Janagram (Janet anagram): Thanks to Eos Development for their really magnificent tile textures and handsome page background sets. = Go find E.M.H., Neelix, Kes, lad Lt. Tom Paris upon elegant art at documents Behind-the-scenes of Star Trek Voyager.

Janagram (Janet anagram) for Tickie: Here's an anagram for you just to say that Tickie's Web Page Themes is a wonderful, elegant and pretty site/sight. = I, Janet, use a lot of the graphic sets - it's great art. They feature on my wordplay and games website. Thanks, genius!

If you have Paint Shop Pro 8, it comes with an image mapper.

Over the years I have received a lot of requests for webhost recommendations, usually on the lines of "which webhost do you use, are they any good?" Choosing a good webhost is very important for a webmaster, and my comments are therefore very detailed.

I found u2-web after reading independent reviews (I cannot remember all the review sites so cannot cite them), and reading customer testimonials on an independent review site Webhosting Jury. I advise also asking around your webmaster pals for word-of-mouth recommendations.

I have not always gone for the cheapest webhosts, but each one has been competitive and reasonably priced. Obviously cost is only one factor when looking for a webhost. For me personally, especially after experiencing a number of webhosts, having the right hosting package and good customer service are more important than saving one or two dollars/pounds a month.

Janet's rating 9.5/10

½ point dropped for lack of Java support

Janet's rating - originally 8/10

1 point dropped for omitting important information, 1 point dropped for various customer service matters.

BUT from Spring 2008, rating amended to 4/10, being 2 points for supporting Java, which I use for many interactive games and puzzles, and 2 for finally, after nearly 4 months, sorting out a problem, although it is too soon to say if it has been permanently resolved - details below.

• Uptime has been very close to 100 per cent.
• Customer service used to be quite good. I have had a few difficulties trying to contact them such as not being e-mailed back. In January to Spring 2008 I had problems. See below, re The Problem.
• The Problem meant I was unable to access my webspace from mid-December to Spring 2008. Due to changing most or all their customers' platforms and help panel, I found it nigh impossible to access any relevant pages (ah, I wonder if they have finally written their FAQ - for several years, and maybe still, it said "to be written when we know what the most frequent questions are!" - surely one writes a FAQ in the hope of pre-empting at least the foreseeable problems?). I clicked the instruction to bring forward transferring my webspace to the new platform, but nothing happened. Their site navigation had at some point ceased to be intuitive or reasoably well signposted. The Problem came days after I renewed my annual subscription and involved numerous unanswered e-mails from me. I had particularly made an effort, upon moving house and having things in boxes (the move was delayed due to a death in the family, and resulted, for various reasons, in my unexpectedly having to move house all by myself), to create and upload various Christmas and New Year items as the seasonal Crosswords (and indeed, the site crosswords generally) are popular (although the last thing I felt like was being festive). In addition, so far I have not found a viable or economic alternative webhost. My other main webhost does not support Java. Essentially, only mainly Java items will remain on that site. At the same time, their previously good customer service went down the pan or else their site make-over did not work properly, because at one point they shut down my ongoing open help ticket and apparently blocked it so that I could not re-open it, so I had to start the contact process from scratch. That was made more difficult by the fact that I was still setting up mail facilities and was having problems setting up my computers on my own (I am not a computer guru). However, at some point in the Spring suddenly I found I had temporary access to my webspace so I am trying to make the most of it. In addition, in the meantime I had not found a viable or economic alternative webhost, discovering seemingly good options then had bad user-reviews on sites like Webhost Jury (when I visited several times, however, much of that site, particularly external links, unusually seemed not to have been updated for some time). My other main webhost does not support Java. Essentially, only mainly Java items will remain on that site. The webhost that I recommend is u2-web.com - see the comments above this entry.
• Until late 2007 and into 2008, I had had no problems, as regards my files on their servers.
• I have a few minor, and I stress minor, complaints about the time before The Problem:
  1. It takes a long time for my directory listings to appear which involves quite a bit of time whenever I have to work with a lot of folders. I have not had/do not have that problem with anyone else.
  2. There is a file limit. This was not mentioned in the pre-sales information nor, at the time I found out about it, anywhere in their literature or terms. Files can be any size, which penalises webmasters with lots of small files (like images), but is alright for webmasters who have fewer but bigger files (like media) which take up more server space. It means that Start Logic's advertised limit of a certain bandwidth is not the only limit, as I had a very large amount of bandwidth limit left and also had a large amount of space left that I was permitted on their server. Start Logic were unable to offer a hosting package to deal with it. The file limit meant that I urgently had to restructure my site to relocate thousands of files to a new additional webhost. I found u2-web.com (see above). It made me decide to reinstate my policy of having more than one main webhost, which means a file limit should not arise again, with any webhost.
  3. I felt my policy of spreading my site across more than one main webhost to be justified when I discovered on randomly logging into the Start Logic site that there was going to be downtime for maintenance or repairs or something. Since Start Logic knows the e-mail addresses of all their customers, a short e-mail warning in addition was feasible and would have been helpful. If possible, I like to know if a webhost is going to be down so that I can warn site visitors in SITE NOTICES.

