The Right Way To Work

November 7, 2007

Some of you might remember a post I made in the spring whining a little bit about my hosting company. I had been with a Web host for a bunch of years and wanted to wrest control of my domain name – jeffcutler.com – and my sites – ideas2words.com and this blog – from that host.

What made things particularly difficult was that the company with whom I was hosting my sites was the same company I helped found in 1997. And the reasons I wanted to move my intellectual and electronic property was because this Boston-based company wasn’t being responsive enough to my needs as a customer.

(AS YOU’LL SEE FROM MY ACCOUNT BELOW, these days Mark Moline and Concept Host are doing things the right way, unlike NaviSite’s approach to business)

Well, I’ve been with another host for the better part of a year now and only the other day found myself called back into a situation where I had to deal with this unresponsive company. But these days things have changed. Here’s the real deal…

The company I’m talking about is Concept Host. They provide Web hosting services (and when I say THEY I mean that this one-person operation run by Mark Moline provides these services) to a bunch of small and mid-size businesses. One of these businesses is my father’s company, and the reason I got yanked back into dealing with Mark and Concept Host was because my father’s site and email had vanished from the Internet.

Perhaps you heard the other day about NaviSite making a grand error in judgment when they tried to migrate their servers from Baltimore, MD to Andover, MA. Well, instead of moving these servers and sites the traditional way (buy new servers, duplicate files and set those files up on the new servers BEFORE shutting down the old sites and moving the equipment) they screwed up royally.

And in their royal screw up they took down all of Mark Moline and Concept Host’s clients including my father’s site. THIS WAS SATURDAY – FIVE DAYS AGO.

Mark appeared on WBZ Radio’s business segment today talking about NaviSite and Concept Host and migration and bad planning and all sorts of things. But the gist of his comments were focused on caring about his customers. Concept Host and Mark have taken a real interest in what’s happening to the livelihood of their hosted sites (subcontracted through NaviSite) and he’s already taken steps to move all of his clients to new servers and a new main host.

I admire Mark’s efforts and wish he had been as hands on and concerned back when I was making my decision to move 80+ URLs and a couple of sites from his hosting operation to another company. I know if he had shown this much attention back then, I’d probably still be with Concept Host.

On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing I moved so you’re able to read and enjoy this post today.

More to come…