So massive thumbs up from us for Vidahost!

Sent from my GT-I9300 using UK Business Forums

 

[Dominic Taylor]

I haven't been around for a while but I saw the email notification that this thread had come back to life

We now handle >500 tickets/day and are building our own datacentre, mainly due to the word of mouth from forums and so on, so seeing negative reports saddens me, whether they're truthful or not.

Not all my tickets are perfect and I'm not saying we never make mistakes, but we will always help clients as much as we can, no matter what the cause. We have a huge range of clients from the completely non-technical to those who get annoyed if we do something for them, so sometimes we can maybe run into a misunderstanding or disagreement, but in any case no ticket is counted as resolved here until the underlying query is resolved, and every person on our support team is available by phone.

I now have a team of 50 including more than 30 support staff who operate 365 days a year and spend a huge amount of time helping clients with any kind of issue from advice for setting up an email address, choosing a WordPress theme, figuring out slow SQL queries or configuring 50-server "private clouds", and who love doing what they do. Some of them were unemployed a year ago after having worked in other industries for 20+ years, others have worked in hosting for 10+ years. We probably wouldn't need and half as many people if we didn't do all this (ie if we provided super-cheap, completely unmanaged hosting), but it's what makes us different and is why people use us, and also why a number of members staff have moved to us from good positions at some of the UK's largest hosting companies.

However, some time last year I noticed one of my sites had been hacked. I informed Vidahost and was basically fobbed off.

Sorry if it came across that way but we don't want hacked sites on our systems any more than you do because they send spam and can cause disruption for other clients, plus you obviously. Our standard advice of restoring a backup and patching is usually sufficient to prevent any further issues. For example if a hacked site is fixed but not patched, it *will* be hacked again which is why we aim to give you the tools via the control panel, and explain what is needed to fix it.

My colleagues did try their best to do that and they did ask me first, and in almost all cases this works and the problem goes away.

In your case, although I can't find the ticket, I think the problem was that there were many sites under one cPanel account, and there were malicious files across more than you/I initially realised. Either that or there were multiple sites within the account which needed updating so whilst one was fixed, another was hacked.

Although I tried to do what I could to secure my sites further I discovered over time that more and more sites were being infiltrated.

It was only a few months later that I got a reply from a different guy at Vidahost who reacted in a totally different way to his colleagues and said that if my sites were infiltrated then this is a serious security breach and I should have told them immediately !

I remember the ticket but I'm afraid I can't remember the ID to check exactly what happened. If any of my colleagues sent you unhelpful replies I would have let them know. As above, we don't want hacked sites any more than you do. We will help but we don't have the manpower to fix every single issue and we're also not web designers - if we did/were we would also automatically patch all installations but that's not viable either - for example about 5 people a day ask us for a backup restoring because a WordPress update has caused a theme issue, and from the backup system activity we can see a lot more people use it without contacting us.

After your initial ticket I thought everything was resolved and I was surprised to see it wasn't, and then offered more advice and located more malicious files and helped you get everything cleared as much as I could so that the sites could then be updated.

Sorry if I over-reacted in my surprise to you but that's all it was - I don't like seeing that anyone has continued problems and we are here to help as much as we reasonably can (ie, I don't think I updated the software on your sites but I would have disabled any malicious scripts to get them in a working state and then aim to advise the cause).

Vidahost exchanged several emails with me declaring that they had warned me via email that my site was nearing it's limit but only after my continued insistence that I had received no such email that they finally realised they had made a mistake with the email address they had sent the warning message to.

Again, there are no bad intentions here - there is no point in us fobbing off anyone about anything because we are here to resolve any query which comes our way, as much as we can.

My colleagues would have checked that the server was set to send the email notifications (occasionally there is an oversight - or there was - we now automate a lot of things that I used to do manually).

