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It all began in 1996. "Let's run a free counter service", I thought. Little did I know my friends just what an adventure was about to unfold. I had noticed that IQS my main hosting service for the Escati website was offering the ksl-count counter, originally published by Kang Soon Lai, to it's customers. A few days later the Escati free counter service was up and running. It was two hours before the first counter went 'live', then gradually the rate of takeup started to increase. Within a month it was roaring away with 500 new counters a day. "You're overloading the server", came the message from Julio, 'The Boss' at IQS, early in 1997. Now I get on alright with Julio, so I accepted his judgement without question and switched off the service. He was grateful. Ten thousand counters down the tube and lots of unhappy 'customers'. Still it had to be done as I guess I had not anticipated the popularity of the service. I wrote to a hundred web hosting companies asking if they could host the service. I gave them all the facts and figures with the projected growth rates. Now I ought to mention that 1997 has not been a year during which I had much cash to spare, so any hosting service had to offer a sensible price or I couldn't afford it. A dozen or so were willing and within my price range. I chose Websolver, as much as anything because Todd, who replied to my emails, answered my questions and was being very helpful. A few days later the service was up. It took off like a rocket as many of the original users were waiting for it to start up again. A free counter service is self promoting, of course. Most new users see a counter somewhere and follow the link to Escati. With millions of new webpages appearing every year the demand is potentially enormous. Within a month there were 8,500 new users, a month later 23,000 and within 3 months it had reached 43,000. Then the 'hacker' struck. Somebody was messing around on the counter server. They were uploading files to the cgi-bin. For those of you who don't know the cgi-bin is where the counter scripts or programmes are kept. You call one of these scripts or programmes when your page is loaded into a visitor's browser. The script adds a count to the counter total and then displays the new total on the web page. Anyway I caught him red handed and erased his sabotage. "Help", I yelled at Todd, "there's a hacker in the cgi-bin". He had no idea who it was or how he had managed to access the server. We changed the password and I kept a close watch on the cgi-bin. It happened again hours later. So it wasn't a hacker. It was somebody with direct access to the server. I erased the files he was uploading, then suddenly the cgi-bin was locked and I could not access it. All the counters stopped working. A few days later the password to the server was changed and I could no longer do anything. It turned out that the server administrator had disabled the counter service without consulting Todd or me. The money I had paid for the server was gone and nobody was replying to emails. Todd nearly lost his job and was transferred elsewhere by his company. I was pretty well broke. I wasn't sure I could afford to do it again and I felt pretty discouraged I can tell you. However I received dozens of emails of support and encouragement, offers of all kinds of help including offers to donate to assist with setting up a new server. I put up a donations page and quite a lot of people made a pledge to donate, so feeling confident that I could manage the finances I started yet again to look for a hosting company. I found host4u. They claimed fast computers and massive bandwidth. I set up the domain counterbyescati.com and soon we were back in business. A month later there were nearly 60,000 counters in use. Then the problems started. The server rejected many of the cgi-bin calls, so that the counters returned a broken image. Their server could not cope. It took them three weeks to sort it out by which time most of the counters failed to work most of the time. Not very helpful for anybody of course. Suddenly it cleared. One of the server guys discovered that they had not set up their Perl interpreter correctly. Perl is the language in which the counter scripts are written and it is interpreted on the host computer by the language interpreter. All the counters started working again. All went well for 10 more days. Then one day nothing. The server was gone. The hosting company was gone. Nothing. All their websites were gone and nobody was responding to emails. It turns out they were disconnected by their connection providers. A connection provider rents one or more connections to the Internet backbone. Now I don't know of course, but when one of our supporters phoned the connection provider they asked why host4u had been disconnected. "Did you disconnect them for not paying their bill?", asked my friend. "I'm not at liberty to say, but I can not think of any other reason why we would disconnect a customer", came the reply. Nearly 70,000 counters just stopped. Hundreds of emails a day to answer. A real mess! By this time I was getting a bit more determined. "This thing's not going to get me beat", I thought, "time to look for hosting service number three!". So look I did. Webindustrials came up with just the right package. In fact it looked like they offered an ideal range of services. Off we go again. Another contract, more costs and in a few days another new counter service. It lasted 13 days! The server administrator switched off the server without any communication what-so-ever. Just turned it off! They had the cheek to say that they didn't give me authority for outside users to access their cgi-bin. Rubbish, it was all in the