2 years ago I blogged about my experiences with UK2.net, a hosting company here in the UK. The post Why not to use UK2.net has at the time of writing received 105 comments. Most of these are from people sharing their bad experience when dealing with UK2 support.
Recently Ditlev Bredahl the Managing Director of UK2 offered, via comments on Why not to use UK2.net, to help anyone out who is experiencing problems. From what I have heard he is sincere in this, so if you have a problem with UK2 then contact him via ditlev@uk2.net and hopefully he will help you out.
But it shouldn’t be necessary
The support staff, and support process, should be capable of handling customer problems without the need to resort to contacting the Managing Director. Yet, despite assurances from Ditlev Bredahl – … but we are turning it around, it is getting better and better – especially on the support side of things …
– comments are still being posted about how basic support queries are still unresolved or worse still getting ignored.
UK.net responds
Well not officially they haven’t, I’m still awaiting that. Recently Ditlev Bredahl contacted me by email and politely asked to be given the opportunity to respond. I have agreed. If and when he sends it I will add it to this post.
But whilst waiting for this we have exchanged a few emails. In one of them he jokingly offered to buy my domain. I told him it could be discussed but that it was likely to be out of his reach. I was offered £1500 pounds – which I have just refused. Obviously they don’t like my search rankings…
And now?
So 2 years on have things improved with UK2.net? or are things still as bad as they were? Feel free to share your experiences.
I have been using UK2 for about eight years now to register many commercial domains. They used to be a good company but have really slipped in recent years. Many of their technical support staff do not speak adequate English and replies to my support emails have been slow and incomprehensible.
They keep charging for services which I don’t use and don’t want. They initially appear cheap, but the extra costs afterwards really ramp up the price.
I am currently having serious problems with them. I have tried to change the name servers of a .com URL and their system keeps reversing the entries. I can’t get a resolution from them after many weeks of trying. To say I am annoyed is an understatement.
This is not a quality company and I do not recommend them.
Hi all,
I have had similar problems to many posters here over the years. I have 10+ domains registered with Uk2 going back 7 years during which time I have suffered some infuriating issues relating to customer support and how UK2 has handled email failures etc.
My main domain for which I have webspace with UK2 is the hub of my retail business… all my business email addresses use this domain address and are forwarded to a BT/Yahoo POP3 account.
Twice this year forwarding has failed for a number of days at a time. It has also happened in the past as many others have experienced…. UK2 servers being blacklisted for spam being an example of an excuse… more recently they blamed the halting of the ‘catch-all ‘ system with customer support saying that it was Aug 23rd when it was finaly stopped… this was in reply to my last forwarding problem dated 8th Nov… it started working a few days later.
Right now and over the last 3 days, in the christmas shopping run up that is so critical to my business… all email forwarding to anything@mydomain.co.uk (over 7 years old so very busy with emails) is not being delivered and after initialy not even being bounced back with ‘delivery failed’ for the first day or two… emails are now being bounced with ‘failure notice’ and an Error 550.
EG:
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.
:
83.170.81.160 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 relay not permitted
Giving up on 83.170.81.160.
All sales enquiries and direct orders from my ecom website use this email address … not to mention all my business associates, existing customers, advertising etc etc. Needless to say, the situation is extremely damaging to my business and reputation.
All email forwarding (and the usual tun of spam) from my other UK2 hosted domains is working fine … its just my main, active, webspace hosted domain that is not working.
UK2 customer support initialy sent this response blaming other isps…
Dear Sean,
Unfortunatly yahoo, hotmail, freeserve,BT and orange are some of the email accounts they have blocked our server
because of the ammount of spam we sent out because of our service which we offered for free (catch-all), Which can cause emails to bounce back or cause MAJOR delays.
unfortunatly we do not have an ETA on when this problem will be fixed but it is on going.
im sorry for any problems this may cause you.
alternitavly you can set up a uk2.net pop3 account which you can forward to hopefully this makes things easier it is free and you should get all your mail.
to do this go to mail.uk2.net and set up an account then add it to your forwarding to replace Disfunctional accounts.
i hope this helps, again im sorry for any problems this may cause.
