Over the last few months my blog (and indeed all my websites) has been notoriously slow to load and often not working at all. However, that should no longer be the case because I’ve moved to a much faster and far more reliable web service.
I know this isn’t exactly interesting, but a number of people have mentioned in the past that my blog was very slow and unreliable, so I thought I would just make a quick announcement to say that those problems should now be a thing of the past.
My previous web hosting company was WeaverWeb, run by my rather charmless friend, Darryl. His web hosting business has been failing for some time and he recently decided to give up on it, and in the process leave many customers without services or any way to reach him.
My new web hosting provider has been extremely helpful in assisting me to move the 60+ websites from my old host to theirs. Dan from EZPZ web hosting (I know, it’s a terrible name) has gone to some lengths to ensure the move was as smooth as possible. His diligent attention to detail and friendly manner has been a refreshing change, believe me!
As silly as it seems, I have to say using this new web host and enjoying the speed and reliability is akin to driving a new car, it’s great, and hopefully, you’ll notice a difference too.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 26, 2008 at 7:45 pm
In the words of the most illustrious Tom Cruise, “I feel the need, the need for speed!” Thanks, Simon, for feeding the need.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 27, 2008 at 2:47 am
Good move Simon. It is indeed much faster.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 27, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Oh yes, this is so much better!
Wrote the following comment on Nov 27, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Well, Anthony, you too should be happy because your blog is now on the very same server. The move from WeaverWeb happened over last weekend and throughout the week I’ve been moving stuff across.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 27, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Weaverweb are shit! The guy who runs the place is impossible to get in touch with and when you do finally manage to track him down he is miserable, unhelpful and downright rude. Frankly I am surprised anyone still deals with them because they are nothing but a sham outfit run by an idiot who needs to learn some customer service skills! It’s a mystery to me that they are even still in business.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 28, 2008 at 6:09 am
EZPZ!? Come on! That’s a fantastic company name! I wish I’d thought of that! Brilliant! Well done on finally moving servers.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 28, 2008 at 3:13 pm
You know Jason, WeaverWeb are in fact closing their doors for good this Sunday. While I can’t say that the performance of my server was up to much in these last few months I can most certainly say that WeaverWeb has provided me with a decent service for the last 10 years!
I’ll admit that Darryl Weaver himself suffered from an unfortunate charm deficiency, but in my experience, such a shortcoming is not uncommon among those of the technical persuasion.
As for the name EZPZ, I think it sounds more like a rent-a-car company or print shop. :-)
Wrote the following comment on Nov 28, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Simon, you should be a politician with responses like that.
So weaverweb is closing. I am not at all surprised. I’m amazed that a company run by such an arsehole could actually have survived in any state for any period of time.
I’m guessing from the link on gofromhere.com that you are friends with Darryl Weaver, if so then I suspect you didn’t experience how much of a total arsehole he is.
Our new host, UK2net, are leauges ahead of anything offered by weaverweb, but then I would imagine it would be quite some task to find a compnay that is less reliable and harder to comminicate with.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 30, 2008 at 12:57 am
Charm deficiency? Is that political speak for rude c**t? Perhaps Darryl could help out Tony Blair in the Middle East, I think his tact and patience could be used to good effect there :-)
Wrote the following comment on Nov 29, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Another ex-WW customer here, and I largely concur with Jason. WW’s charges became increasingly extortionate when compared to the service level. Pricing for the high-end but then offering dreadful service is precisely why the company must have gone under. For example, of relative late, support emails were rarely answered, and email uptime was pathetic.
By comparison, my new host – a major and not exactly well-regarded (but cheap) supplier – has cost me under 15-minutes of email downtime (one failed connection, which righted itself the next time my email client did its regular check) in over a month. Amusingly, the reregistration of my domain, plus some other goodies and a much more flexible and useful email service also cost far less than a single annual renewal of a dot-com on WW.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 30, 2008 at 11:36 am
Hey, don’t be knocking them weaverweb boys. Quality costs money. You know what they say, you get what you pay for. So lets do a price comparison with Zen web hosting’s ‘Silver‘ web hosting package.
This is what you get from Zen:
From weaverweb we got the best package available from their website and upgraded it using the WW price list to the same disk space allocations offered by Zen. In that package you get the following:
*Without the ‘upgrade’ to the WW package the top of the range WW package would cost £1,515.00.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 30, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Given the figures above, things become even more comical when you consider that Simon said he had some 60+ sites with weaverweb.
Assuming he was given a generous discount for customer loyalty and buying in bulk, at those prices his web hosting costs would have been well in excess of £300,000 a year (excluding tax)!
Looking then at the most expensive package from Simon’s new host, and assuming he paid their full published rates, it would appear that they offer a great deal more for a saving of no less than £299,600!
Way to go Simon, that’s quite some saving.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 30, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Thanks for the kind words Simon – though there’s nothing wrong with our name :P
At least it has got you talking about it :)
Dan
Wrote the following comment on Nov 30, 2008 at 10:28 pm
So then, over the last ten years Simon must have paid this weaverweb company something like three million pounds in website hosting fees. That’s spectacular! LOL!
Wrote the following comment on Dec 23, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Dan? His site is stangely familiar….. Are they all called Dan (or Darryl), or is this the same Dan as Binasys?
Wrote the following comment on Jan 5, 2009 at 10:44 am
Sorry Joelle, I missed your comment. Dan from EZPZ isn’t Dan from Binasys. I nearly moved to Binasys but I decided to move in a kind of 75/25 fashion with 75% of stuff going to EZPZ and 25% going to Binasys.
As for what I paid WeaverWeb, it wasn’t three million pounds though that made me laugh out loud when I saw that number! Darryl did indeed offer me a generous discount and for many years I enjoyed a decent service, even if at times the charm was a little lacking at times.
Wrote the following comment on Feb 3, 2009 at 2:20 pm
after receiving an email from darryl weaver saying that weaverweb were closing in a matter of days i made several telephone calls, submitted numerous support tickets, and sent a number of emails practically begging him to help me, or at least tell me how i could get my website and email moved. he didn’t respond at all and after a few days he simply switched off the service leaving me without my business website or email. after just over a week i managed to get my email switched back on, however my web-store was lost! obviously he doesn’t care, but i would like him to know that this caused me considerable anguish and was an unbelievably shitty thing to do!
Wrote the following comment on Mar 16, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Darryl Weaver is a cunt! It’s a simple as that. The miserable idle fucker totally screwed us on our domain name and website. It all stopped working and repeated calls to the number we had for weaverweb went unanswered. The mobile I had for him was no longer in service and we were left with a total loss of email and our website. I left numerous messages for Darryl but heard nothing back. In the end the .com domain name was registered by another company and we had to pay a fortune to get it back from the new “legal” owners who had nabbed it when it expired.
I run a small company with a modest turnover and the cost to my business can be counted in the thousands. The way Weaverweb treated us was absolutely criminal. If I ever bump into Darryl Weaver he better hope that I have mellowed over time because I’d like to punch that fuckers lights out!
Wrote the following comment on Apr 29, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Darryl Weaver is a floundering idiot who talks himself up in order to hide the fact that he is an unprofessional inept fool.