M. R. JORDAN
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Leave it to Weebly

1/28/2016

 
Weebly:
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Me: Oh my God! When did that happen? Why didn't I get an email.
Weebly:
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Me:  Oh, you mean I need to extend my service. I knew about that. I was waiting for payday. But why are you giving me a warning that it's currently suspended.
Weebly: Currently suspended, expiring soon.. it's like you say tomato and I say tomato.
Me: Really?
Weebly: No, not really. Actually, our marketing team has decided to use scare tactics to get people to renew.
Me: Really? Hows that working?
Weebly: Soso. Siteground has created a page that tells our users this is a prefect time to change hosts. 
Me: I was thinking the same thing, but I'm going to wait until this ball of irritation passes and then decide.

Weebly: Hey now, we're just trying to prevent churn. (Churn is the rate users quit us.)

Me: Head-desk, head-desk.

I figured it out! What happened to my site.

1/27/2015

 
Pour Glenn has been having a bad time. His friends are like "you didn't really give yourself first prize in your own writing contest and then  put in on your resume`? WTF man, who does that?" And Glen is like (talking to himself) "Man, what am I going to do. This is like getting caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I know, I'll complain to ICANN." And that's all he did.

Then I got some suspicious looking emails and was like (talking to my self), "Totally, a scam."

Bear said, "meow."

"I know, right?" And I hit delete.

Thankfully, one of these emails was still in my message box (and I remembered that particular suspicious email from all the others) because Weebbly was getting more confused by the minute and, as things turned out, poor tech support couldn't of fixed it anyway. I found this out by calling web.com. It seemed if the email originated from them, then hey, what's it going to hurt to call.  What took Weebly days and days to get nowhere with took Web.com twenty- two minutes. Actually, I was on hold for twenty minutes, so it really only took them two minutes.

Then I had to go my weebly page, update my information, respond to the email Web.com sent. (Some of you who read my comments on their letter might of been thinking I was nit picking the we and the us, but if you understood that I need to email web.com from that... well, I just don't know.) For the sake of prosperity, I sent a photo of my housing contract (in Korean) and my job contract (in English and Korean) in case Glenn complains again.

Then I had to call them (not ICANN or WHOIS or Weebly, but web.com) again and let them know I sent the email so my site wouldn't get locked again. All this took about thirty minutes.

But a good story involving Weebly customer service wouldn't be complete without Weebly customer service. Tech support was kind enough to get back to me and let me know my site was working about an hour after web.com turned it back on. As I was reading "your site should be working now," I imaged the tech guy scratching is head at all the issue reports run up the flag pole.

I sent a response stating that it was only my educated guess, but weebly must be a reseller of web.com domains and that, customer service should be educated on this rather than sending tickets to tech support  for issues that aren't technical. The tech support guy replied to say Weebly does buy their domains from register.com which is owned by web.com. He also sort of apologized. "I'm truly sorry that it took so long to figure this out for you." Yeah, that's totally not what happened. Also, I'm pretty sure my site would still be down if I hadn't called  web. com. But, hey,  I got six months free pro-services... I love free stuff =)


Copied from mr-jordan.net.weebly.com: The scam email that predicted my site going down and why I ignored it: clue gund for ICANN and WHOIS: also, why is web.com  sending me emails? 

1/25/2015

 
Weebly is absolutely perplexed by my site being down. As I was talking with the rep who promised my site would be back up, I remembered three scam emails I had received threatening to take down my site if I didn't provide my personal information. The representative of Weebly did say that WHOIS is some kind of governing body of the interment. I'd never heard that before so I was like "huh?"

Anyway, here is most of the email I was sent. My comments are in blue.


Dear Registrant, (Omg, how did they know I go by Registrant? Okay, lets repeat with a little less sarcasm. If this is a real thing, Registrant could apply to a lot of people. Vague wording is a scam clue.)

Your domain registration (I have a couple of domains through weebly so again, this smelled of a scam.) has been tentatively scheduled for deactivation on 01-15-2015. (I trusted if this were true, Weebly would contact me directly)  Please note, we’ve (Who is we? Vague, official sounding language is common in scams)  attempted to you reach you via telephone to discuss this matter .  Please read below for more information regarding your domain registration rights and responsibilities.