Warm Regards,
Well … if this is the case then surely it means UK2 are useless anyway if their email servers are blocked by most popular isps? Regardless, its odd that I was and am still recieving spam forwarded from all my other UK2 domains to m y BT/Yahoo Pop3 account … fact is I even found the odd email, even a genuine one, to the domain that isn’t working had got through.
Yet testing emails sending and recieving with many combinations of POP3 email accounts … even setting up forwarding to a UK2.net POP3 email and sending from a UK2.net POP3 (so completely by-passing BT Yahoo or anyone else UK2 care to blame) … I still get ‘Failure notice’
Many urgent, unresponded emails later I have now recieved this reply…
Hi,
We’ve refreshed the DNS Records which should resolve this issue. Please allow up to 24 hours for the changes to take full affect – if you do not see any improvement after the 24 hours, please get back to us.
Warm Regards,
We’ll see…
Apologies to rant at length … but I feel completely let down by UK2 and my livelyhood and reputation is suffering as a direct result of their inconsistency to provide the most basic and important of services or back it up with honest and effective customer support.
Just got e commerce cart from UK2.net, can not access the admin page, no problem, went on to customer support raised a ticket, set Priority to low (11 Dec 2007 08:54 AM), no action, set to High (11 Dec 2007 06:52 PM), no action, set to Urgent (12 Dec 2007 03:28 PM) no action, writing this 13 Dec 2007 01.19am, still no action……….. UK2.net no good.
Hi
Just updating about my e commerce web site challenges with uk2.net. The problem repost 53 was eventually solved, I must state that I am impressed with this shopping cart for my needs… but wait, at the bottom of page a UK2.net banner with web links, no problems I will remove it, No “The powered by UK2 banner at the bottom of your page cannot be removed. In the past we were able to this but due to third party companies advertising using the bottom of the footer page for other miscellaneous. We have put this there as default.”
what can I say, find a new e commerce site, help
I am also trying to move the link to UK2NET at the bottom of the page as I resent paying them to advertise a sub standard product that I do not wish to endorse.
If you find a way to do it please let me know
Jane
My UK2 Email POP3 servers / system…
(which spam infested sreivice I am currently forced to use due to UK2 being ‘blacklisted’ by my usual PoP 3 email host as well as many others… read below)
… went down today … came back online after a few hours but 4 days worth of emails have been lost.
Not ideal.
My POP3 emails went down today and are still unobtainable. However, for around five minutes at lunchtime, I received a whole batch of emails that were lost in July 2007, and a large number of emails dated November and December 2007 that I have already received previously. I think UK2 are clearing out all sorts of stuff caught in the drawer mechanisms of their file servers. Back in July last year I moved my business emails and domain hosting away from UK2 because of the glitch that eventually ran on for two weeks or so before being resolved. I will not be moving them back in a hurry – that’s for sure. Perhaps Network Rail ought to consider using UK2 as they seem to have the same regard for their customers!
I’m an experienced web developer and have dealt with most of the big guys (1and1, 123-reg, telivo etc.) as well as some of the small ones (poundhost) and they are all held up as angels against the ‘customer service’ of UK2.net.
I just wanted an easy automated shop to set up for a friend who isn’t particularly technically minded. UK2 looked good, even after you added the hidden add-ons. I rang (at 50p a minute) to confirm that you didn’t need to get additional webhosting space to run the shop package, and that it could run from root (www.domain, rather than shop.domain). As soon as I placed my order, they told me I err… did, or that I at least had to purchase DNS management to point shop.domain to http://www.domain, which is A. crap, B. a fudge, C. not great for SEO and D. Costs a non-trivial amount of money.
I ploughed on, hoping things could only get better, but they haven’t. Once you go to customise the templatable shop, it turns out the impressive demo has been hand crafted by the guys who wrote the cart software and license it out to companies like UK2 – so if you want it to look half-decent it takes hours of hand hacking the code through a browser as they don’t allow ftp transfer!