The email sending is automated and the address used is the one which is shown within your cPanel account which sounds like it was an old address so presumably I checked the logs, confirmed the address, and then it was realised to be outdated? Sorry if there was any confusion. Again, we don't want your sites to go offline. In the near future you'll be able to choose the overusage action - eg "notify me then take my site offline if I don't reply" or "notify me and charge me X for the usage to keep my site up".

What prompted me to resurrect this thread after such a long time is I have noticed that Vidahost are flagging up as a security certificate issue when I try to click on their link from Google so looks like security issues are there again

This was an expired SSL certificate on our main site which was my oversight. It's not related to outdated/insecure scripts on your website in any way and my colleagues fixed it - thanks if you reported it to us (I wasn't here on Saturday morning although I was covering the night shift until an hour or so before the SSL expired from what I heard). The SSL issue was my fault, I thought I had it setup for 2 years.

 

[ThamesTeaCo]

I have only today transferred my hosting from 123 Reg to Vidahost as I had been receiving a very poor service.I was very nervous about this as I look after 8 sites but the guys at Vidahost could not have been more helpful in migrating my sites.

 

[ianm10]

Great response from Dominic, and a reason why I recently moved to them.

As someone that manages L2 & L3 teams onshore and offshore (circa 50,000 tickets resolved p/a), this is evidence of great support by Vidahost, and really going the extra mile.

As the saying goes, you can please some of people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time

 

[F1SEO]

Holy Thread Ressurection

Even though I knew Vida were getting bigger I went to visit them at their new HQ in Slough a few months ago, as we invest significant hosting with them.

What I saw was: a totally secure datacentre, oh yes, Biometric scanners to get into the building, and I had to be with a director of Vida at the time, then I had to get past the security guards with various checks, then to the server cages, and then there was another biometric scan specifically for see to their area.

That put my mind at ease that everything was being taken care of to the highest level.

I think I even submitted a problem on Christmas Eve, and had a message back that it would be taken care of Christmas Day - and it was. When I asked 'didnt they have a day off' they said that Vida is a 24/7/365 support.

I know they've grown yet I think they've kept their awesome service. I keep all our hosting with them.

 

[JPMiddleton]

Woah! I've been a happy customer for a couple of years but didn't know that- great security!

Holy Thread Ressurection

Even though I knew Vida were getting bigger I went to visit them at their new HQ in Slough a few months ago, as we invest significant hosting with them.

What I saw was: a totally secure datacentre, oh yes, Biometric scanners to get into the building, and I had to be with a director of Vida at the time, then I had to get past the security guards with various checks, then to the server cages, and then there was another biometric scan specifically for see to their area.

That put my mind at ease that everything was being taken care of to the highest level.

I think I even submitted a problem on Christmas Eve, and had a message back that it would be taken care of Christmas Day - and it was. When I asked 'didnt they have a day off' they said that Vida is a 24/7/365 support.

I know they've grown yet I think they've kept their awesome service. I keep all our hosting with them.

 

[10032012]

What I saw was: a totally secure datacentre, oh yes, Biometric scanners to get into the building, and I had to be with a director of Vida at the time, then I had to get past the security guards with various checks, then to the server cages, and then there was another biometric scan specifically for see to their area.

(I am not saying Vida isn't secure)

Just hope their network security is as good as their datacentre!

 

[iKam]

As many have already mentioned, If your looking for World class hosting with technical support who are actually human and go that extra mile sign up with Vidahost. We moved from 1&1 hosting around 3/4 years ago, we've never looked back. Vidahost technical
Support is one of the best in the business and it's defiantly worth every penny IMO. 1&1 on the other hand.... No comment.

 

[MG72]

First time poster so I am sure I will get the usual raised eyebrows but please give me a moment.

I have a number of websites hosted with a number of web hosts, and a small number on a shared hosting package with Vidahost. Never had a problem with any of my sites, tried to keep on top of updates and plugins etc. Around a month ago all my Vidahost sites were hacked, I informed Vidahost and they advised to change all my passwords and let them know when it was done. When completed I told them, and all the sites went back live. I was not asked to do anything else, and assumed they had scanned the sites to see all were ok (maybe too much of an assumption on my part).

