intermorphic.com Blog

We reported to Yahoo on 13th August that our Yahoo hosted forum had gone down – we just got an error message when we tried to access it (error message still there). We had done nothing that would cause this problem as we had not modified our SQL database in any way. We did notice that at around the same time, however, that all the file permissions on our website had somehow changed, which Yahoo denied was anything to do with them (as far as we know, the only way for the to be changed would otherwise be by us, but we did not change them). We only noticed this as we tried to update some pages but were not able to overwrite the existing files with their replacement.

Anyhow, back to the forum problem, Yahoo finally confirmed on 20th August (after a lot of chasing, some with no reply) that they had had other forum owners complain about similar problems to ours, and were putting technical resource into solving it.

It is now 23rd August and our forum is still down, and we have no further update from Yahoo as to when this will be fixed.

If you are thinking of using Yahoo to host your forum, think very carefully about it. We are a UK company, so the only way to contact Yahoo support is either an International telefone call (there is only a US number to call), or via email. The thing about this is that the Webhosting service is not a free service, it is something you pay for….

When you email them, they have a contact system where you are given a case number. They say you should get a reply within around 24hours or so. That would be OK, but there is often a real communication problem, and they do not seem to understand the questions asked (this is very very patchy) and sometimes it is days before you get a reply, often one that does not help at all. Also, they can really only handle one problem or question in each email, which is a problem in itself because things are often interrelated. It all means that you end up having an exchange of emails (and thus delays) that stretch on for days and days and days and turn into weeks.

There is no point in giving specifics here, as this is not meant to be a rant. It is just pure frustration with Yahoo Web Hosting. We just want our forum back online!