Our suggestions to help outage situations.

[wildjokerdesign]

It thought it might be a good idea to start a thread that had only the suggetions we thougth would help a current situations like the current on or even perhaps minimize the effects. If we keep this thread clean with just suggestions perhaps it'll make it easier for them to see and they won't be missed in a long thread.

A couple things I have seen others post so far is that maintnance could be done on weekends.

Someone from WH replies on the forum with some infromation during the outage.

[<-- R O B -->]

I'd also add that for European customers (such as myself) it's doubly bad that updates get done in the night (MST) as this is the middle of the day here (GMT). Plus, I'd imagine if things go wrong - which they have this time, there's less people in the Westhost offices to deal with complaints and/or help fix the problem.

I'd suggest adding a field to account editable from the site manager (or reseller manager) stating preferred times that maintainance is done.

[MitchellSTL]

I second the motion that someone from WH states that there is an outage. Forums would be a good place. Another place would be in the members.westhost.com area. It could be placed in the "contact tech support" page.

[squidier]

I second the motion that Westhost customers outside the US get a bit more consideration.

[monjaw]

Like I said before " get a better customer service!"

We all know that things could happen, but at least inform your clients! and don't wait until everybody is upset because they do not know what is going on!

Customer Support is the most important service in any business! If you don't have it you will loose sooner or later most of your clients!

[RichieHindle]

Here's a suggestion: when maintenance activity is going to change the host key of the server machine, announce it. entrian.com is now back up, but when I try to log in I get "WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!" I can understand that the key has changed, but it should be announced. Without confirmation from WH, for all I know I've had my domain hijacked. Do I really want to reveal my password to this new machine?

[dansroka]

I would like to see members.westhost.com become more of a users' tool. Right now, it is heavy on sales promotions and links to manuals, which is ok, but doesn't help us have an idea of what is going on. I'd like to see the page reorganized into more of a dashboard, with the network status, maintanence schedules, current issues, all front and center. And nice clear direct links to live chat and tech support.

[wildjokerdesign]

Good point dansorka. I would like to see the members area become just that. I even would not mind if that area had a log in system based on our main account username password if WH felt there was some information that should not be viewable by non-westhost clients. I think then that the focus could be on existing clients and not selling WH services. I feel as you that right now it is more of a marketing device.

[WestHost-SHull]

Thank you for your great suggestions! I know how frustrating it is when downtime hits and communication from WestHost seemed to be at a minimal. Unfortunately, we were very understaffed in proportion to the client inquiry volume, this morning.

I loved your idea, dansroka. The use of the members page to be geared to keep current clients properly updated and less sales driven, is a good thought. We are also concerned about our international clients and the time frames that servers might be down.

Thanks again for this thread and all your suggestions and feedback. We certainly value it!

[dansroka]

Thanks Scott. Glad you guys got things cleared up.

Oh one refinement to the member's area idea. It would be helpful for Network Status to just show the servers that effect your account, instead of listing them all. Shawn's idea of logging into the member's area could make this work.

Dan