Lo and behold two weeks later and all my sites are hacked again. Now I got the advice to hire a designer to clean out the code, or pay for some software to do if for me.

Perhaps being a bit of a simpleton with hosting, there was me thinking the only difference between my Vidahost instals and the ones I have elsewhere is that the ones away from Vidahost have never been hacked. So is it unreasonable to ask Vidahost to guarantee that the hosting could not have been the cause, before I pay god knows what to have the sites 'cleaned' only for a a hacker to go through the server again?

Hear are a few of my responses

Yes your site is hacked again it won't be down to us the hack will be due to vulnerabilities in the code

Can you guarantee that it is not down to Vidahost?

Hacks can be very hard to trace and 99.9% of all of them is due to site code

So if you cannot trace them how do you know it is the code and not the hosting?

This is from experience on CMS sites which have these security issues

Other than being given a link for a service that would charge around £300 a site to 'clean' them up (got around a dozen sites with Vidahost), or to hire a 'design' (assuming a web designer) to sort it for me, I am not sure I have been fortunate enough to get the 'World Class Support' advertised.

Vidahost may well be right that it is down to the site code, perhaps I have just been incredibly unlucky. However would you pay to get your websites cleaned at the cost of thousands of pounds and then put them back on the Vidahost hosting based on the answers above?

Having hosting elsewhere I can say any issues that have ever cropped up have always been dealt with by the hosting company, or clear direct advice given (they are the experts), with Vidahost it appears you are very much on your own. Shame

 

[Nuno]

I have always had first rate service from Vidahost.

There again I have never treated them as my in-house IT department, only as a hosting company.

I repeat my earlier post.

 

[MG72]

I repeat my earlier post.

And perhaps you have a point, but when I have had issues with other hosting companies they have always sorted it out. With Vidahost all I get is 'well its probably all your fault'.

Big difference

 

[Nuno]

£300 a site seems strong. Sucuri offers their 15 package for up to 50 sites, clean and monitor, for $390 which is about £227.
Are they WP sites? There have been a lot of attacks on WP sites in the last year, some of which require a serious professional clean out. Hope the old back ups are good.

 

[spiritusuk]

Nuno,

You may be a first time poster but I am not and what you described reflects almost perfectly the experience I had with Vidahost some time ago.

It started off with one site being hacked before a large proportion of the many sites I had with Vidahost were also hacked.

Despite informing them of my sites being hacked I did not receive much offer of support other than an offer to do a complete database reset ! Even this offer was withdrawn in a later email and I was told it was something that I should easily be able to do myself.

Several months down the line and with me still reporting issues I got an email from Dom who stated that they take malware on their hosted sites "very seriously" but his words and their prior (and subsequent) actions does not support this.

After this went on for several months I felt I had no option but to jettison my websites. I informed them of this and my disappointment but it was clear with their lack of response that they didn't particularly care what I did or didn't do.

In a related incident, one of the hacked sites was making one of my sites exceed it's bandwidth. I only found this out when I checked one of my sites to discover it had been taken down. On investigating, I learnt it was a bandwidth problem and Vidahost insisted they had emailed me a warning when my site started to reach it's threshhold. I insisted I had received no such email from them. Email tennis between Vidahost and myself continued for a while with them showing no self doubt whatsoever and even having the audacity to blame my email provider for either junking or losing my email.

Eventually, Vidahost admitted there was an "email configuration" problem with my account.

When I started using Vidahost their service was excellent. I got the impression there were only two customer service guys in the whole company-Dom and Seb because I only ever received assistance from them but as their company grew larger and possibly outsourced the customer service side of things then the quality of their customer service has dropped drastically and there is no excuse for that.

 

[smo]

Their support isn't outsourced and is pretty much 100%.