Anyway. The last straw is that I opened a support ticket on the 13th of December (yes thirteenth) asking how to change the registration process so that it is anglosised (not asking for ZIP code / state dropdown etc.) without breaking the installation, as it crashes if I just change the text definitions. I’ve had some inane and frankly irrelevant replies from people who are working somewhere with a warmer climate than ourselves – but the issue hasn’t actually been tackled yet.
Aaaaagh, that felt better. Sorry about that.
Happy New Year anyway!
p.s. – accept my congratulations for not taking the 1500 and running, especially since no-one would have known.
A doff of the cap to your sir, you’re sadly a dying breed!
I got a uk2.net budget dedicated server recently.
Works very nicely and I’m happy with it.
Well it did work nicely until today and that’s why I’m here ;p I was searching for their network status page
The best solution is just to get out of UK2.net but of course they will charge you a “cyber move” fee as a last 2 fingered salute ! http://www.uk2.net/move_away/
Cool, a few days after my post here uk2 suddenly get a status page. http://status.uk2.net/ Looks fairly open and honest (yes ok I’m still a new customer so not quite as jaded as you lot yet lol)
Set up a website for a a non technical friend a few weeks ago. Web site worked OK for a week then stopped. Raised a ticket. Following day the site started working OK for no reason or explanation.
Email – set one account up on day one, never managed to deliver mail to it. Can send mail from it OK. Raised a ticket two weeks ago. Some numpty tells me I have not set up a POP3 account. I sends him a screen shot of the configuration; nothing heard since then.
Support is non-existant. I won’t be ringing at 50p per minute when the configuration is fine.
The same old issues never seem to be resolved with UK2.net…
I have 21 domain names hosted there and each time there is a difficult technical problem I never get a response. I send critical ticket after ticket only to be ignored.
The latest issue is a problem with one of my main web sites (online purchasing is how we survive). This site shares web space with Lifeaxe.com. The site dissapeared for no reason… on checking the sub directories on the UK2 server it had been deleted!. This same problem happend to all our web sites 6 months ago!..
We then found our site was directed to a UK2 maintenace page.. The DNS had now been changed too!
We re-uploaded the content back on to their server and contacted UK2 to sort the DNS problem out for us.. 7 days later we still have not had a reply.. So far we have lost hundreds of pounds in lost sales due to their error..
Having seen the email address on here for their MD I have just fired off an email to him to try to get him to assist us.. The reply will be posted on this web site for all to see.
By the way.. has anyone ever tried to move a domain away from UK2.net? I would apprecite any advice so that we can do the same.
ALlan
An update to my previous message:
Having sent an urgent message to both the operations manager and the MD of UK2.net explaining our part time employees will be laid off this week as a direct result of lost revenue from our site lifeaxe.co.uk.
The reason why our site is down is UK2.net deleted our site for no reason and now refuse to (or are unwilling to) get us back online.
As a company we rely totally on online sales. Knowing this you would expect the Ops manager and the MD to do everything in their power to resolve their problems with tec support and get us back online straight away…
Have we heard anything from any of them (including the MD)?… NO!
Out of frustration I sent another critical note to tech support requesting information on how to move our domains away from UK2.net.. guess what.. we had a response within 4 hours explaining what we need to do. Can you believe it!..
This company does not give a damm about the hard work all we have put in to make our company successful (it is only very small but we take pride in it), nor do they give a damm about the effect their lack of support has on the lives on others (part-time single mums).
From my perspective UK2.net do not have a tech support.. it is make believe… a way of generating cash without doing a thing. So a word of warning to anyone out there who runs a small business…
DO NOT BUY YOUR DOMAIN AND HOST IT AT UK2.NET as to do so will leave you and your company vunerable to being closed down through no fault of your own.
There is an ever increasing movement toward not using UK2 and I and my colleagues are just about to jump ship as well.
I am getting no answers to critical support tickets .looks like UK2 have a major problemI used to use UK2 very often but rarely these days.
I reckon its to do with the fact that they want you to use the Tel Support at 50p a min and therefore very very slow to answer the normal ticket support in the hope you will call at premium rate.