It has been It has been brought to our attention that some or all of the information associated with your domain registration is outdated or incorrect (This happens to be true... for a lot of reasons but mostly because I move back and forth between South Korea and the USA. Weebly has my credit card information and hasn't requested I update anything. Basically, I figured if there was an issue, Weebly would let me know.)  These types of complaints are brought to our attention in one of two ways:

  1. ICANN (Who?)  - The Internet Corporate for Assigned Names and Numbers is responsible for accrediting Domain Registrars. (Huh?) ICANN requires domain registration Customers to keep their public WHOIS domain registration information current (unless you pay to keep your information private which makes this sound like a scam to get buy some kind of privacy package, and Weebly wouldn't be involved in that. No, really, Weebly has it's flaws but they wouldn't be involved in that.)  They (Wait, if "we" is ICANN and WHOIS then who are "they"? ) mandate that outdated contact information can be grounds for domain name cancellation. (What? Huh? Who is ICANN again? How are WHOIS and ICANN related. Also, this email came from web.com?) 
  2. A Customer  or third party contact who may reach out to file a complaint (Let me guess, his name was Glenn?) to a Registrar.These complaints  are typically brought to our attention when another party is interested in purchasing the domain (Someone want's buy my site? How much!?), received unsolicited e-mail from the domain or are unable to reach the Registrant listed for the associated domain for a variety of reasons. (Have they heard of email? And by that I mean, one that isn't vaguely threatening with undefined pronouns such as "we." No really, I'm confused about how "we" is, because this message didn't come from ICANN. It came from whoiscomplaint@web.com)
If you have any questions regarding the ICANN policy, please see the following or you can view the  entire ICANN Registrar Agreement via:  http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm

3.7.7.1 The Registered Name Holder shall provide to Registrar accurate and reliable contact details and promptly correct and update them during the term of the Registered Name registration, including: the full name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and fax number if available of the Registered Name Holder; name of authorized person for contact purposes in the case of an Registered Name Holder that is an organization, association, or corporation; and the data elements listed in Subsections 3.3.1.2, 3.3.1.7 and 3.3.1.8. (Since my site went down, I'm taking you guys seriously but I'm still confused about what ICANN is. I searched you guys through Google and looked at your website... My neighbor found my on floor. 

After a cup of strong coffee, I searched Google with "Can ICANN shut down my site?"which turned up no results. I also searched "ICANN + WHOIS",  "who is WHOIS", "Who are we?" and "Who are they".   Have you ever had a national identity crisis during a website outage? Well I have. Can you please had a link, "Site not working? Here's how to fix it."

Also, can you communicate with Weebly, because they're even more clueless than me.  We've tried updating my personal information but can't. Actually, I tried to update a long time ago, but as I've mentioned, I live and work in South Korea and I'm just used things being USA centric.)


Please check your records, update the WHOIS contact information (How do I do that?) and contact us to confirm this information is up to date as soon as possible (Us is ICANN???). Otherwise, we may be required to suspend the subject domain registration and/or associated website. ( You can't talk with Weebly or WHOIS? You guys are on your way to functioning like a government entity.)

You will need to log your Account Manager to review and update your contact information. In order to update your WHOIS database information, please have your User ID and password ready (Before my site went down, this wreaked of a scammer trying to get my password and user name and I was like nuhu. And now that I'm pretty sure you're behind my site going down, I'm just mad. Who are you that you can just turn off my site? Why didn't you contact Weebly? Why doesn't Google know about this kind of email? ) and follow the instructions via the he link below:   ('cus scam emails never ask targets to do that. Sigh. Also the link is at the very bottom under all the other links. It takes me to ICANN who sends me to WHOIS who sends me back to Weebly. I don't know when my site will be back up or if it ever will, and I still don't know who ICANN is or how they're linked with WHOIS or why I'm getting emails  from web.com.)

Copied from mr-jordannet.weebly.com: Why I had to duplicate my site

1/24/2015

 
My website www.mr-jordan.net returns "server not found." Based on a sudden drop in stats on January 15th (I didn't immediately notice the problem) my site has been down ten days and counting.