If you have a site with security holes in the code then its your problem not theirs, they are well within their rights to disable it and not re-enable it until its fixed as its a risk to others too. Stop slagging off an excellent company (Vida/Tso are both paragon internet brands) and sort out your crap websites with their security flaws.

Strangely enough we've never had any of our 20+ sites hacked because they are either well written in php/html 5 from scratch or based on magento rather than something with more holes than a colander like wordpress!

 

[Faevilangel]

I have in excess of 500+ websites with vidahost (wordpress, opencart, other ecommerce, html etc) and not one has been hacked so 99% sure it's not vidahost that's the issue but your actual websites.

I wouldn't expect vidahost to fix issues on my websites, that's not what I am paying them for and it's upto me to keep my sites secure. They will probably help you if it happens but it's not something you should expect.

And totally agree with Nuno, vidahost aren't your IT support, you need to take control of your own sites and stop relying on vidahost to fix it, you pay them to host the website and not to be your web developer.

Do you have a web developer who you can call on to check your sites properly and advise as I have known hackers to find a vulnerability and open more so they can keep going in and doing what they want.

 

[Faevilangel]

something with more holes than a colander like wordpress!

Nothing wrong with WP as long as you keep it upto date (along with plugins), unfortunately opensource code comes with issues due to anyone being able to see it.

I have built / installed in excess of 1000 WP sites and can only remember one site which was hacked (the client didn't update WP and didn't want to pay me to do it).

WP now does updates (minor ones e.g. 3.9.1, 3.9.2) automatically so you don't need to keep an eye on them

 

[Jeff FV]

About a year ago my site, hosted by vidahost, was "hacked" or "infected" (I'm not sure of the difference) but I think it was through not having the most up to date version of (I think) Shockwave, or some other adobe product on my computer as my virus scanning software started throwing up all sorts of warnings.

Tried sorting it myself, couldn't, ran a scan on my computer, installed latest version of said program, changed all my passwords and Vidahost re-installed my site with a back up (that they had taken) and all was good with the world.

Prompted by this thread, I've just had a look at my support tickets - it was less than 12 hours from me first asking for help to the problem being completely resolved (and those 12 hours were overnight.) I'm no techy, but I felt I got "world class service" that day.

 

[JPMiddleton]

Why are people always so quick to blame a hosting company for their websites issues?

If you own a high street store and you leave the front door unlocked, you can't blame the landlord when you arrive in the morning to see the stock has been stolen.

 

[Nuno]

Nuno,

You may be a first time poster but I am not ....


...
After this went on for several months I felt I had no option but to jettison my websites. I informed them of this and my disappointment but it was clear with their lack of response that they didn't particularly care what I did or didn't do.

Nuno the first time user here...Well spotted @spiritusuk. Those 3000+ posts I made were just practicing for my first real one here.
And did you really "jettison" the "many sites" you had at Vidahost? Just walked away without moving them to another host or cleaning them up? Blimey. All those hours, all that effort just chucked overboard. Brave chap.

 

[spiritusuk]

I am not "slagging them off" for the service YOU receive. I am giving my feedback on the service I received. As you are not an authority on the issues and service I experienced and I can back my claims up with emails then I will continue to give my honest feedback. That's what an open and transparent forum should be about, should it not ?

Vidahost dropped the ball on the bandwidth issue and weren't apologetic even when they conceded eventually that they got my email address wrong.

Hacked sites are not always purely the sole responsibility of the website owner and hosting servers can also get hacked and infiltrated (I'm presuming you already know this).

Vidahost have also sent generic emails out to their customers in their past warning of security attacks on their servers and to be vigilant so I think you're off the mark to suggest that a hosting company has zero responsibility.

 

[ebroker]

For what it's worth I've used Vidahost's shared hosting for smaller websites in the past and have no complaints. (Admittedly, I haven't needed anything from their support.)

That said, I would not use shared hosting for anything "mission critical" and have no experience with their cloud or dedicated offerings.. Does anybody here?