Response 62 – so five days on no improvement. Had a mail from Stuart Parry who said he would sort this out; as yet he hasn’t. Got another mail from Support asking me if the problem had been solved??
Told them to send a mail to one of the mailboxes and they see the problem had not been fixed. They must have the most incompetent support staff of any organisation.
I have sent around 12 support emails to UK2 since 27 January. There have been no useful replies and now my emails are ignored. I am again writing to Ditliv
here it is
Hello Ditlev
This is the second email I write to you
[#XJJ-546060]: web diversion does not wor
You have not responded to the first and there has been nothing done regarding my ongoing problem.
This problem ( regarding shared web space and web forwarding ) has been ongoing since This problem was reported on 27th of January 2008. I have had no useful response up to this time.
I am offering you the opportunity to keep me as a UK customer by having someone correct the problems I am experiencing.
kind regards
nigel hetherington
http://www.communicatingexcellence.com
I’ve had huge problems trying to transfer my domain to someone else. The fax number rings and hangs up every time and they ignore all their emails. I tried posting the proof of identity but they just ignored that. I’ve asked my new registrar to give me a hand with this – we’ll see….
im also having massive problems from uk2, they keep closing down my subdomains!! I have spent two months trying to sort it out, their support know nothing though! some of my websites remain down, so ive had to go public! Here is my article, please comment on it if you have a similar problem!
http://www.jamesfawcett.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8
I registered uk2sucks.net years ago when they really wound me up.
I am too lazy & web-incompetent to do anything that actually gets the message across that uk2 should be avoided, so what can I do?
Can I put a simple meta redirect to your site? I don’t think I can really point the www. A record to your site because I have hosted images at http://www.uk2sucks.net which I have used in various discussion forums etc.
What do you think? I tried to put into words my dislike for uk2’s charging scheme, high prices, and general gotchas, but in the end I didn’t do a good enough job.
Has anyone had problems with applying the shipping to CSV files when importing to e-commerce shop.
It seems that the Pinnacle Cart keeps giving me a .mysql error : Unknown column ‘shipping_price_1’ in ‘field list’ when I choose to import CSV.
Feel free to comment coz this must be a common problem, but can’t seem to find anything on google.
UK2.net = Incompetent, liars, irresponsible, cheats. They have lost the data of well 10 sites web and servant serious damages. The authorities should prohibit to similar people to operate online still! Shame!
I wish I had seen this web site before I started to commit.
I was recommended uk2.net but now alarm bells are beginning to ring.
Technical Support appear to be keen to close tickets before completing the task.
There are other open ends in tickets which remain unsolved from a few days ago.
As a business they are now causing me problems and I feel like I’m building on sand.
I hope they will help me migrate to a different supplier if everything is not fixed today.
Disappointing.
You should be congratulated on this site. I hope it will prevent others from being “duped” into signing up for a uk2.net account.
My depressing experience led to one last ditch attempt as follows :-
—————————————————————————————————————-
“I ordered a reseller account on Tuesday 2nd September and despite numerous emails the account has still not been setup. I was told the account would definitely be setup by close of business on Tuesday 9th Sept, only to be subsequently told that there are problems with the server which will be resolved asap. Unfortunately I cannot continue to wait as my clients expect a certain level of professionalism. Therefore, if my account cannot be setup by close of business today please cancel my partially setup account immediately. I am very disappointed with the customer service your company provides, by which I mean ignoring support emails, not being truthful about the status of my account and being redirected to unanswered telephone numbers etc etc.
If you are experiencing technical problems why do you simply not explain this in the first place. And why are you still taking registrations for the reseller account if you cannot set accounts up in a reasonable timeframe. I have since opened an account with eukhost.com who have already surpassed all expectations with their 24/7 support, so I am very happy to take my remaining client base to them.
Your website states “We bend over backwards”, is this some kind of joke?
————————————————————————————————————–
It is staggered how poor their customer service is. I can only compare with the incompetent service I received from BT, so am wondering if they are somehow linked.
