Yahoo Small Business Hosting Train Wreck

[ackmnmn]

I post this writing in hopes that someone from Yahoo will contact us to assist in making a serious problem we are experiencing with Yahoo Small Business Hosting right. Two very fine server techs in Minneapolis have been unable to solve the DNS and registrar issues-for over a week. We have exhausted our options with Yahoo and given an email address at Yahoo corporate for complaints as our only pathway to resolution.

Familiar Ground
I've gotten in hot water with Yahoo before regarding Panama Geo-Targeting and I swore to never engage in rancor with a major search engine again. Then we experienced the week-long Yahoo .php server 500 error which scared us to death because our WordPress blog did not work intermittently. I’ll say up front that I want to love Yahoo but they are making it so darn hard.

The Genesis of Disaster
We registered our blog domain with Yahoo Small Business Hosting to learn about Movable Type and WordPress a while ago. As the endeavor became more serious my company, aimClear, developed our own theme, inspired by Lee Odden at Top Rank Blog, which is beautifully enabled for social media. We think Lee's site is the best in the world for interactions with social media.

Because of what we've learned from Top Rank and other sites, we now have the opportunity to work with a number of clients (using other hosts) with Custom WordPress installations and have attained good organic results. When we were ready to move our own blog to a more serious custom environment, we used the Yahoo domain control panel to change name servers to our new host. This simple nameserver flip was a nightmare and has resulted in lost credibility for the domain. Remember, our customers hire us to help them blog. Our customers' blogs work great...right now our young blog does not always resolve the version we maintain.

Flipping Nameservers and Registrars Should Be Easy.
To be blunt, the simple task of flipping nameservers and now attempting to change registrars from Yahoo has been a frustrating disaster. Their procedures appear obstructionist and designed to make it difficult or impossible to leave Yahoo Hosting without dismantling your site for at least a few days. A week after the nameserver change I can’t know whether I’ll get the broken version of our young blog on Yahoo or the new version on our new host’s server from whatever ISP I might attempt to access the site from around the country.

I'm scared to even post the blog link here because I can't know what you'll see. Suffice to say that this situation has delayed our hard launch. We wanted to make SES NYC 2007 the first conference we've ever blogged beginning to end...but I guess we'll be sourcing content for future posts .

Domain in Flux
Each morning I wake up and check the domain and can’t predict what I’ll see. MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE, depending on its mood, seems to inconstantly publish the nameserver information from day to day. For instance a DNS lookup on the Charter ISP I use at home in Duluth, Minnesota has shown different DNS information for aimClearBlog FROM DAY TO DAY! If you take a look yourself the Yahoo hosted version is based on the lovely Blue Zinfandel Theme by Brian Gardner. The new one has a header with a picture of a bridge and lake superior at night.

Nearly a week after the nameserver flip (past the time period we could expect DNS caching at ISP’s) the site shows up inconsistently either on Yahoo’s server or the server the new nameserver listing points to…sometimes pointing at Yahoo’s old hosting account. By the way, Yahoo broke the old hosting account after the nameserver flip and we had to fix it one of the times we were pointed at the Yahoo hosting account. Even on ISPs that point to the new hosting account ftp.aimClearBlog.com STILL points at Yahoo’s hosting account. What the heck is going on? Our tech guys think that Yahoo must use a distributed DNS server system that needs to propagate within itself and is doing so inconsistently because a Yahoo Small Business Hosting Account still exists for the domain within Yahoo.

We Decided to Change Registrars.
The first 3 times we requested a registrar change through Directnic and approved the request as owners Yahoo’s domain registration partner MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE refused the transfer. We learned that Yahoo provides an authorization code to be used during the registrar change. We then used the transfer authorization code and it is now, 3 days later, MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE still has not approved the change. They did not answer my customer support emails. Yahoo just does not want you to flip nameservers or registrars.

Yahoo Says they are Not a Registrar
Yahoo is not a register. They have a partner in Australia who is their “private registrar. Unfortunately, as a supervisor at Yahoo explained to me, I am not allowed to contact my “registrar” (MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE) and ask them why they refuse the registrar flip. Yahoo tells me that we must first cancel our Yahoo Small Business Hosting account. This would have the effect of taking our site down for any nameservers around the world with incorrect DNS information still pointing at Yahoo!

Simply put, the Yahoo Small Business Hosting partner for private domain registrations in Australia (MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE) refuses to allow transfer of a domain we first registered with Yahoo Small Business Hosting We followed all of Yahoo’s specified procedures including using the “authorization” code provided me in the Yahoo Small Business Hosting domain control panel.

This is SO Messed Up
Making a long story short these issues with the nameserver change are unacceptable. We have to change registrars. We understand…Yahoo Small Business Hosting is not for serious technical endeavors. A tech support rep at Yahoo explained to me yesterday that the services are geared more for businesses who don’t want to tackle complex custom hosted application building.

Hostage Situation
I now understand that Yahoo is “not a registrar” and we can’t contact “our registrar” unless we wreck our site for days. The situation we are dealing with right now amounts to holding our domain hostage. Yahoo wants to make us take the site fully down for 3-5 days in order to leave Yahoo Small Business Hosting. Our concern is that even THAT won’t work because of the lack of responsiveness on the part of MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE.

Anyone from Yahoo want to help? (I should note that, unlike Chicago, I was not invited to the Yahoo's party at SES NY next week even though we buy hundreds of thousands of dollars in PPC from Yahoo each year for our clients )

[toprank]

Hey Marty, I certainly know your pain as it relates to hosting issues (but with a different host). Thanks for the nice comments about our blog. I hope your situation with Yahoo Small Business hosting can get resolved - it sounds rather tricky.

[ackmnmn]

Lee,
Which version do you see?

[ackmnmn]

MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE was willing to work with us after we pleaded our case for a while. The domain registration was finally flipped and everything works great now.