I immediately messaged Weebly-- that message has yet to receive a reply. The next day I had a live chat with someone who said he didn't know what was going on  and would run it up the flag pole. I've been awaiting a response from "the flag" pole but haven't even gotten "we're working on it." And of course "We're sorry your site is down," is not in the stars.
 In the meantime, I was able to duplicate my site. But none of my blog posts were transferred. I feel very frustrated and I'm a little surprised that Weebly is not alarmed by my site being down for so long.
Down time is big deal in site hosting. I feel like this issue has been put in cue with other things like photos not working.

Since it's been down so long, I might start copying blog posts over here, but that's a lot of work and I don't know. I haven't been blogging as much these days. Anyway my current site is paid for until mid 2016. One would hope that Weebly will fix the issues before then=)

Weebly woes: I hate to love Weebly but I like to eat my cake too

1/16/2014

 
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I was going to write about something completely different. I even downloaded a photo and set about uploading it because Weebly lacks the ability to important an image from a link. I'd really like that feature.

Anyway, I found myself once again uninstalling and reinstalling Flash. If I exclude Weebly from the equation, I can't think of any other website or service that requires an "updated" version of Flash so often.
My irritation is two fold. Since Weebly updated their site, I have had to update flash every time I wanted to upload a photo. This is true for all the computers I use. That's the first fold. The second fold is their help department  also known as the let-us-tell-you-why-it's-you're-fault-guys. For whatever reason Weebly ignores trouble reports. Oddly enough, my last blog yapping about the woes of Weebly bugs resulted in a lot less bugs.

So, here's why I love Weebly. When it works, it's great. Here's what I love and hate about Weebly. If users (like me) blog about the troubles we have with the service, the corporate powers that be take notice and the issues get fixed. However, I dislike blogging about Weebly Woes.

Finally, because I like to eat my cake too, can someone fix the auto save bug that makes it hard to edit blog titles? Maybe delay the auto save feature a second or something? I don't know.

Thanks!

Updates:
1/31/2014- Still having photo upload issues. Uninstalled/ reinstalled flash for the millionth time, cleared browser cash, and logged back into Weebly. Finally able upload a photo. Needless to say, this is a pain in the *. 

2/09/2014- The  bug with editing titles seems to have been fixed.  However, I still can't upload photos without reinstalling flash.  Fix it Weebly, I beg of you.

3/6/2014- I have un-installed and reinstalled flash halve a dozen times since I last posted about this issue. I finally emailed Weebly who has responded by confirming that Weebly doesn't work on Explorer. What? I use Firefox but I've had this issue on Chrome as well as other browsers. Anyway, so far their solution is: Weebly is not the problem, though perhaps using Chrome will solve the problem after I uninstall  and reinstall the browser. Yes, their solution to my problem with having to uninstall/ reinstall flash is to uninstall/reinstall Chrome.

5/6/2014
The uploaded was working pretty good-- I've only reinstalled flash five times since I posted about this issue in March and seems to be primarily limited to Sexy Computer. Big Bertha hasn't had any problems since I purchased her three weeks ago after giving up on the
<s>{work computer}</s> dinosaur. Can't really blame Weebly for the up-loader not working on that. A lot of things didn't work right on that computer. However, for the last two weeks I've been having up-loader failure on the desktop. I ignored it, worked around it, and finely sent an SOS. To be fair the SOS started with, I'm probably wasting my breath but....

Weebly responded with a copy and pasted message about Bit Defender. I stopped reading after, "
Unfortunately, if the issue persists, you'll need to contact BitDefender's support for assistance."  (I wonder if customer support  is replaced with robots would  the responses will be less robotic?) Three days later I got a chance to rank the helpfulness of this message.  I replied like this: Bad

Anyway the head of support offered to help. "Help included the following:  we have millions of happy user; We offered to help you more at the end of our copy and pasted solution. ( I stopped reading the "solution" that didn't apply. My bad.) You didn't explain the issue clearly enough. (Or perhaps, support didn't read my issue , opting instead for copy and paste); You haven't contacted us about this issue since March. (Clue gun: When customers stop trying to get help, that means they feel like asking for it is pointless.)

8/11 2014

I have no major complaints against Weebly at this time. Photos are loading on every computer except my work computer. I like their new feature which allows users to drop photos into text, but I dislike that I can only drop one photo into a test box and thus must create multiple text boxes to get the picture text affect. There used to be a feature that allowed you to create columns. Now they have a "smart column feature" and I think it's "intelligence" is one reason you can only drop one photo into a text box. It creates a new column when you try to drop a second picture.  Titles still auto-save any minute change. This makes editing the titles a bit like whack-a-mole. Often I just delete the title and retype a new one. However, it's better than it was so... small steps, I guess. 

