Thread: 4sitesnetwork down

Hi all -
As of this morning my reseller account and sites hosted by 4sitesnetwork is down. Their UK website has been presenting a holding page for about a week.
The phone number on the holding page appears to have been disconnected.

Their Australian branch still appears to be active. But I have commercial clients whose sites are currently dead and they are going ballistic! I have no way of contacting the company to find out what is going on.

Any ideas or suggestions welcome...

Cheers for the suggestions - I shall be giving the Aus. office a shout when I can. Fingers crosssed.

Also just in case you hadn't thought of it yet (and fingers crossed you have or they do not control them) don't forget any domains etc if managed by them, jump on that quickly too!

I managed to speak to someone who was involved with the Australian 4sites but he and Alex Robinson are no longer doing business. Companies house have told us that 4sites have not applied to wind up the company - but then they may not have sent anything in yet.

I have a heap of sites that are now lost. I have some backups but not up-to-date backups of the various databases. Some .com, some .co.uk and one or two .net and .org - Any suggestions how I should proceed to at least get some of these up and running again elsewhere would be appreciated.

One of my client sites holds very strong positions in the Google SERPs after some years of SEO and the siteowner gets all her work through the site so this is the most urgent for me.

Originally Posted by mam4q

I managed to speak to someone who was involved with the Australian 4sites but he and Alex Robinson are no longer doing business. Companies house have told us that 4sites have not applied to wind up the company - but then they may not have sent anything in yet.

I have a heap of sites that are now lost. I have some backups but not up-to-date backups of the various databases. Some .com, some .co.uk and one or two .net and .org - Any suggestions how I should proceed to at least get some of these up and running again elsewhere would be appreciated.

One of my client sites holds very strong positions in the Google SERPs after some years of SEO and the siteowner gets all her work through the site so this is the most urgent for me.

Hi there,

Do you already have access to the domains, can you at least get the DNS changes completed?

If you want some space to get the most important sites up and running so that at least your downtime is minimal then ill give you some space whilst you sort yourself out.

You can then at least concentrate on a better migration if you look for a reseller plan and have it controlled

Chris

Originally Posted by freethought

Unfortunately 4sites have a habit of registering domains with their e-mail and postal address details

Oh fun

OK, this open up a minefield, get any and all documents pertaining to the purchase of each individual domain then contact the registrar directly.

If Nominet, it should be slightly simpler as long as 4site put the correct registrant! :P

Hi Chris - Thanks for your kind offer.
Unfortunately I don't have access to the domains. I've foolishly left the registrar of my .com / .org domains as 4sites so they are the owners. Without contact from them I am pretty stuffed as far as I can tell.

BTW - Can you recommend any UK reseller packages?

Tony

I'v just received this email from 4sites

"Dear Customer,

We are contacting you as a result of the server, on which your reseller account is being hosted, being withdrawn from service.

Although talks with our data centre have proved fruitless in the restoration of the Venus server, we are able to offer you an alternative hosting environment for your websites. Although accounts can be managed from one central “Reseller-Style” login, requests for new website accounts to be added will need to be submitted via support ticket. As with cloud offerings the new system does have many advantages – including, but not only, the ability to run PHP or ASP technologies from the one account, advanced SPAM filtering across all accounts, Urchin web stats, and more. As with all our clients, we recommend that you keep regular backups of your files. To be clear, we do not have access to any data previously stored on the Venus server.

Unfortunately, due to recent and upcoming changes in our business structure, we are unable to offer any alternative hosting other than that outlined above.

If you wish to take advantage of the above offer, please reply to this email with a list of domain names you would like created as accounts on the new system. We will then create your reseller login, create the accounts, and assign them to your reseller login.

We sincerely apologise for this situation having occurred without any notice.

Kind Regards,
The 4sites Team."

I'd already decided to take my business elsewhere yesterday but I have to say I'm disappointed as I've been with Alex from the start. If I'd had some notice I would still be a little miffed but I wouldn't have this bitter taste in my mouth. Hopefully my new hosts (chosen as a result of this board) will prove to be more sensible in their approach to business.

Tony, I hope you manage to get things sorted. As they are still reponding to emails you may be able to get back control of your domains.

Chris

Hi Chris -
Thanks for sharing the email.

So the Venus server and everything on it is lost...

Was it the mail@4sites.com address that you used for contact?

If I can regain control of my domains that would at least be something.

Cheers

Tony

Originally Posted by mam4q

Hi Chris - Thanks for your kind offer.
Unfortunately I don't have access to the domains. I've foolishly left the registrar of my .com / .org domains as 4sites so they are the owners. Without contact from them I am pretty stuffed as far as I can tell.

BTW - Can you recommend any UK reseller packages?

Tony

Hi Tony.

Seeing th above post, as you say get control of he domains sorted first, I am sure you will see plenty of reseller packages around this board you can find.

Kind regards,
Chris

Hi Tony

That's the address I used. It took about 24 hours for them to reply. Also I think their fax number is still live.

Chris