Anyway, that’s my rant over, back to more constructive matters.
Simon
Absolutely amazing, within 30 minutes of contacting ditlev@uk2.net and posting my message, my account was finally setup. A big thank you to all concerned.
I knew it was too good to be true. Although the powers that be react appropriately if you contact them the support ticket system is a complete waste of time. No response for hours, then when you least expect it, the same response from 3 or 4 different support staff, which all becomes very confusing… It should not be becessary to contact the people at the top and it is becoming embarassing.
Another thing that concerns me is the offer of “unlimited” may not be quite what it seems but I will comment on this further when I have more of the facts.
The first thing I look for when selecting a web host is a professional site and UK2.net certainly fall into that category. I recently signed up with a hosting company with not such a professional site, which I thought may be a gamble, but I have to say their service and support has been really fantastic – the host eukhost.com.
Finally giving up with UK2.Net, it’s more fun chewing razor blades… Stay well away if you value your sanity….
well that blows. i was really interested in their e-commerce package. it looked easy to navigate and had everything i needed, but after reading the disastrous reviews here, it seems it would be ripping my hair out more often than making sales. had hoped that the new guy called ditliv had sorted it out but it seems from the more recent critiques not to be the case. so anyone know of a similar e-commerce package that i could use, been looking at actinic but their online package i dont like and there more complicated package is a bit more complicated than i want right now. uk2 templates are nice and you can easily change the css via ftp. anyone know of another package like this?
depends on what you are selling, and what you want to use for the payment side of things.
I developed eShop for WordPress for the low cost option.
For larger commerce sites though Trading Eye is still one of the better ones out there, though perhaps not as friendly in the back end as it could be.
thanks for the links rich, so it appears trading eye sells the exact e-commerce package as uk.net use, though they sell it for a 1 time payment to use this package but dont offer to host it inclusively. i have a feeling it is probably available somewhere else cheaper. anyone know of any other hosts that use this package in the uk or or ireland and charge a yearly rate to use and host it with them? i didnt realise wordpress offered an e-shop now. i’ll look into that. guess it would be the cheapest option, though im not sure how much people generally charge to host it either. sorry bit of a noob at all this. thanks again.
the site I sent you to are the people that created Trading Eye – I wasn’t aware that they had teamed up with uk2 and I do doubt that it is the same package…
i think it is rich, if you have a look at uk2.nets templates; this one for eg. http://kopenhagen.co.uk/jewellery/ (their jewerly store theme), you can see that this template is listed as an extra purchase on trading eye as well as others at http://www.tradingeye.com/department/shopbuilder_themes/
also if you go and use their demos, you can see it exactly the same thing. i think what uk2.net did was purchase the Unlimited Licenses (per server) package for £2999 and are now calling it their own “new e-commerce product…..we have totally redone” and re-selling it for £12.50 a month. I wish tradingeye offered a similar deal as i am tempted but really after reading the dirt uk2.net try to get away with, it seems i would be hanging my own noose. nayone know if they are still registering your domain in their names or do you get full ownership?
where on the site does it tell you that
I thought that I was buying my domain name?
What about the names I transferred in.
how do I find this out
Blimey – you’re right I could tell as soon as I saw the admin interface!
Well to give credit where credit is due UK2 have taken on board one of the better carts out there – though the charges are a bit steep. Wonder if they’ve made their money back yet.
Trading Eye is a good product and well worth spending the money on it. You could always ring Trading Eye and speak to them, though I doubt there’s much they can do for you its always nice to be able to talk to the developers of the product!
Why not let us build you custom built store for a one off fee?
Your home page isn’t a good advert, seems to be a myriad of validation issues so I couldn’t check it for accessibility…
Fair comment, and being updated accordingly.
Presently trying to extract myself from UK2.net.
Two months with them now and I have had a website content deleted, a domain rendered inaccessible due to a setup error, support ticket responses which go back and forward several times before I get an answer to my original question, difficulties logging into their system etc..
