All I can say is: “DON’T DO IT!” That would be in response to someone asking me about GoDaddy’s hosting service. I’m sure many have had no issues with them, but I had them from the beginning.
Setup wasn’t very straightforward… they don’t even send you your access/login information via email. They don’t send you site FTP or even nameserver information. I think that should have tipped me off to potential problems. But I figured it was just about tighter security, and maybe that is actually the case. I don’t think so though.
The tipping point (and it was pretty fundamental) was my inability to implement a PHP site search script on the host. Now this isn’t some huge script that exploits vulnerabilities (from what I can tell). It’s a fairly straightforward indexer that goes through your site real-time in order to pull up results. I have used this script successfully on my own site and several other sites. So I figured there would be no issue. I was WAYYYYYYY wrong. After posting the files, the search turned up no query results even though there were test pages for the purpose of giving me results.
I thought that maybe I had missed a configuration or that maybe this search was not compatible on some level… so I found another simpler search. It also didn’t work. I tried another search… and it didn’t work either. All of them gave me no query results. I tested them on my localhost and all worked fine. I even tested on a free PHP host (lycos.co.uk) and it worked fine there too. I called Tech Support a couple of times to find out that they only have access to the minimal online help the same way I did. I submitted a support ticket online to escalate to the next level of support, and that is what pushed me over the edge.
After listing my issue and giving examples of how this might be a permissions issue on their side, I was told in successive e-mails “Sorry, it’s a third-party script and we don’t do script debugging”. Whatever… it didn’t need debugging, it needed to work on my webhost that was clearly not allowing any site indexing. I did some Googling and found that some users had also found hidden robots.txt files that blocked ALL bots including even Google. So the combo of bad tech support, funky permissions, and not allowing the world’s biggest search engine access to spider sites sent me running quickly to my new host, Laughing Squid.
I signed up a couple of days ago and got my site info yesterday evening. Loaded the search up first to make sure I wasn’t being over-reactive and it worked perfectly. That sealed the deal. Finished loading up files on the new host, changed my dns, setup my email, and canceled my GoDaddy account this morning. The one good thing I will say about GoDaddy is that I’m getting a full refund because I’m canceling within 30 days. That is the ONLY good thing I will say.
Now let us all close that chapter, and move on to the next level of tech challenges… setting up my RSS feed. LOL