emails. Lots of them and all agreed in advance. Still it was off and that was that! It turns out that the guy I was dealing with was a reseller and HE did not have the authority to sell me the service in the first place. He behaved and sounded like the boss, gave me all sorts of assurance, but he was in way out of his depth. Idiot. "So what now?", I thought, "this is getting us nowhere". Then out of the blue came the email. "Host4u is sorry about not communicating for weeks and sorry we have had to move, but here is your new IP address for counterbyescati.com". Well great, except that counterbyescati.com was by now registered as being on a server at Webindustrials which no longer existed. "OK, better the devil you know", I thought and on 25th October the service started up again on the new host4u server, which is where it is now at the time of writing. Everything went well. I introduced the Free Guestbook, Time By Escati and Date By Escati services and the new Counter Type 5. I designed dozens of new digit styles and everything seemed to be going great. By 30th November there were about 100,000 registered users in total. Then suddenly it stopped. It took me a while to discover that somebody had changed the file access marks on all the counter users log files to 'read only'. This meant that the files could be read by the counter scripts, but as they could not be written to, the counters could not update and returned 'missconfiguration error' instead of a counter image. Access by FTP had also been blocked so I could not reset the file access marks myself. I renamed the counter log file directories, set up new directories and within a few minutes 100,000 counters started up again, but all of them had been reset to zero! Not very clever of host4u I think you will agree. I wrote numerous emails. It took them nearly a day to reply then Bill said, "Tell me which directories have been effected and I will see what I can do". He claimed the server had crashed and they had restored the files from backup. OK, it might have, but file access marks don't get changed by accident. There are thousands of files on the counter server and only the counter log files had been tampered with. The guestbooks, which basically behave in the same way had not been touched. I didn't really believe him, but I was willing to see what he could do. A few hours later the file access marks on all the new directories I had set up were suddenly set to read only and all the counters stopped yet again. OK, so I repeated the operation of a few hours earlier and they all started up again, but again they had all been zeroed! Maybe you can imagine what I said to Bill. I was not pleased. Since then it seems to be working OK and whoever was messing with the log files has not repeated their sabotage. --- OK, that's the story to date. Perhaps you would like to know that only a handful of the people who made pledges actually ever sent any money and one cheque for $20 dollars bounced! It's not been easy, I can tell you. I've had too many sleepless night and I sometimes wonder whether it's worth it. I live in southern Thailand and these servers are all on mainland USA. What amazes me is the irresponsible actions of a string of people involved in running these servers. They don't care at all about the tens of thousands of people who rely on the counter service. They don't care at all about the money I have paid them or our contracts. They just turn things on and off without a word. I call it childish and irresponsible. It could be criminal for all I know. So what next? Well my guess is that host4u will let it ride for a while then one day I'm going to go online and the service will be down. I'm not being pessimistic, it seems that these days that is what we should all expect. What's the answer? Well I'd hoped it would be through donations, a kind of public service, but that didn't work. In my opinion it needs a stand alone computer run by a reliable admin team, like my own Escati guys at IQS. What will it cost? About $1,000 a month. I can't afford it. I rarely earn that much let alone have it to spare. Perhaps what it needs is a sponsor. Somebody to put up the cash in return for the publicity. We'll see, but in the mean time my friends I will continue to give you these services any way I can, I promise you.
Well here we are in 1998. I seem to spend most of my time apologising for the latest counter service. We shall see what the year ahead brings. Even though the host4u contract was cancelled, they charged over $100 to my credit card long after the service ended. They promised a refund, but it never arrived! Now that's theft in anybody's book!
There has been a lot happening during the last few weeks. I would like to try and set up the counter service on a new dedicated computer at IQS. We didn't get a sponsor, although that's not out of the question, but we did get new contracts for '98 to help some Multi-National companies with their Internet traffic. It looks like I shall pay for the 'Counter By Escati '98' server myself.
Well the IQS deal fell through. I have been with IQS since 1996 and considered them reliable. I paid $1150 by bank transfer to them a few days ago and then the bombshell hit. They changed the deal. Lots of restrictions, which basically meant it would not work. I was getting very little more than a normal hosting service at 50 times the price! I have cancelled my accounts with IQS and moved Escati elsewhere. Back to the drawing board!
I got an email from a helpful guy in Israel who suggested a solution. As a result a company, sharpview.com, say they will host the counter and have fast computers and lots of bandwidth. The Counter By Escati 98 is now hosted there. It went live on 20th April and appears to be working well.