Decided that I would transfer in a domain – seemed the best solution at the time. After altering the IPSTAG to UK2NET and going to their site to bring the domain in I discover an incoming fee of about 6 pounds. Suppport tells me this is not a transfer-in fee, but is for hosting for 2 yrs.. but I am paying for hosting! I cannot get any clearer info on this issue – the domain is not in limbo.
At that point I decided this looked really bad, so decided to transfer-out the domains acquired via UK@.net… emmm… 13 pound transfer-out fee (not mentioned anywhere I can find on the site). So, to move-out all my domains will cost an extra 50 pounds or so. Recommendation – do not transfer-in any domains, do not purchase domains via UK2.net… it will really cost you in the long run.
So, at this point in time, I am tied into a system that effectively has ‘wheel-clamped’ my domains, dumped a pile of release charges on me from out of nowhere, and I have paid for the transfer-out of one domain (7 days ago) and I am still waiting on its release so I can do what I need to do with it.
For anyone looking to run a business via UK2.net this is a useless setup – beware!
Ed
Things don’t seem to improve, two years on!
Wandering through their site, checking up on the recurring charges that keep appearing on my debit card, I checked out their MoreUK2 offering.
(OK, WTFWIT: MORE UK2? I’ve been with them for seven years utilising their simple mail forwarding and web diversion. It all started off at something like 5.99 two years. Now it’s a fiver a month for the catch-all mail forwarding; 7.99/yr registration and 11.99/yr for web diversion.)
Anyway, somehow I stupidly committed to their expensive and – for all intents and purposes – useless MoreUK2! product. There was no confirmation screen (d’oh) and when I realised what they’d done, I immediately looked for a way to cancel it. Nada. OK – I wrote a mail to the support desk detailing the information and the request to cancel the transaction as it had already posted to the debit card account as pending.
Long story short – today I got a response from the help desk explaining that according to their refund “policy”, this product was nonrefundable. Fifty quid for nothing? I think not! I explained to the pillock on the help desk (there is only one I reckon) that I was not looking for a refund but a cancellation of the original transaction AND that despite the flurry of emails (one way, from me to them), nothing had been done. Therefore I had got a new debit card, cancelling the previous one. And cancelled (disputed) the charge. UK2 had, in my words, squandered their last chance at redemption.
I am moving my domain after seven long and I have to say mostly torture free years. But THAT is another process fraught with pain, by the looks of it.
Firstly I need the domain unlocked and sent my needs to the hostmaster address listed in the WHOIS record, copying in the Marketing Director Nicola Woolham. And a good thing I did: she saw first hand the muppet listed for host master was an invalid address. I of course brought this to her attention in another, follow-up mail to which she responded immediately! She escalated it to the ‘Head of Operations’ and assured me that if I did not receive the high level of service and support to which she and the company are dedicated, I should contact her again. To quote
“I hope that your issue gets resolved promptly. Otherwise please let me know.
I would like to reassure you that we take support very seriously and are constantly looking at ways to improve our service to customers.”
Fair enuf! Here’s a spare pair of spectacles, Nicola: they may be of help since it’s a plain as the nose on my face what there is to look at or not.
But then looking and seeing are two diffenrent things, are they not?
We’ll see, though, won’t we?
More later maybe!
I want to cry
I have or have had all the above listed problems and more
the shop in the e-commerse site is drab boring unexciting and difficult to customise. The only responce I am getting from UK2net is to be repeatedly sent their very poor documentation in the form of a pdf file which is also a pain to have to dig through whenever you want something.
they also keep telling me to edit in dreamweaver.
I pointed out that I did not think that editing in dreamweaver every time I wanted fully justified text was fine nor did it live up to their claims about how easy this shop was to customise.
You cannot get thumbnail on the products. Well you can if you edit the templates.
A point also here is that on top of the package you are buying from them Dreamweaver is a very expensive programme which you would have to spend some time learning. Dreamweaver has ready made templates that are more easily customised than these.
I am also not happy about the shop set up as it appears to be that you can either have it dirrectly there at your site first page or in a folder which gives it a dogdy url which I am told is difficult to SEO not that I would know because I have not got a site yet
This product is rubbish and I have bought two years of it. As one other poster said they have what looks like a professional website.