Security wise, best practice always pays. Stay on top of updates, don't use nulled or untrusted scripts, use multiple strong passwords, restrict access and permissions etc.

 

[Tin]

I'm no techy, but I felt I got "world class service" that day.

Same for me, been with them for 4 years with a bunch of sites and they've always been excellent with support. Despite the negatives on this thread, I honestly can't fault them.

 

[MG72]

Just a quick update on my ongoing problems with Vidahost, I asked them three times to guarantee me that the issue was not through their hosting package, a perfectly reasonable request I would have thought if I am just about to spend money getting the websites cleaned up, and I do not want the same thing to happen again if it is down to the hosting.

I also asked if Vidahost could suggest a better was of ensuring a secure hosting environment.........again ignored.

Finally after three failed attempts to answer that they can guarantee it was not their hosting, I asked that my concerns were passed to someone else who could help me.

I got a response from a Darren Lingham (I think I have seen his name mentioned on here before?) who says:

I can absolutely guarantee that this hack was not caused by a vulnerability at the server level. If that were the cause, the other several hundred WordPress and PHP related sites on the server would also have bene (sp?) affected

Great finally some clarification of my concern. However I do not have a server package with them, I have a shared hosting package. However Darren then explains

A vulnerability in one or more of your sites, allowing someone to add code to all of your sites because they're under a single cPanel

So if a hacker gets access through one of your sites then they can run amok through your hosting as it is all on the same cPanel.

However, it is clear to me now that if you run a shared hosting package (any shared hosting, not just from Vidahost I must add) there is no second line of defense if a hacker gets through one of your sites. Therefore my concern with remaining on shared hosting is justified.

This thread concerns the customer service of Vidahost. I am not saying that the issues with my websites have not been caused by a vulnerability. However if I have never had any issues with the same websites, same themes, same plugins etc on other hosting packages elsewhere and never had a problem then it is understandable to question Vidahost.

What I am extremely disappointed in is the poor customer service. Failing to answer simple, direct questions (I doubt they have even tried to read my tickets), ignoring my request for advice on providing a more secure hosting environment, and absolutely no inclination to give advice or help, just a cold shoulder and a fob off. If they could provide a more secure hosting environment then I would happily pay more to get it. No such advice was given, despite me asking for their expert opinion.

For those who say you should not slag off Vidahost because you have not had a poor service, I would say that I went with them in the first place because I saw positive comments on forums. However, they are one of a number of hosting companies we use, and I have received as much assistance as possible from all of the others we have used in the past, whenever we have had any problems. Vidahost are actually the most expensive of the lot, but their customer service has been poor for me. It is clear that I am not alone.

There is nothing more frustrating that asking direct questions and them being repeatedly ignored. I am sure they are very busy, but in my view if you cannot look after the customers you have already why would you even bother looking for more. Poor all round.

 

[IanG]

we were only offered an 'abrupt' refund, nothing more.

Quite sure that's preferable to a long, drawn-out one.

 

[MG72]

Their support isn't outsourced and is pretty much 100%.

If you have a site with security holes in the code then its your problem not theirs, they are well within their rights to disable it and not re-enable it until its fixed as its a risk to others too. Stop slagging off an excellent company (Vida/Tso are both paragon internet brands) and sort out your crap websites with their security flaws.

Strangely enough we've never had any of our 20+ sites hacked because they are either well written in php/html 5 from scratch or based on magento rather than something with more holes than a colander like wordpress!

But as Darren at Vidahost now makes clear, if you have shared hosting and they get into one website then they have easy access to the rest through your single cPanel, a facility provided as part of their services.

All my websites have different logins, passwords, plugins and themes kept up to date. We run over 50 blogs on different hosting, none have ever been hacked before, all my ones on Vidahost have been, twice. This may just be unlucky, but please do not defend them for repeatedly ignoring my very straightforward questions, and also ignoring my request for advice on a different hosting package that could provide a more secure environment.

