elescondite

I am a developer (back before the days of the Internet). I work for large companies all over the world. I have to deal with different ISP's on a daily basis. One of my clients is hosted with, lets call them "BH". I need SSH access. Their policies state that they need a photo ID in order to activate SSH. A little silly, but I sent them a copy anyway. I get a message back from them later telling me that I must provide a government-issued ID for the named account holder. Since the named account holder is the President of a multi-national corporation (who I have yet to meet), I am not inclined to bother him with something so trivial! After telling them so, the response was "if there was a way around it, we would be happy to help you". Sure, there is a way around it. Change your policy. Hawk Host on the other hand, only wants to know whether you are experienced enough to work in a shell and won't be calling support every 5 minutes. I didn't time them, but I bet it took all of three minutes to set up.

Of course. I have been doing some SQL development that relies heavily on triggers. Through an oversight on my part, it didn't register with me that Hawk Host has MySQL 5.0.x installed, whereas I develop locally on 5.1.x. When moving a DB to my account, all CREATE TRIGGER statements would fail under 5.0 as MySQL required SUPER privilege up until 5.1 (brain dead, but that's life). Obviously, granting SUPER privilege on a shared server is out of the question. (As of 5.1, a new TRIGGER priv is available). I really really really did not want to implement the trigger logic on the client side, so I fired off a ticket to support on the off chance they could suggest something. I didn't expect much and was about the move the DB to another server I have. Tony got back to me (within minutes) with the idea of moving the account to the one server that is running 5.1, but I was reluctant to ask for it as it involved work for HH that really wasn't their problem anyway. Regardless, Tony went ahead and did it, preserving the account on the old server until the changes propagated. The reason I am impressed is that I didn't receive the stock response "we run 5.0. You are S.O.L." Running shared servers is hard. Keeping a stable platform is hard. Making necessary upgrades without breaking everything is hard. Telling users to suck it up and tough it out when they can't have their WhizBang 9.0 application is hard. I know, I used to do it back in the dial-up days (when 2400 was the norm and 9600 was blazing fast).

I have been a developer for many, many years and have been with just about every company imaginable. I have to say, Hawk Host is the best experience yet. This morning, I ran across an issue that, while important to me, was in no way, shape or form Hawk Host's problem or responsibility. I posted a support ticket on the off chance their was some way we could work around the problem, but really didn't expect that there was much we could do. Within minutes, Tony made some suggestions and implemented them. Problem solved. To say that I am impressed is an understatement.