Hosting Web Sites

[chrissa1]

Is it possible for two companies to host the same web site and therefore charge you for it? Also, is it possible for the bogus company to close down your site for non payment?

[woofgang]

one company may be hosting the web address and the other may be the one whose server the actual website sits on.

[chrissa1]

Right. How would you find out and what would a normal annual charge be do you know?

[woofgang]

charges vary...check out places...google website hosting and URL hosting. You'd know because it has to be set up like that...whoever designed and set up the website would have used a CNAME setting to point the URL to the server the website sits on.

[ChuckFickens]

it is possible to have one site hosted by two people, but it's going to be a very advanced setup and seriously not something that could happen without you knowing about it.

(I very much doubt you signed up for geoDNS or geo load-balancing without realising, and it costs a small fortune)

[chrissa1]

Morning Chuck. I asked the question because a local company who we had some dealings with over 2 years ago sent us 2 invoices for hosting our site yesterday out of the blue. One for 2009 and one for 2010 sayin g that if we don't pay it we will be cut off.
We think they are just being nasty and trying it on.

[ChuckFickens]

Did you actually cancel the contract with them?

You could have moved the site to another host and all the records for the domain would have been changed to point at the new host but if you didn't cancel the contract with the old host they might have still been storing the site on their servers and although it wouldn't have been getting used as far as they would be concerned they would still be providing you with webspace and would still charge for it.

[chrissa1]

Nasty is a very mild word for what they are doing. I'm thinking about putting the 2 invoices in my VAT file, not re-claiming the VAT of course and bringing it to the VAT authorities attention.

[chrissa1]

Mmm Chuck, I think it was all verbal at the time, (they are a local company).

[chrissa1]

Why didn't they invoice in 2009? It sounds very fishy to me.

[chrissa1]

While you are here Chuck, again thanks for your help with the Autosport Mags.

[ChuckFickens]

You might have problems if it was all verbal. I'm sure you don't need telling but you should get everything like this in writing.

The first thing I'd check is who is listed as being the administrative, technical contacts and the Registrar for the domain, if it's the new company the old one can't "cut you off" if it's the old company then they can take the domain over and effectively cut the web site off.

the easy way to do that would probably be to contact the new hosting company and explain the situation to them and your concerns about being cut off as they will know instantly what to check and will be able to decipher the results a lot quicker and easier than them being explained on here.

[chrissa1]

I'll do that this morning. Cheers.

[cute]

If you need hosting means you can get the hosting here http://www.thewebpole.com/ and also get the domain name register, domain appraisal, online file folder, ssl certificate etc...