And when you offer your instruction not to slag off Vidahost, and tell us that their Customer Support is 100% then take a look through the thread. It is clear that a number of people have been unhappy with the 'support' they have been given by Vidahost, and therefore it is not 100%. You are not amongst these, but if they are happy to accept the good feedback then they also have to be accepting of the bad.

All I can confirm is that they have provided the worst customer service I have ever received from a hosting company.

 

[Nuno]

This begs the questions:

• If you are so unhappy, and have been hacked twice, why are you still with Vidahost?
• I thought you has 'jettisoned' all your Vidahost hosted sites. Now it appears not. Did you perhaps 'jettison' them after the second hack?
• Have you found the malicious code? If it's in a folder or file in the root cleaning up the individual sites won't work. It'll just come back.
• Why did you move to Vidahost in the first place if you have a large presence on another host?
• You are right that Vidahost's record of customer support is not 100%. Nobody's is. It just appears that a very significant majority here are satisfied with it. Are you surprised that this majority might think there are two sides to every story?

 

[silvermusic]

Why are people always so quick to blame a hosting company for their websites issues?

If you own a high street store and you leave the front door unlocked, you can't blame the landlord when you arrive in the morning to see the stock has been stolen.

Sadly too many people nowadays will not take responsibility for their own actions and screw up's, because it's easier to blame someone else rather than admit to being in the wrong. I see this many times every week, don't even get me started on ebay buyers, they're the worst.

 

[MG72]

This begs the questions:

• If you are so unhappy, and have been hacked twice, why are you still with Vidahost?
• I thought you has 'jettisoned' all your Vidahost hosted sites. Now it appears not. Did you perhaps 'jettison' them after the second hack?
• Have you found the malicious code? If it's in a folder or file in the root cleaning up the individual sites won't work. It'll just come back.
• Why did you move to Vidahost in the first place if you have a large presence on another host?
• You are right that Vidahost's record of customer support is not 100%. Nobody's is. It just appears that a very significant majority here are satisfied with it. Are you surprised that this majority might think there are two sides to every story?

Where did I say that I had jettison any of my Vidahost sites? I have looked back through my posts and can see no where I may have intimated this. The second hack only happened in the last couple of days. The poor customer service I have received is in the last few days, as a result of this second hack.

The only advise I received from Vidahost from the initial hack was to simply change all my passwords, and logins. Which I did. They then put the websites back online, as they took them down in the first place I presumed they had done some check that they were clean.

Yes I have gone through the files and removed all that looked suspicious.

The question on why I took out some Vidahost hosting, I am at a loss for the relevance of that? I have about five different shared hosting accounts with different companies, and a dedicated server with another for our e-commerce sites. What relevance is this? Some of the shared hosting accounts (including the Vidahost one) have a limited number of websites that can be hosted. I did not say I had a large presence with another host in any of my posts, just I had several. I did not 'move' to Vidahost, I just chose to take out a shared hosting package with them on the back of some good mentions on forums.It was probably the last hosting package I have taken, so I am able to compare them with the other ones I have.

And as for the comments about two sides, there are just that. My reply was to someone who specifically said to stop 'slagging off' Vidahost because they had a '100% Customer Service'. Many in this thread agree, but clearly some do not.

Of course we will be moving from Vidahost, and to anyone who is considering them I absolutely agree that there are two sides to everything. It is important to consider both. However with my experience of a number of hosts Vidahost are by a long way the poorest of the lot. Simple questions being continually ignored is not good customer service. My experience and my opinion, but I am clearly going to challenge someone who is telling me to stop slagging them off just because he found them OK, I did not.

 

[Nuno]

Apologies. It was the other whinger who jettisoned their sites or claimed to.

 

[MG72]

Apologies. It was the other whinger who jettisoned their sites or claimed to.

Funny isn't it, if you have a problem then you are a 'whinger' or making it up, but if you think they are great then you must be genuine?

 

[Nuno]

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it...

(Sing along version)

 

[MG72]

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it...

