Lunarpages, we hardly knew ye!

Looking back in the 6 months that have passed since the birth of this blog, and reviewing the lay of the land surrounding Lunarpages and her refugees, provides an interesting glimpse of how much some things can change … and how little some other things have changed. Hey, it’s not a “static” world in which we live, and the online world is notorious for it’s “evolve or become extinct” model, so these changes should not come as a surprise.

Since change is to be expected, change for the good deserves to be recognized as a “Good Think(tm)” while “bad actors” continuing in their evil ways should not be allowed to “fall off the radar” because of apathy or lack of interest. Doing this helps shape how the online world we share develops, and can impact what it becomes. So, here is one of my observations of the last few months in the world of LPRefugees (with more to come next post!).

First, I’m very impressed with a development over at WHReviews.com. Those of you who followed the birth of this blog in the aftermath of the Lunarpages “Surprise! All Your 404 Pages Are Belong To Us” stunt back in October of 2007, and while the online fallout from the fustercluck was in full swing, I wrote to WHReviews.com about Lunarpages inclusion in their list of “Honest Hosts”. I questioned whether it was appropriate for Lunarpages to be on such a list in light of what had transpired, and when I didn’t receive an immediate reply from Dan, I blogged here about my correspondence in a post titled “What is an “Honest Host”, and when does a host quit being one?”.
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A poster to the newly available LPRefugees.com Forums brought up an interesting point in a recent post. In that post, “dwr” pointed out that “the semi-famous hosting recommendation site WHReviews (owned by WebHostingTalk community liason (sic) ldcdc) features Lunarpages as one of the Honest Hosts.”

Dwr wondered if WHReviews.com “believes they still deserve to be listed after all that has happened”, and I think he asks a great question. Dwr reported he had sent a message to the folks at WHReviews.com asking about this.

After he started that thread on the forums here, I popped over to WHReviews.com and took a prolonged look around, including reading everything I could find about their “Honest Host” Award.

It sounded like WHReview.com took it seriously (they even had a reference on their site about removing the award from a host that no loner deserved it), so I sent “Dan” a message also, using their “Contact” form.

Dwr says he hasn’t received an answer to his question. I haven’t gotten an answer either.

Dan has obviously become aware of the 404 page hijacking incident, (even if he didn’t receive the messages from dwr and me), as he has already referenced it on the review page for Lunarpages. In spite of all that has transpired, Lunarpages is still listed as an “Honest Host” on WHReviews.com, so I guess it’s pretty clear how Dan feels about it all.

I guess “honest” means very different things to different people. Or is Lunarpages getting handled with “kid gloves” because of the that affilliate link that “dwr” noticed? I’d really kinda like to know.

I am surprised he didn’t answer either of us, though. Maybe his mail is borken? Yeah, that must be it!

I know! I’ll repost my letter to him *here*, as an “Open Letter to WHReviews.com” – that way maybe he can still get a chance to read my message even if his contact form and email doesn’t work. Who knows? Maybe one day he’ll be googling about, and this blog post will pop up?

Open Letter to WHReviews.com:

“Dan,

I’m wondering how you feel about the recent action of Lunarpages in placing ad/revenue generating link/directory pages on the domains of their hosted customers without permission.

I know that they have since abandoned this practice, but their method in doing this appears to be less than “honest” on the face of it in that:

1) It has been reported by Lunarpages customers that Lunarpages changed their published TOS to allow this action on their part *after* they had already done it.

2) The pages they placed on domains registered to their customers carried a search box that was labeled “search this site”, implying to most that the search box would search the site that had generated the 404, when, in fact, that search took traffic away from the said site and into “paid link land”.

3) It is inherently dishonest to covertly put something on a website under a domain that does not belong to you that falsely leads a visitor to that website to believe that the website has placed something on the site that they did not place there, or in this case, even know about.

4) Lunar pages customers have reported that this was done without notification from Lunarpages to the involved customers that such action was being taken.

I believe there are other moral, ethical, and legal issues involved with Lunarpges recent action(s), some of which speak volumes to me about the lack of respect Lunarpages appears to have for their customers, but the four points I have listed above speak directly to their “honesty”.

Everything about this behavior on Lunarpages part was deceitful, misleading, and less than candid.

If your Honest Host Award is to have any validity at all, it is to me, and I think most others, obvious that Lunarpages has disqualified themselves from consideration for such an award and, in accordance with your stated policy on your website, they should be removed from the list of Honest Hosts.

Respectfully,

Admin – LPRefugees.com”

It’s been a busy couple of days for Lunarages Refugees in general, and for LPRefugees .com in specific. I’ll write more on that shortly, but “first things first.”

One of the things that has happened is that the WHT forum thread where discussion of these matters was continuing has been closed (at 16 pages of post, I believe), and I’ve heard from several participants there that they are *not* done discussing this. read more, and check out our really cool Categories…

… especially if you host at Lunarpages, and have not built your OWN 404 error pages.”

Ok, so I had to build an error page for LPRefugees.com anyway, right? I figured I might as well “do it up right”. The “Good Folks” at WordPress had a pretty neat error page included with the WordPress software, but I thought I could improve on it slightly for *this* site.

I left it pretty much the same as it was, with just a couple of “tweaks”. and I kinda like the way mine came out, so I thought I’d make a point of sharing it with you all. It would be really cool if my version started popping up around the web on the “better” WordPress powered blogs, so I’ve provided the 404.php file I use for this WordPress site for  anyone to use. I’d be very honored.

You can view my “fork” of the WordPress default 404 page here, and download your own copy for inclusion in your WordPress site, courtesy of LPRefugees.com. Who knows? Maybe if this became a popular 404 page on a lot of sites, Lunarpages might rethink the wisdom of trying to sneak smarmy error pages onto their customers’ domains.

… and some of your traffic, too!”

Hey, DNS just came up! It’s “zero-dark-thirty” in the AM here, and I’m beat, so I’ll try to give LPRefugees.com a proper launch tomorrow. Until then, you might want to take a look at some of these links:

The closest thing I’ve found to “the whole story”, is probably this thread on WebHosting Talk . All 13 pages of it (and growing). Really!

From the “Couldn’t have said it better myself” file, check out Josh Jone’s post, “Robbing Your Customers” on the DreamHost Blog (and find out how to get a FREE year of web hosting if you are a Lunarpages customer!)

Or, for some really interesting reading, go take a look at some of the hilarity that is embodied in the recently revised Lunarpages Terms of Service. You’ve got to love this, It’s even got at least one typo! I think they might have written some of it “in a hurry”, ’cause we all know lawyers would *never* let something go out with an error in it if they were not in a panic, right? Right!

Coming soon!

“The TOS that keeps on giving (or at least, keeps on threatening!) even after you terminate service!”

“Lunarpages did WHAT? in WHOSE backyard? For HOW MANY COOKIES?”

“Search Which Domain, you say? Search? SEARCH? We Don’t need no stinking SEARCH! And that DOESN”T search my site”

“That Ain’t MY page! What’s it doing on my domain?”

“Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money!”

… and more great stuff that would probably be funny if it wasn’t so evil.