Zencarts on Godaddy

**DrByte** · 9 Sep 2009, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by Paul Karlssen

What sorts of problems have there been with Zen Cart on GoDaddy?

PaulKarlssen

GoDaddy has serious server performance problems when running advanced tools like Zen Cart. Their services are only suited to simple sites with a few HTML pages, not busy sites with databases and serious business intelligence. Not to mention not worth the money they charge.
If you want all the dirty details, grab a pot of coffee and do a search on this forum, and enjoy the read. But your time would be better spent researching other hosts instead.

**schoolboy** · 9 Sep 2009, 09:22 PM

I'm tempted (after all these years) to start a GoDaddy joke thread.

Here's the first one.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Internet newbie buys GoDaddy cheap hosting, and borrow's his grandpa's 1994 copy of "Internet For Dummies".

He turns to page one:

Now we will show you how to create your first web page and view it in your web browser...

HTML Code:

<html>
HELLO WORLD
</html>

Newbie is ecstatic when he loads the page into the browser - gets the family round to look at his first web page...

"HELLO WORLD" sits lonely and forlorn in the top left of an otherwise blank screen.

Over the next two weeks, Newbie focuses on how to FTP because there's no point in just saying HELLO WORLD to mum, dad, brat brother and the mangy dog. If you say HELLO WORLD, then that's what it has to do - get out there to the world...

So, after 2 weeks he manages to ftp "index.html" to the GoDaddy server.

Trembling with excitement and anticipation, he types up his URL in the browser....

......

But instead of seeing HELLO WORLD, he gets the GoDaddy Server Capacity Error...

"Your total storage quota has been exceeded. Please remove files before your website can be activated..."

**Paul Karlssen** · 10 Sep 2009, 09:13 AM

Originally Posted by DrByte

GoDaddy has serious server performance problems when running advanced tools like Zen Cart. Their services are only suited to simple sites with a few HTML pages, not busy sites with databases and serious business intelligence. [...]

Great. I just recommended to a friend that he host his website with GoDaddy when his subscription to a reller's TuCows service expired. Fortunately, it's a pretty static site (for now), but I anticipate that he would want to go "storefront" in a couple months. Now I'll recommend that he watch his server's performance for a while before depending on his shared server at GoDaddy. Do you think the problem is primarily with GoDaddy's shared web servers or with their database servers?

PaulKarlssen

**schoolboy** · 10 Sep 2009, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by Paul Karlssen

Do you think the problem is primarily with GoDaddy's shared web servers or with their database servers?

You have to understand that the guys at the top of GoDaddy's tree are about as interested in web hosting as I am in flower arranging. (about ZERO...). They do this because (right now) it makes them good money, and the more they can pare from the bone, the bigger the margin between costs and profits.

So they pack the servers FULL... and configure them to the bare minimum (keeping a server "in-tune" for the complex stuff is costly and resource-intensive - two areas that if implemented, will contribute greatly to narrowing that critical cost/profit margin.

So GoDaddy "stacks 'em high and sells 'em cheap" and (as Dr Byte - one of Zencart's founders - says) ... this is only good enough for static html sites comprising a few pages and a handful of graphics.

I am not critical of their ethos - or their business model. In a free market they do good business, so congrats all round.

But they are not adequate for the "heavy" stuff. E-commerce is not a game... it's serious stuff. If you are serious about running an online business then you will partner will people who are just as serious. And you should start with the "Recommended Services" link (above)...