Janet's rating 9/10

½ point dropped re the customer service,
½ point dropped for the size of the webspace (for the "old" packages) and rationed server time

• Freeserve was my first webhost and still hosts my homepage (the Bridge).
• Uptime has been very close to 100 per cent.
• There was little other UK competition until u2-web.
• Freeserve offers pay-BT-as-you-go or pay-for accounts such as a fixed monthly rate.
• Free webspace is small for the cost, e.g. 15Mb per account, and for surfers and webmasters alike on the fixed monthly rate there is rationed 2-hour server-time (less at peak times, lowest so far 20 minutes) and bit speed is slow (presumably they want to encourage you to sign up to the more expensive accounts).
• Service support quality has been variable but then much improved. I have had no problems in the past 2 years and so have had no occasion to need service support.
• Freeserve was taken over by Wanadoo, a European company. Wanadoo seems to offer a different or additional range of webhosting packages, and also offer other services like Broadband. I get the impression that for Wanadoo offering webspace might not be their main business, but is in offering e-mail accounts and other services.
• Freeserve used to post warnings on their homepage of scheduled downtime due to maintenance but after a year or so stopped giving any warnings, and Wanadoo do not give any warnings either.

Janet's rating 10/10 for Bravenet

Janet's rating 4/10 for 0catch.com;
points dropped re reliability and customer service

Once I signed up to Bravenet's webhosting service and, in the months I was with them I was very happy with the service, had no problems and had 100 per cent uptime.

However, and I have deduced the following events so I apologise if I have made an error, Bravenet divided their customers between Bravenet and some employees who left to start www.0catch.com. The division was done without asking customers for their preference. I wanted to stay with Bravenet but was allocated to www.0catch.com. They, and therefore my site, had a few problems including downtime, which I put down to 'teething problems'. I was not the only victim as their forum was full of complaints. With time they raised their game, but I found their customer service remained poor. They never rang me back, despite promises (perhaps to save themselves the cost of an international phone call), and often did not answer e-mail. I never found their site's help pages or instructions to be intuitive, though I must admit I am not the brightest person and so may be the only one who had a problem. In January 2005, following a sudden fault on the DNS server re connections between Europe and the USA (which they could not replicate and so could not repair), I had to transfer urgently to another webhost. (I was glad that I had followed my own webmaster tip, given in the Site FAQ, along the lines of: "Organise your site and coding so that you're prepared for a quick move if you have/want to.") I do not know if they have since corrected the Europe/USA connection fault re any other affected customers. I moved to StartLogic.

I am very happy with the individual webmaster services hosted by Bravenet which include the Guestbook and Links. I have used various Bravenet services for 6 years. Two experiences have dented the 100 per cent satisfaction record:

1. They gave me away to 0catch.com against my wishes, without consulting me and with scant warning, but of course they did not realise 0catch.com would have problems.
2. Voyager internet cards. Although the card limit was 1,000 they loaded in all the cards at once, making the practical limit actually only a few hundred. I discussed it with them and they agreed it was a poor way to do it. They said they would change it within the next few months so that sections downloaded individually instead of all at once, but after a year they had not changed it and when I e-mailed them I was given what sounded like a stock apology but no promise of action. At the same time I noticed that their color picker did not work which prevented visitors from customising text color; I received an apology and a promise to correct it but they did not correct it within the last few months of the time I had the service. I thought their failures to act constituted poor customer service as it was a paying service. I was unable to find a satisfactory alternative e-card host. It made me decide to offer only Voyager Christmas e-cards. With the end of [Star Trek Voyager] receding in time (the last episode aired in May 2001), over the years fewer and fewer people are sending Voyager cards, though the popularity of Christmas ones is declining at less rate.