I have made it a point not to work on web sites hosted on GoDaddy. I have found in the past that anything that takes minutes to do will take hours on GoDaddy. If you don’t know any better, you’ll be happy. But if you are a professional, or have worked with other web hosts, you know that GoDaddy is awful.

Well I had a help request from a relative, and horror of horrors, they want me to help them with GoDaddy hosting. Specifically move two web sites hosted elsewhere to GoDaddy.

They knew that the web sites had to move to a new host, and they knew this well in advance. They had 2 months warning. They asked me to help only 10 days before the current host server is retired. And they already have a hosting account with GoDaddy. None of this is an ideal situation.

Getting the one of the old sites via ftp is trivial. Log in, download it, simple. The other one was a little harder. No ftp info yet, but I can wget so I have that safely copied locally too.

Now, getting it on to the GoDaddy server. Should take a few minutes right? Wrong!

GoDaddy gives me an ftp server that is the same as the server I just downloaded from. We haven’t changed the DNS records yet because I want this to be a seamless transition – clone the site and then change the DNS.

GoDaddy also doesn’t give an alternate way to ftp in to the new web server. A look at the DNS manager, and I don’t understand what they are doing. I need to call on their tech help, right?

Oh, logging in to GoDaddy is a challenge. They have implemented 2 factor authentication. On the surface this may seem like a good idea. In reality, it limits access to the point that it is very inconvenient for anyone other than the account owner to access the control panel. Log in requires a user number, a pin code, and an authorization code that gets sent to a cell phone by SMS.

I did manage to co-ordinate with the owner and get the authorization code for initial log in. 10 domains registered. Only one has a hosting plan. It is not clear that this one hosting plan can host all these domains. Naturally, I assume that the domain being moved needs hosting too. Selecting that takes you to a page where you have to approve additional charges. If GoDaddy were honest, they wouldn’t be deceptive about this.

Well, this is a rush job, so I set up the hosting for this domain, and an ftp account. Then go to get the ftp credentials, and damn if GoDaddy doesn’t tell me that the ftp server URL is the same as the one I just downloaded the original site from. That can’t possibly be right. Any attempts to connect to the new ftp server are useless. There should be a direct connection, just like with other web hosts, but that info isn’t available in the dumbed down GoDaddy interface, nor in its help section.

Well there is chat help. Let’s click on that. Wait time initially is 38 minutes. After about 15 minutes, the wait time increases by 15 minutes. After another 25 minutes, the wait time increases again by 10 minutes. Wait time hovers at 13 minutes for 15 minutes, and again at 4 minutes for an additional 15 minutes.

Finallly, after over an hour, a tech gets on and asks for account number, pin, and authentication number. Damn. Old one is expired after 20 minutes so we need a new one. The prior one isn’t accepted. Site owner can’t be reached now, so no authorization number. After waiting an hour, tech help cannot help, and my original login has timed out. I am out of the control panel.

In total, I have tried for 2 1/2 hours to do what should have taken only minutes. I am even more adamant than before. Not for a customer. Not for a relative. Not for a friend. No GoDaddy. I won’t do it. Not unless you pay me $1000 beforehand. Otherwise, do it yourself.

How onerous is working with GoDaddy? Would you be willing to boil 40 gallons of shit in your kitchen? I put both situations at the same level of horrible.

Friends don’t let friends use GoDaddy. If you got yourself into that mess before consulting with me, it is your problem. Sign up with a new host, and an new registrar. Then I can help you.