Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

[laiyin]

Hi

My friend's site is hosted is Malaysia with a host who is very expensive and poor service.

Recently, they shut down his site because he questioned them on the bill and "extra services" provided.

I'm a current Vodahost customer paying USD95.40 per year and very happy with your service so I recommended to him. He's paying about 14 times more per year in addtion to setup charges!

His site has physical product pictures but shopping cart doesn't work. For the past 2 year, no leads (except spam) information obtained through the 'enquire form' they created for him.

And worse of all, he wasn't given control panel access - their reason being that it is highly confidential??

So, here are my questions:

1. Can my friend back up his site and transfer to another host? But problem is they disabled his site yesterday and now it has a '403 Forbidden' message.

2. I check my friend's domain through whois and although it is in my friend's name, admin and contact info is controlled by them. Can my friend regain control of his own domain?

3. Is there any difference hosting a Malaysian site with a Malaysian host or a foreign host? Advantages, disadvantages?

[VodaHost]

Re: Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

Sounds like your friend is in a bit of a jam, he probably can not back up his files from the server unless they give him control panel access.

If they are the admin of the domain name, your friend has 0% control over the domain name.

[laiyin]

Re: Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

Hi Administrator

Thanks for replying.

Just found out that my friend has a backup of his files although not the most recent.

His site is presently hosted by "Server Type: Microsoft-IIS/6.0".

2 questions:

1.Should he decide to switch to Vodahost, what is the procedure to upload his backup?

2.Is there any difference hosting a Malaysian site with a Malaysian host or a foreign host? Advantages, disadvantages? (sorry, asked this earlier but didn't get answer.)

Thanks.

[cellopro]

Re: Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

I can probably take guesses at what you're asking. As long as he (your friend) can read instructions in English, then there is no problem. The tutorials, which are pretty basic are also in spoken English, and written English.

1. The process is fairly easy just use whatever .ftp program you wish and point it to your cPanel which you will be given ABSOLUTE control over. You will be assigned a user ID and password, but control is all yours. Both Blue Voda and Soholaunch provided free with a hosting package are quite good, and support most scripts and .html. I'm assuming your friend's site is in English and not Bahasa Melayu (Malay) or Indonesian, and characters are in Latin alphabet or Jawi? This might prove the only problem, if you use Blue Voda or Soholaunch, it does not support arabic script, only the latin script. However if you are just posting pages that are already web-publishable, it makes no difference unless you are editing. Even if your friend's site is in Malay, I would use the latin alphabet, simply because the web BUILDING software supports it.

2. No difference, except for the price, and quality of service. Sounds typical for Malaysia, another scam almost. As if there aren't enough credit card numbers floating around that country....given your friend's story, I would STRONGLY reccomend this site, simply due to the customer service. You have a problem, you get in touch with support through an email system, and you'll get an answer (in my limited experience here) in up to 6 hours. Open 24/7/365 here as well. You own your domain, you keep the passwords, you keep the logins, and there are absolutely some great add-ons here that your friend can use to expand his website. Technically there is no difference between a Malaysian host and a foreign host. People all over the world use this site as their host. Makes no difference, when it comes to internet, the world is finally as one.

Couple of disadvantages that come to mind. The language. Are you translating? Or does your friend speak English? Remember the emails, and correspondence are in English. The instructions are in English. Editing through this site's software is in English. Reason I ask this is if you're translating everything, the customer service will seem slow, since it goes through a third party (you) to get communicated to him.

Second thing is payment. This site takes USD$, not MYR or RM. I'm not sure if the shopping cart accepts MYR as a payment option. Haven't looked to be honest. Remember that if you're offering products to the online community, then you have international shipping rates to consider, unless you are doing electronic downloads.

BTW, I've toured in Kuala Lumpur couple times, it really is beautiful. I especially liked Sultan Abdul Samad Building. Quite a nice blend of architecture. Yes, I'm a musician btw, hence the name.

Hope you come here, it's a helpful and streamlined community.

Paul

[zuriatman]

Re: Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

Hi laiyin,

I am PJ and my website bumiweb.com [under construction] is hosted by VB.

The reason I have not located in Malaysia is most of the service providers are not competitive. Support is nowhere close to VB and they want you to be dependant on them so they can bill you for all the extra services.

You are never in control of your own website.

With VB you are the Master of your own website and the ability to chop and change your webpages without having to pay extra.

The backup services are excellent and the treasure chest is full of extras which are provided free which otherwise you will have incur a lot of additional expenses.

The problem is if your friend is not computer savvy he may find a bit of difficulty setting up home. This is a problem which can be overcome.

Put up an offer on Voda Bid and somebody will respond.

Good Luck,

Abu Bakar.

[laiyin]

Re: Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

Hi Paul and Abu

Thanks for responding. My friend eventually had to pay for another year's hosting about RM6000 (equivalent to USD 1800) to get his site up and running again.

I wonder if I can get some advice here with regards to:

1. How I can transfer this site to Vodahost? (step by step please, for a non IT savvy person)

2. Currently, the 'Add to Cart' buttons don't function properly. Can Vodahost or some expert help to revamp the site so that products can actually be sold through the webpage?

3. How to include an attractive pop-up optin form to collect emails of interested visitors and follow-up through an autoresponder?

Thanks.

[VodaHost]

Re: Can a site hosted in Malaysia be transferred to Vodahost?

We can easily host this site, after you sign up we will send you full instructions on how to upload it to our servers.