You want webspace on teh Intornetz? Don’t use netfirms.com. They’re a huge company and they offer a great deal of webspace and some nice features at a good price — for the time it was webhosting for one year with only a $20 payment for the year — but you’ll soon find that their technical support is lacking, the FTP is slow and doesn’t complete bulk transfers, the mySQL databases are slow to connect and difficult to work with remotely, and the server itself is generally just slow and shuts down from time to time. At least that was the experience when I was trying to build Paradiseworld.net 3.0 on their servers. Maybe they were going through a transition period, but it was enough to disenfranchise me from using them again. HostGator.com is my new webhost. You pay by the month, so there’s no contract, and it’s about $15 (per month). You get all the subdomains, addon domains, and mySQL databases you want. The server is fast and responsive and so is their FTP. By far the best quality of HostGator is that they have live chat technical support. With Netfirms I had to call their long distance number if I wanted help and they’d hold me on the line for ten minutes at a time before telling me that they couldn’t do jack-crap for my situation because they had never, in all their years of business, ever encountered it. Thanks Netfirms. The HostGator live chat response is almost immediate, you can ask them a question and you’ll get an answer right away, they’ll even send you the transcript of the chat. The invisible people on the other end of the live chat seem pretty nice and friendly. I’ve asked them stupid questions and they didn’t treat me like the moron I usually am. That’s not a bad feeling.
If you develop PHP/MySQL code for fun or profit, there are minor things that Netfirms just didn’t offer. Here’s the big one: no CX Panel. Having CX Panel means you get control over everything in your webspace. Here you can configure scripts, email, addon domains, parked domains, create FTP logins, subdomains, and partition your gigabytes of space into chunks and pass them to your friends if you want. If you make a database the Netfirms server will give you some jumble of numbers and letters. Everything is through their custom interface, and although it might be great for new players to the Internet game, it just seems a hassle for an old intorweb guy, like me.
So this is the new home of courne. Why the Courne Supremacy? Ever watch the Bourne Supremacy? Yeah, but it’s nothing like that and this site will have nothing to do with corn. What you’ll mostly see on this site is a combination of video game ramblings and ideas and mainly short stories. I intend to use this blog not as a means to be bitchy or emo, but rather as another creative outlet. I’ve always believed in digital publishing as an alternative to the mainstream — cheaper, easier, and more control, things I like — so that’s what the new Courne Supremacy is about.
Oh, and the sister site, the mother site, if you will, Paradiseworld.net, will still be around. If you’ve never heard of it, which I’m sure most people have never heard of it, it’s my art-site. I used to draw everyday and posted the artwork (scantly clad girls, you know how it goes, come on, if you could draw, wouldn’t you be drawing scantly clad girls?).
New short stories to come…as fast as I can pull them out of my ass.
