Tag Archives: GoDaddy

GoDaddy Acquires Media Temple

Oct 15, 2013 by Matt | Posted in Hosting 2 Comments

I hope you’re not a Media Temple customer, because I have bad news. GoDaddy has just acquired the hosting company, according to the press release they put out today.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Oct. 15, 2013) — GoDaddy, the Web’s largest platform for small businesses, has acquired (mt) Media Temple, a Los Angeles-based Web hosting and cloud services company focused on the creative class of digital designers, developers, entrepreneurs and innovators.

The two companies will continue to operate independently. The strategic acquisition provides GoDaddy with direct access to Media Temple’s hosting gurus, who will share knowledge and insight on how GoDaddy can better serve Web professionals and developers. GoDaddy provides scale and investment for (mt) to accelerate its growth and further expand internationally.

Media Temple is a popular option for Linux-challenged web designers seeking managed hosting with a friendly control panel, though they pay significantly more for the convenience. Though that may change as GoDaddy’s influence permeates their acquisition.

Ditching GoDaddy? Here Are Some Alternatives

Sep 11, 2012 by Matt | Posted in Featured, Hosting 16 Comments

Whether it’s because of the recent major outage, their brazen support for SOPA, or their longstanding questionable business practices, there are many reasons one may wish to avoid doing business with GoDaddy. (Archive.org has a mirror of the old NoDaddy site if you’re curious about some of the hijinks they’ve been behind in the past.)

There are countless alternatives for the services GoDaddy offers, but many newbies are not too aware of them. After all, they don’t pour money into TV ads during the Superbowl.

Since I’m frequently asked for suggestions, I figured it would make for a good post.

Domains

It is usually prudent to register domain names with a separate company from the one that actually hosts your web site. That way, if you have cause to switch for one reason or other, you can simply edit the DNS to point it to your new host, and you don’t have to worry about transferring the name from one service to another.

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Despite Boycott, GoDaddy Still Supports SOPA

Dec 26, 2011 by Matt | Posted in Domains 2 Comments

As if there weren’t enough reasons to not do business with GoDaddy, they recently made it clear that they not only support SOPA, but that they were involved in the authoring of the bill.

Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA.

Even with that lesser-publicized fact aside, GoDaddy’s support of SOPA has spurred a large boycott, which they have met with a cavalier attitude (“we have not seen any impact to our business”) and some fuzzy PR-speak leading people to believe that they no longer support the bill, while they still do.

If you are looking to leave GoDaddy, or someone you know is, there are plenty of alternatives.

Domains: Name.com, Moniker, Gandi.net, Hover (Tucows), 1and1

Shared Hosting: HostGator, Media Temple, Site5, WPWebHost, A Small Orange, Nearly Free Speech

VPS Hosting: VPS.net, Linode, Media Temple, Rackspace

Domain Hijackers Hit Design and Development Blogs

Dec 5, 2011 by Matt | Posted in Domains 2 Comments

There has been a sudden outbreak of design and development blogs having their domain names hijacked and held for ransom. It seems to have started with David Walsh’s site, when his domain name was mysteriously transferred from GoDaddy to Name.com and from there to 1and1. The DNS records have been pointed back to Walsh’s host by 1and1 while things are sorted out, but for now the domain is still not under his control.

About one day later, the same thing happened to Chris Coyier’s CSS-Tricks.com. Someone gained access to his GMail and GoDaddy accounts and moved the domain to PlanetDomain. From his detailed chronicle of the events, it’s a possibility that he may have a keylogger on his computer, as the miscreant has been able to get around password resets of the GMail account, and may have even accessed the Media Temple server CSS-Tricks is hosted on. Coyier also received the impeccably-penned threat “pay 2k to get ur domain back.”

This has recently happened to a few other big-name sites in the same field, including Abduzeedo, Kirupa, Design Shack and InstantShift. Abduzeedo was able to catch the transfer and stop it, though. (Interestingly, it has been almost exactly four years since the same thing happened to logo designer David Airey.)

Just to be on the safe side, you might want to do a quick WHOIS search on your own domain and make sure it’s still on your registrar.

Update, Dec 5: Planetdomain is reversing the transfer, and moving the CSS-Tricks.com domain back to Chris Coyier’s GoDaddy account.

GoDaddy Now Registering .me Domains: Does Anyone Care?

Jul 23, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Domains 2 Comments

GoDaddy, one of everyone’s least favorite registrars, has started registering .me domains. At $40 for a two-year registration, they’re not the cheapest domains on the block, but there certainly are some interesting possibilities. Such as

  • Kick.me
  • la.me
  • Digg.me
  • throwabrickat.me
  • Aweso.me
  • give.me/some_money

Could be fun, right? Too bad, GoDaddy doesn’t like it when you have fun.

GoDaddy has already taken most of the “good” ones and put them up for auction. And then there are issues with multiple people trying to register a domain, all of them being charged and recieving reciepts, but only one getting the domain in the end (asssuming GoDaddy doesn’t just sit on the domain).

So… We have a new TLD with potentially cool naming possibilities, but GoDaddy screws it up.