Preview PAYH closure

[#1]

Thank you PN. This morning, I received an email giving me three months notice that my active server pages web-space was to be shut down.

“You will need to move your website, databases, email and any other services you have on your PAYH account to another suitable provider over the next 3 months before the 21st August 2014, otherwise your website will cease functioning when the PAYH service is closed down.”
Clear enough.
And fair enough – PAYH was not a serious offering.
EXCEPT that nearly six years ago, after strong hints (well … more than hints) from Ian Wild that CCGI itself was to be closed down, I was not alone in moving the active server pages of my various websites from CCGI to the (free) PAYH "preview" service which was offered as a replacement. All the non-active pages remained on the home pages servers.
SO:
Those who ignored Ian’s recommendation and left active pages on CCGI were recently given an assisted passage to Hostopia.
Those who played the game and went through the purgatory of magic quotes, Safe Mode, different permissions and so on needed to move to Preview PAYH have now been told out of the blue to stuff off elsewhere.
OK – I guess I can move to Hostopia. Or perhaps I can’t any more…. no mention of this it in the email – just “go away by our deadline”.
Thank you PN. 
And I’ll take my top-of-the-range Business Fibre Unlimited account with me.

[#2]

I remember Ian Wild saying that PAYH was the future for web hosting from PlusNet, for CGI and php requirements, so like so many others I moved my forum from the CGI Platform to PAYH, to say that i am not amused is to put it mildly.
I don't have the time to move my forum, with what is going on at home, but I will back up the database ready to move to it's new home, for the time bean I will need to close the forum. 

[#3]

Unfortuntely 6 years is a very very long time in business, especially the tech area. The number of customers actually using the service is very small and those that have a Plusnet account from the earlier PAYH service offered to PN customers is just a handful of accounts. I'm sorry that this is going to impact you, but 3 months is a fair notice period in my opinion for this.

[#4]

@Chris, Sow when is the other shoe going to drop!  
I.E. Shutting down the home pages servers? Or Shutting down eMail servers?
once upon a time you were the best now you are second rate as an ISP at best I am sorry to say.

[#5]

Quote from: decomplexity

OK – I guess I can move to Hostopia. Or perhaps I can’t any more…. no mention of this it in the email – just “go away by our deadline”.

You have an active CGI service so there's nothing stopping you doing this.

[#6]

So why were the cgi users helped to move to hostopia and the PAYH users who did as PN asked are given no help with the migration?
(More to the point why haven't all PAYH users been notified?)

[#7]

The PAYH platform is an entirely different beast. The customer demographic is different, the service is much more fully featured and it's based on completely different architecture. The challenges/commercials associated with an assisted migration to another Plusnet-owned service were simply not deemed worthwhile.
Whilst I was around at the time, I had little involvement with the preview service and Ian's recommendation that customers migrate across to PAYH. Like Chris says though, 6 years is a long time. If anybody in this position has found themselves without a Plusnet CGI account to migrate back to then please drop me a private message.
We've only notified half of the base, the next batch is going this afternoon at some point I think.

[#8]

"Unfortunately 6 years is a very very long time in business, especially the tech area. The number of customers actually using the service is very small and those that have a Plusnet account from the earlier PAYH service offered to PN customers is just a handful of accounts. I'm sorry that this is going to impact you, but 3 months is a fair notice period in my opinion for this."

Strangely, I agree.
What makes me  (and - obviously - others) see red is the way the communication was handled and the process managed.
To summarise my earlier post and PN's replies: :
If I had ignored PN's request to move to PAYH Preview, I would have 'been migrated'.
Because I had co-operated, I was - pace the communication email - being left high and dry because (in Bob's words), the effort to provide an "assisted migration to another Plusnet-owned service were simply not deemed worthwhile" even though (in Chris's words) we constitute  "just a handful of accounts"

Since I have an active CCGI Hostopia service (I made sure I had a token remnant when the conversions were undertaken), I can 'move myself'.
But I have been a PN customer since 1998 or thereabouts and pay £good for a top-rate business account, and I resent being treated in this cavalier way

[#9]

Sorry you feel that way
Give me a nudge if you need any help with the migration over to your CGI space.

[#10]

Thanks Bob.
It's nothing personal, and over the years I have received good service from almost all of the PN CS and Tech staff including yourself.
I was surprised when, after 'inheriting' it, PN kept the PAYH service going at all, especially as it became technically more and more down-date (SQL; PHP;...)
But I think you see my point about the communication.

[#11]

Yes, we probably should have managed communication for those with preview accounts differently.

[#12]

@Bob, I have sent you a PM.

[#13]

FAQ's
The link in "What will happen to my DNS records e.g. subdomains etc.?"  to the help guides isn't a link!

[#14]

Seems to work for me - it just takes me to the relevant paragraph in the FAQ
However the all the links take you to the start of the paragraph but not the title of the paragraph which is confusing

[#15]

Try the help guides link in the paragraph! I didn't say the index links at the top!

Quote from: jelv

FAQ's The link in "What will happen to my DNS records e.g. subdomains etc.?" to the help guides isn't a link!