Dreamhost account shut down without warning

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Dreamhost account shut down without warning

I just got this cheery little message from my web host of several years, Dreamhost:-

Hello,

This is just a note to let you know your DreamHost account has been
disabled for violation of our Terms of Service listed here:

http://www.dreamhost.com/tos.html

Specifically, section 8 of Material Products, "Customer agrees to not
engage in activities pertaining to Black Hat SEO, Spamdexing, and so-
called "Scraper sites." These can all have a severely detrimental
effect on server performance and are not permitted."

As such, we have now closed your account effective immediately and
refunded all your money. It should show back up on your credit card
within 3-4 busines days.

Please do not attempt to sign up for service with DreamHost again in
the future.

The DreamHost Abuse Team

I sent them this message in reply. Hopefully they'll allow me to recover my most recent dynamic data for my sites. I certainly won't be using their hosting service again at any point.

Hi. I just woke up this morning to this charming little message. No warning; no explanation; and apparently no opportunity to recover recent dynamic data for my sites.

In regards the the apparent abuse issue, I had a number of sites setup using the Ebay storefront script from http://mcjiffy.com/ . I assume this is what is causing the problem, and I probably should have been keeping an eye on the cpu usage for those sites if that is the case. To close my account without any warning, explanation, or opportunity to backup my sites, is just ridiculous, however.

At this point, I don't have any urge whatsoever to continue hosting with you, and will begin looking for a new host immediately.

So, my question to you is: is there any way I can recover the recent data for my sites. I have one popular site ( proxyfreelist.com ) which people post their links to in return for a text recip link. I now have no opportunity to recover the most recent submissions for that site, and reciprocate for the links that the submitters have placed on their sites. This is the site that I would mainly like to recover the data for.

Do you plan on doing the responsible thing here, by allowing me to backup my sites?

Regards, Bill Stanbrook.

Looks like I'm going to be fairly busy for a while, transferring all my sites to a new home.

puki

Monsters.

I shall lesson them.

MGE

yep...be careful of the fine print. They (isp's) can shut you down for any reason they can think of. Bastards.... That's why I just use a dedicated server. It's cheap enough now days, run your own dns, have as many sites as you need. ;)

Bill Stanbrook

Well they've set things up to allow me to backup my sites.

It was a bit of a kick in the guts to wake up this morning to find my account shut down and all my sites inactive, but looking at it realistically, it's probably my own fault in any case. I've just got too many dynamic sites to still be using shared hosting.

I sent them the followup email below after they allowed me to backup my sites:-

Thanks for setting things up to allow me to backup my sites.

Looking at it realistically, I've probably reached the point where I shouldn't be running my sites on shared hosting in any case, and I can see that the dynamic sites would be placing a large strain on the server, which may impair the performance of other accounts on the server.

I did a large search engine submission campaign yesterday, which may have placed a large load on the server due to the engines all spidering the site I submitted, within a short time period. I probably should have spread that out more. But it's obviously time for me to move to higher capacity hosting in any case.

My apologies for any inconvenience I've caused, and best wishes.

Regards, Bill Stanbrook.

Plash

You had all the sites in your signature, yes?

What's the point of it all?

Bill Stanbrook

You had all the sites in your signature, yes?

What's the point of it all?

I had a large number of sites hosted on the account, including the ones in my sig.

What's the point of what all? The sites in my sig are Ebay storefront affiliate sites, if that's what you're asking. I've mainly got them there to get them indexed by the search engines.

Beaker

You do realise that search engines can't see your sig unless they are logged in as a valid user?

Bill Stanbrook

Well I do now, Beaker. Thanks for pointing that out.

I guess that explains why those sites were slow to get indexed.

I probably shouldn't be using my sig for that purpose, anyway.

---

In regards to getting my Dreamhost account shut down, I just realised that I no longer have control panel access to any of the domains I registered with them. I can't change the nameservers, or even get access to the transfer codes to shift them to a different registrar.

I guess that's another thing I'll have to take up with them. Transferring all the domains to a different registrar is going to cost a lot of money I can't really afford right now. What a wonderful Christmas present Dreamhost have given me today.

This has really been a kick in the guts. I'm regretting ever having anything to with Dreamhost.

Plash

That sucks.. you still have my greatly confused though.

"Ebay storefront affiliate sites"?

You should consider using GoDaddy/Google for domain registering in the future, and forwarding them to your host.

MGE

#10

I did the multi domain ad/affiliate sites years back. It's really, really hard to get these kind of sites built up, maintained, etc, etc. I ended up just focusing on 1 site, populating it with daily data, etc, etc. Then sold it for a shite load. If you're a 1 man show, focus on 1 site and stick to it long term. imho. :)