Weebly does eventually fix the bugs. However, I think that bug fixes take longer than they should because they don't listen to average users.

Some thoughts on Weebly and DNS registration

3/21/2013

 
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If you don't know, I use Weebly to manage this site. I love that it's drop and drag and I don't really have to know how to write code.

However, Weebly is bug ridden. I've mentioned the bogs and they blame my choice of browser. I use Mozilla most days, but when I use explore, I get the same bugs. The most serious bug I had, almost cause my entire site to crash. This was before I could download a copy of my site. Their response of course was to blame my browser and "There is nothing we can do." To be clear, this issue has been address by allowing users to back up their site on their hard drive. However Weebly still doesn't allow users to archive pages. Once you delete a page it's gone forever. Yahoo and other providers are leagues ahead of Weebly, offering ability to archive as well.

Weebly is on the pricier side and a bit trixy when it comes to pricing. I'm not sure where they get their "ave X% on competition from. Domain registry with other sites like Go Daddy is about $9.00 a year and Weebly is $25.00 a year.

Domain registry is just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to website services. All it does is give you an address. You don't have a house until you build the site.

And that's were Weebly stands out. It's perhaps the easiest to use website builder out there. However, just because they set a new standard, doesn't mean another company won't surpass them in the future. You can easily import your domain through Go Daddy into Weebly and get access to all the features I have for free.  In case this isn't clear:

Register a domain with Weebly:
-- $25.00 a year
-- free use of standard features
-- add pro for $25.00 a year
Total yearly cost: $50.00

Register a domain with Go Daddy:
-- $9.00 a year
-- Free use of Weebly standard features after you import your domain
-- ad pro features for $25.00 a year.
Total yearly cost: $34.00

Go Daddy offers design programs at a steep additional price and they're mostly for professional designers. This is one reason why many people forward their domain. The other reason is that domain registration is a lot like how phone companies used to be with phone numbers. You could forward your number to a new number, but you couldn't take it with you.

When you register a domain, you're pretty much stuck with that registry service until you die... unless you want to lose the domain. Again, this might be confusing.  So let me use a hypothetical. Lets say Yahoo has a new, improved page builder that makes Weebly look hard. I want to use Yahoo to renovate my site.

- I grant Yahoo access to my domain.
- I pay Weebly $25.00 a year to maintain my domain name.
- I pay Yahoo $9.99 a month to have access to their web builder.
Total yearly cost: $145.00

However, let's pretend I registered my domain with Go Daddy, but have been using Weebly to construct my house.

- I terminate my contract with Weebly
- I grant Yahoo access to my domain.
- I pay still pay Go Daddy $9.00 a year to maintain my domain name.
- I pay Yahoo $9.99 a month to have access to their web builder.
Total yearly cost: $130.00

I hope this paints a clearer picture between website registration and website design I didn't understand how this worked, nor could I find an explanation of this anywhere. When I bought my first domain thorugh Go Daddy, I thought I was buying design tools too. It took me forever to figure out why my site wouldn't work. I had to pay extra for access to a program that would let me build the site.  A lot extra.

Now, Yahoo charges something like $9.99 a month for small business and this includes a program to build pages. The program is pretty easy to use, but not as easy as Weebly.

But remember with Weebly you get the exact same features with a domain registration as you do with a free site. Pro features cost extra. Still, compared to other sites, there may be value here. Except, for example, with Yahoo, you get domain emails with your monthly fee. I think Go Daddy provides free email as well as free sub domain registry.

Weebly does not provide email.

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Do not be fooled by this. The box says "Set up email to send and receive emails from your own domain."  If you add this service, you will not get email accounts. You will get a forwarding service. You can set up your emails trough Gmail... this was free but may cost $5.00  per email/per month now. (Yahoo gives I think ten emails, which would cost $600.00 through google.) Finally, you can use gmail's service with any company.

On a side note: if you are using gmail to manage your domain addresses, Weebly's forwarding service will interrupt your company accounts. YIKES.

So, while Weebly makes site design easy, after all the add-ons, direct and indirect, may make Weebly the most expensive choice. I suggest you consider all your needs before upgrading your free account.

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