Alright,

Good news everyone. Soda water did remove the stain. Oh wait, wrong blog. No great news, after a week of banging my head against anything firm, trying to sleep, dealing with authorities, I now OWN newbiewriters.com rightfully as I always should have.

I have signed up with a new webhost. One that is local to my town as well as the UK, that way if anything goes wrong, im coming a knockin’

Because of this, I will be officially shifting the site on Friday 23rd of April. The site may be unavailable during that time and potentially across the weekend as I will be updating where the dot com points to (they say it can take 48 hours). If you notice a Server Not Found message, please try clearing your cache/history. Close your browser and try again.

Some forum posts may be lost. This blog post too potentially.

I thank you all for enduring this. It has not been a fun a ride.

Damien

Hey everyone,

I don’t usually post on the blog but I feel I need to keep people in the loop. Hopefully if you have registered the RSS feed of this blog you’ll receive it in your email. This is why I have used the blog and not the forums. You will have noticed Newbie Writers being offline or extremely slow. Some may remember this happened earlier on in the year.

I am not happy to say the least.  This is what has happened. We host Newbie Writers with a webhosting company called ServerGrade. They had been excellent up until just prior to Easter. I sent them a couple of emails in regards to the downtime of our site etc. Normally I would receive an automated response then an actual response from one of their staff in a matter of hours. I got nothing. The situation got worse. The site was slow, Dawn nor I could receive emails. I noticed certain administrator applications ceased work and gave me frozen stats dating back to February.

I tried calling them. Always an answering machine. Getting  jack of this, I googled “ServerGrade issues” and blow me down, there are forum posts after forum posts about this exact issue and how the staff of this company seem to have disappeared. Here’s the real clunker. I have emails to ServerGrade requesting what is called a Domain Registration Key (or derivatives there of). This is a code that says I am the owner/purchaser of www.newbiewriters.com I have emails saying I will be sent the key.  Key never arrived.

But even worse, this company, rather than registering Newbie Writers in MY name, they decided to register it in THEIR name. This means that if I try to get the key through the various authorities (and gawd I’m trying), I have replies with “your name isnt associated with this domain as you arent on the registration list, you need to contact servergrade” and THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

I can move all our files to a new webhost in little under an hour. Its the access to the Domain thats the issue. Now our account runs out in June. I have cancelled the account to ensure that another payment for the next year isnt made. My fear is that they wont de-register www.newbiewriters.com because the people at servergrade dont seem to exist anymore. I’m fighting this tooth and nail at the moment.  I have Business and Consumer Affairs helping myself and the 100′s of other customers who have spoken out against this rogue company.

I thank you all for your patience. This is having a huge impact on Newbies google ranking, our reputation, our new member sign ups.. the works.  At  the moment I’m basically screwed until someone, somewhere thinks outside the rules and says “we can access that key for you, you have proof you paid for it” I’m hoping more of the people on the forums with complaints (im on them now too) get a move on and push the higher authorities to make this hosting company accountable for their devious actions. They have let their customers down and not delivered on even the basic contract we signed and paid for.

Sorry for the long winded post but rather than emailing those who ask me if “there’s something wrong with the site” I figured I’d post up on here. So bare with us during this tough and annoying time.

Damien

New Women’s Magazine Seeks Articles

Kraze magazine is a new quarterly publication for urban women. Their primary target are women 18-40 years old. Kraze’s content concentrates on female sexuality with men, sex, relationship and lifestyle articles. They welcome submissions. View the PDF file for details. http://www.krazemag.com/docs/Website_Writers_Guidelines.pdf

Travel Articles Wanted

 baraaza.com is a travel network that connects people who love to travel with inside information about any destination on the globe. Members connect with other travelers and natives from around the world to discover unique, direct-from-the-source information about amazing spots and travel activities. Baraaza.com is looking for contract travel writers to write brief destination guides for cities, countries and regions all over the planet. They pay on a per guide basis and require the content to be of high quality and original. They prefer the writers have firsthand experience with the locations they’re writing about. View website for details. http://www.baraaza.com

Smash Cake Open to Submissions

 Smash Cake Magazine is a twice-yearly, perfect-bound, print publication open to all genres, lengths, styles, and voices. They welcome both experienced authors and newbies alike. They pay a token fee. View website for more details. http://www.smashcakemagazine.com

Smories New Competition

 We will be announcing the 50 shortlisted stories for the March competition on the 5th of April. On the 1st of May, films of these stories will go live on the website. The April competition is now open until the end of the month. The format is slightly different this time: We will have 5 prizes: First Prize: US$500 Second Prize: US$400 Third Prize: US$300 Fourth Prize: US$200 Fifth Prize: US$100 Stories will be restricted to 750 words. Please take a look at the site for further info. http://www.smories.com/ As ever, we welcome your feedback.