This website was hosted by the people at Tier1Host.net. It offered all the services I needed — a large amount of web space, no bandwidth restrictions, unlimited e-mail accounts, SSH access with Rsync and other bits and bobs.

Uptime wasn't great. There were periods when my website was completely inaccessible, sometimes for over 24 hours. Techincal support was terrible. These things I didn't mind so much though because the package was very cheap and included a lot of good services as mentioned above.

I began to get a clue about just how incompetent they were when I wrote to them asking why my server had been down over the weekend. They wrote back thanking me for telling them that it was down. These people were clearly not professionals.

In September 2002 I moved flats. This left me without Internet access for a while. And so my e-mail built up on their servers a bit. I could read the mail through their webmail service from work though. Suddenly this stopped working. My entire website disappeared. I couldn't log in through SSH. It was as if my account no longer existed (although I could still log into the billing area of their site).

I tried e-mailing them twice, but got no response. I thought that possibly all that e-mail had put me over quota and offered to delete some of it if they let me log in to do it.

As e-mailing them was getting no response, I phoned the international number listed on their web site. A recorded voice with an American accent told me that the number I had dialed did not exist.

As all e-mail to my account was now getting bounced, I set my domain's MX records (which luckily I still had full control of (I hadn't trusted Tier1Host.net with them) to point at a more reliable host and within a few hours my e-mail was being forwarded to my account on Rob Lazzur's server. (Thanks, Rob)

I am no longer having anything to do with Tier1Host and am looking for a new host.

Update

I took to hosting this site on my own desktop computer as an emergency temporary measure and it has worked out well, so I am no longer looking for a new host.