There have been four separate server failures in a week, I'm sorry to say. As of today the server is down and has been down all day. So far, I have no idea what the problem is. I'm trying to find out.
Well it's still down, so I guess it's dead. The server admin team are not replying and the guy at sharpview.com can't get through to anybody either. Looks like somebody just pulled the plug again without any communication. Amazing! It performed well while it lasted. I thought it would work out this time. I think what happens is that people underestimate the amount of traffic the counter service generates. They just can't cope. I have to add that the guy at sharpview.com refunded my money, so not all was lost! Have you got a server that can cope? Let me know ...
Well somebody DID let me know and a new counter server is now up and running via hypermart.net. To be honest with you I have no idea how it will work out. However, it's working fine, so keep your fingers crossed!
Well, it worked well for nearly 3 months, which must be as record, but the server administrator blocked access to the cgi-bin at 10.32am on September 3rd. All the counters stopped working, although the Stats reports are intact. I have set up a new cgi-bin called files, and as long as people edit their counter code with files instead of cgi-bin the counters will start up again from where they left off. Now this is yet another example of a server administrator acting without contacting me. The server was set up after discussing requirements with the server team, but here we go again!! We shall have to see how long it lasts this time! Note: On Saturday 10th October the server2.hypermart.net crashed. That is where the Escati Free Counter is hosted. This server is in the USA and is not managed directly by Escati. All the files were lost on that server. That means all counter stats reports were reset to zero. I sincerely apologise for this. It was not of our doing.
Well here we are in 1999. Since the October 10th failure hypermart seem to have been able to cope. As of today the counters are all working OK, and I managed to add a Guestbook service which is also performing as it should. Keep your fingers crossed gang! January 20th hypermart.net have just crashed the counters and guestbooks, for no reason that I can determine. It seems they may have done it deliberately, although I have no idea why. Check http://www.escati.com for updates. This also effects all forms on Escati. I'm really sorry about this. January 22nd I contracted with Hypermart for a free counter service and paid them a full year in advance. They disconnected the account without warning and without discussing anything with me. Hypermart have set themselves up as a "top class business hosting" company. If this is the sort of way they treat their business customers they do not deserve to be in business. In my view this is an absolute disgrace. I am usually quite polite about my counter problems. Sometimes it can be put down to human error, sometimes to an individual server administrator. This time, though, my friends, I'm not going to be quite so polite. To be frank Hypermart have not demonstrated loyalty to their customers or to their end users. They just don't care at all about the thousands of you who rely on this service. They just cut it because they have some reason of their own to do so. High traffic, maybe? I would guess so, but high traffic is exactly what Hypermart claim they can handle and what they claim they are striving for. I have received many kind letters of support, for which I thank you all. Personally I doubt if Hypermart will reinstate your tens of thousands of stats pages or give you back your counters and guestbooks. They will just leave you with broken images on your pages. Watch this space ... January 23rd A small victory! After numerous complaints from me and very many of you, Hypermart have relented and reinstated the account! However ... I have to reset about 100,000 file access masks, as they have restored from backup and some of your stats and guestbooks won't work until I reset them. It will take me a while to restore everything to where it was when they crashed it. Update ... It's currently 10.30pm here and about 75% of the counters and all the guestbooks should be working again. Hang on in there. January 24th - 1am Thailand As far as I can tell all the counters and guestbooks are working again! The result of team effort?
They've done it again! Hypermart have just crashed the counter and guestbook server, without notice. I had received an email from them confirming that they were not going to do this again! They even wished me "good luck" with it. I asked them to keep in touch and to discuss any problems with me, rather than just crashing tens of thousands of counters and guestbooks. They must be mad! February 10th - 2.30pm Thailand I have just received an apology from hypermart.net. They say they are putting it right. We live in hope! February 11th - 12.30am Thailand The server is working again. All the counter and guestbook files have been restored from backup. They will not work until I manually reset all the file access masks. I have to do tens of thousands of files, one file at a time, by FTP from my computer to the server at hypermart. Hang on in there ... 6am OK, it's complete. Everything should be working again. February 12th - 2am Thailand Well it's not over yet. It seems that hypermart.net restored the counter and guestbook files again and overwrote my work. This meant that the file access masks were all wrong and the counters stopped working. This happened at 10.20am server time. I spotted it fairly quickly and am resetting everything now. February 14th Hypermart admitted that there had been an internal problem and that their "system had goofed". They apologised and have given me a free extension of the contract for the counter service. Mark Garcia was as helpful as he could be. So there are some good guys out there, after all!
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