(Sing along version)

Ha Ha, love it. Now can you suggest a good web host not beginning with the letters 'V' or 'T' please?

 

[Jolt.co.uk]

But as Darren at Vidahost now makes clear, if you have shared hosting and they get into one website then they have easy access to the rest through your single cPanel, a facility provided as part of their services.

All my websites have different logins, passwords, plugins and themes kept up to date. We run over 50 blogs on different hosting, none have ever been hacked before, all my ones on Vidahost have been, twice. This may just be unlucky, but please do not defend them for repeatedly ignoring my very straightforward questions, and also ignoring my request for advice on a different hosting package that could provide a more secure environment.

And when you offer your instruction not to slag off Vidahost, and tell us that their Customer Support is 100% then take a look through the thread. It is clear that a number of people have been unhappy with the 'support' they have been given by Vidahost, and therefore it is not 100%. You are not amongst these, but if they are happy to accept the good feedback then they also have to be accepting of the bad.

All I can confirm is that they have provided the worst customer service I have ever received from a hosting company.

Honestly... how can Vidahost protect against you installing a WordPress plugin or theme that is insecure, and grants a hacker access to your cPanel and Addon domains?

Perhaps they could have explained this better but I suspect they are inundated with service issues like this as it happens so much.

Sadly, WordPress is not secure if you do not keep it up to date, and a lot of the themes and plugins open up an even larger can of worms.

Hosting companies get a bad rep but mostly do a good job. Vidahost and the other Paragon brands provide a solid service for what you pay them. They, like us, aren't providing a Webmaster service to maintain your code and security.

Matt

 

[MASSEY]

I got a response from a Darren Lingham (I think I have seen his name mentioned on here before?) who says:

I can absolutely guarantee that this hack was not caused by a vulnerability at the server level. If that were the cause, the other several hundred WordPress and PHP related sites on the server would also have bene (sp?) affected

Great finally some clarification of my concern. However I do not have a server package with them, I have a shared hosting package.

A shared hosting package on a server by any chance? Which means the same thing.

However Darren then explains

A vulnerability in one or more of your sites, allowing someone to add code to all of your sites because they're under a single cPanel

So if a hacker gets access through one of your sites then they can run amok through your hosting as it is all on the same cPanel.

If you have a hosting account that has multiple wordpress installations / addon domains that feed off the main hosting account domain then they would be vulnerable, which is just common sense.

However, it is clear to me now that if you run a shared hosting package (any shared hosting, not just from Vidahost I must add) there is no second line of defense if a hacker gets through one of your sites. Therefore my concern with remaining on shared hosting is justified.

I've used shared hosting for years, because its cheap. I've been hacked in the past. One was due to not keeping wordpress up to date. One was because i seem to have uploaded a dodgy file via ftp and some dodgy code was being injected into the header.php.

After me removing the code multiple times it seemed to go away, so luckily i didn't have to pay anyone. But as mentioned, it is possible to restore your site, via your hosts backups or your own, to a time when you were not infected which should get rid of it.

If a host has a problem with the server they generally hold their hands up and email you about it.

This thread concerns the customer service of Vidahost. I am not saying that the issues with my websites have not been caused by a vulnerability. However if I have never had any issues with the same websites, same themes, same plugins etc on other hosting packages elsewhere and never had a problem then it is understandable to question Vidahost.

It is understandable you would seek them to give you some direction as to where the issue emanates from, i agree.You seem to be asking for a great deal more though.

What I am extremely disappointed in is the poor customer service. Failing to answer simple, direct questions (I doubt they have even tried to read my tickets), ignoring my request for advice on providing a more secure hosting environment, and absolutely no inclination to give advice or help, just a cold shoulder and a fob off. If they could provide a more secure hosting environment then I would happily pay more to get it. No such advice was given, despite me asking for their expert opinion.

I think you were most probably asking for things that exceed buying a hosting account and sticking a website on it. They are not your very own technical IT team for £3.59 a month.