Potential Web Hosting Replacements for Media Temple

After yesterday’s announcement of GoDaddy buying Media Temple, (more about this on TechCrunch) I’ll need to move. But it’s going to be a couple months before I can do that, so these are some notes about hosts to research when I get some free time to make the switch. These were all recommended to me by friends or picked up from the TechCrunch comments as possible replacements.

Green Geeks

Rackspace Hosting

Digital Ocean

LiquidWeb

pair Networks

Solar VPS

SoftLayer

BlueHost

Datarealm Internet Services

I hope that some of these share screens of their control panels. Media Temple’s control panel interface was far more usable than any other host I’ve worked with, so I hate to take a step backwards.

table flip princess bubblegum 1

Sigh.

Continue ReadingPotential Web Hosting Replacements for Media Temple

GoDaddy buys Media Temple and I lose my mind

I was checking my email this afternoon, all unsuspecting, and suddenly this crap bomb appeared in my inbox from my web hosting provider Media Temple:

I am proud to share some momentous news with you today. GoDaddy, the Internet’s largest platform for small businesses, has acquired (mt) Media Temple. We will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company and our mission will remain unchanged. However, new investments from GoDaddy will provide us the necessary resources to strengthen our focus on web professionals and will help accelerate our plans to expand internationally.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you surely have seen GoDaddy’s incredibly sexist ad campaigns. But here’s a nice refresher course for you, just the same:

Ms. Magazine: Top Five Sexist Super Bowl Ads, 2013

The Moderate Voice: GoDaddy: Poster Child For Silicon Valley Sexism

Geek Feminism Wiki: Go Daddy’s advertising

Miss Representation: #NotBuyingIt: Go Daddy Disappoints, Again

GoDaddy has also been critiqued for really terrible user interfaces and “dark patterns” – a user interface designed to trick you into doing something or buying something that you didn’t want or intend. Read more about some GoDaddy’s dark patterns tricks.

I actually had 12 domains registered with GoDaddy from really early on. I never hosted files on their servers, but when their domains were $3 and $5 a year, I registered quite a few of them. This was before all the horrible sexist advertising and before the dark patterns took over their interfaces. Once they started their terrible ad campaigns, I began moving my domain registrations, but unfortunately it wasn’t as easy to do as I had hoped. I had purchased some of my domain names under an email address I no longer had. When I changed emails, I updated all of my contact addresses for each individual URL. But unbeknownst to me – this is an example of one of their dark patterns – those changes didn’t also apply to the privacy settings on those URLs. So when that address when away, I couldn’t turn off the privacy settings in order to move the domains to a new domain provider. I finally found the log in numbers to the privacy accounts by searching on an ancient backup drive I put in the closet 6 years ago, and was able to update my privacy information in order to move, but it took me months to get it sorted out. So I was GoDaddy-free, finally!

I hate you fucking people.

Annnnnd now I’m back. I host 12 sites on Media Temple architecture. I’m going to be moving them sometime this spring, unfortunately. So far, Dreamhost, Digital Ocean and Pair.com are front-runners for new hosting providers. We shall see.

Continue ReadingGoDaddy buys Media Temple and I lose my mind