**thewebpenguin** · 11 Sep 2009, 09:18 PM

To answer your question about the problems that i was having:
(1)You cannot install two zencarts on the same GODADDY account and expect it to work properly
(2)Installing was a bit of a challenge because they renamed files like the configure file and more things had to be changed than usual. This is a minor issue that could easily be lived with and may not apply to the first zencart if you used their install system.
(3) Everything is slow updating. Even if you install through their system it takes several hours for the zencart on your GoDaddy account to be operational
(4) File manager often exceedingly slow
(5) Sometimes opening these zencart files timed out and you got an error message and you couldent even open them at all.
(6)(The problem that killed me). You cant set file permissions on individual files. You have to set your entire includes folder to something like 755 in order to update your site.
(7)Slow support. You email them a question then the next day get a responce
(8)Incompetant non functional support. Ask them a question and you get a ready made responce (The next day). So you email them again and get another responce the next day. After asking them 3 or 4 days in a row about how to set individual file permissions I resorted to asking the same question in different ways and finally after almost a week finally got somebody to tell me that on godaddys system you simply cannot set individual file permissions. It took almost a week for me to find this out.
They do have phone support which might work for people in the USA but being overseas (And I was on hold eight minutes once and never did get to talk to anybody) that is not of much use.
There are probably other problems that I cant remember all in one go also.
I am very disapointed as godaddy has probably the cheapest way to register domains and works very well, the most vast range of products for a reseller, actually take care of support for your customers so your customers dont even have to know who you are (Albiet not support I would want to burden my customers with) and everything is easy (Assuming it will even work).
A lot of people are making a lot of money on godaddy reselling and they have a lot of presumably happy clients so I am assuming that they handle a lot of products extremily well (They certainly have a wide enough of a range of products - probably best range in the world) and that it is just zencart that they cant properly support. I guess I shouldent really knock a company because one in at housand products that they offer dont work so well (Especially a free one) - except of course when talking about that one product.

**gunnerdaddy** · 12 Sep 2009, 01:30 AM

Great Caesar's ghost, you all are right on the money. I just got off the phone with godaddy. I'm new to them, and they are a joke. For the last month, I've had a godaddy virtual dedicated server account. I installed two zen cart apps on it, and it craps the bed every day now. I have to request a "power cycle" just to get the thing running again. I've had a single zen cart app on a shared "Linux Builder" account at hostmysite.com before and it ran great. Any other success stories out there, especially running multiple zen cart apps on a single hosting plan? I've got to switch to a new host ASAP. I'm thinking about going back to hostmysite.com, but their plans are limited in other ways. Plus, I don't know if they'll work well with multiple zen cart apps.

**DrByte** · 12 Sep 2009, 01:52 AM

Have you looked at the list of "Certified Hosts"? (link at top of this page)

**schoolboy** · 12 Sep 2009, 02:03 AM

As I have said so often over the years... CHEAP hosting is actually very expensive... Look at all the time poor old GoDaddy customers spend on this forum... HUNDREDS of hours collectively - and if you add in the hours they spend tearing their hair out trying to fix GD stuff, we're moving out of man-hour territory into man-years.

I host sites in various places, but have a couple with the recommended hosts (link above) and quite a few with a company in Anaheim CA. Just to show you the level of support I get from both....

I never hear from the recommended hosts... because I never have to... my sites have been running faultlessly for MONTHS... One has never had an issue in the 2.5 years since the day it was set up.

The Anaheim company called me on the phone at 4:30am two days ago (I am in the UK, 9 hours ahead of CA). They wanted to be sure that I had not installed a couple of scripts which their Alarm System had flagged as "dangerous" a few minutes earlier. They had quickly disabled these scripts and blocked any further damage with 000 chmods on them.

I replied that I had not put these scripts in and that it could be a hack.

2 hours later, the guy called me back to tell me that they had cleaned up the rogue stuff and all was now OK...

The site is running perfectly...

Why people bother with GD I just don't know...

If you are serious about doing business on the www, then do it properly...

**janissaire** · 12 Sep 2009, 08:58 PM

I don't know if this will help but you could also check out *** edited*** if none of the "Certified Hosts" (link at top of this page) are good for you. I've had no real problems with them so far and it looks like you can do multiple carts via a directory setup.

I used Go for my SSL process and they seemed to be good at that.

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