That's 3 hours of my life I'll never get back

or, why you should never use Network Solutions for web hosting...

That was brutal.

After 3 hours, I just finished uploading a new site.

3 hours.

THREE HOURS!

I can not believe how much I hate Network Solutions right now. I've never had a client use them for web hosting services before, and now, I'll dissuade anyone who is ever considering them.

Here's what happened: a few weeks ago I put up a temporary "Coming Soon" kind of placeholder page up. That took something like 20 minutes.

Anyone who has ever FTP'ed files up to a server knows this should take a matter of seconds. Not minutes, and certainly not tens of minutes.

So, my client called Network Solutions after I had that bad experience (I had told him to dump them, and to switch to another web hosting service). Well, Network Solutions claimed they were familiar with it, and that their servers were down, and that it almost never happens... blah, blah, blah.

I've been working on this site intensely for the last 4 weeks, with the intention of launching it tonight at 6:00pm PST.

I wasn't thinking. I should have tested the FTP connection earlier today. I should have uploaded all of my images files, and all of my secondary files. I shoulda,woulda, coulda...

But I didn't.

Instead, I waited until 6:00 like a fool, expecting everything to upload within a couple of minutes.

These are not large files. We're talking 200k files, and 4k thumb nail files. The thumb nail files were taking longer than 5 minutes each! I was about ready to pull my frickin' hair out!

The good news: my Hubby is a total rock star. We had friends over this evening (to help celebrate the launch). Dick fixed them all drinks, then, when we all realized that this was going to take me a while, Dick called in an order to our fave Thai restaurant, when out to pick it up, served it, AND cleaned up. All the while, I was sitting with my laptop, staring at it through glossy eyes.

Everything was finally up by 9:00, and we had an official launch.

That was brutal.

Worst. Web. Hosting. Service. Ever.