I have emailed them today to ask how I get my money back their reply was They will look into it.
What does that mean don’t they know how they refund money?
I am also concerned about a little bit I read about their refund policies that appears to be a threat to stop you doing it.
About black listing your credit card What is that all about and can they really and what do you do if they do. How would you know if they had?
I’d be interested in seeing that PDF, any chance you could email me a copy?
Which PDF do you want
The one they sent me first time I asked a question
The developers pdf they sent me when I asked how to fully justify text
They have never told me how to do this and I cannot find it in the developer pdf
The one they sent me when I asked how to change text size
(they pointed out which page to use)
and it involved major hacking of the code
There email
Hi Jane,
In the page 14 of the ‘Developers manual’ in the section ‘How to add new product template’ you there are options to edit the font size. You will see it is page 16 (attached) where the codes are given in which you can edit the text size.
Please get back to us if you have any further issue please get back to us.
Regards Technical Support
UK-2 Ltd
I wanted to paste the page here so people could see just how difficult changing the size of the text was to do but could not cut and paste it.
I did suggest that had they included a text editor in their package that there would be no need to hack the code.
I got no reply to that
Sorry but I am very frustrated with this
They make the claim that you can get a good looking shop easily.
I defy anyone to get a shop without programming experience.
You need to change the code to get the shop theme changed.
It is just too much hard work you may as well learn to write your own code it would be as fast
Also there are warnings all the way through not to delete this and that or your template won’t work so it would be so easy to screw up and be left with all your hard work lost.
A note here
I have used for myself and others all the top shop generating packages Actinic etc I have been able to produce a shop and catalogue etc from them all with little or no code changing and be left with something we all liked.
I have hacked the code on them all to get fantastic results and I could without much assistance from UK2NET do the same with this, but after buying what I thought would be an easy hassle free package do not want to be spending all my time editing template for very BASIC results. I began asking the question not because I could not do the changes but because I wanted to see just how bad this was, and because this is marketed to people without experience.
Other points are if you don’t spell very well like me then the absence of a text editor means that you are always cutting and pasting from another programme that has one. Something else I consider a basic.
I have had this a month and really don’t like it, it is too much hassle even for someone who has programming experience, in fact that makes it much worse as you can see all the missed opportunities, the things they could have included and that you can get as basic in so many other programmes.
I wanted the ability to manipulate invoices etc and the newsletters and email lists sound good but the shop is so poor and so difficult I don’t see how I will ever get that far. Starting from scratch is easier as it does not involve all the frustration.
One of the other things that really irks me is their constant reference to editing the templates in Dreamweaver, as I pointed out in my last post Dreamweaver is expensive and you need time to learn how to use it which if you were going to do you would not need to have bought this package.
I have asked for my money back
I would happily send you it
Where would you like me to send it
Jane
can you send to elfin@elfden.co.uk
(note to self – fix comments)
received thanks.
More Problems with UK2NET E-commerce
It is impossible to get both a picture and text onto the shop catorgories. If you add a pic then the text vanishes, you can add two pic but only one shows.
I want to remove the text advertising UK2net at the bottom of every page
suggestions on a post card please.
I can’t even find the footer to edit it. Have sent tech support a ticket asking how to do this.
The edit in dreamweaver option that tech support keep telling me to do is almost impposible as everything you try to change has an effect on something else. I suggest that if you intend to do this that you make sure you have a copy to go back to.
There appears to be no way to change colour than editing the code which is difficult because unless you have Dreamweaver or similar you have to find the number for the colour you want and put it into the code. then go back and look at it. very unsatisfactory. not easy for a complete beginner to either find what they should change or get the right code back into the page of code in the right place. Searching manual and developers guide.
This package is beginning to make Actinic look good and I hate Actinic.
Has anyone seen or been to a site that uses this package as UK”NET will not supply me with a list of sites that use this package.
Jane
UK2 E-commerce Shop – User Handbook
Welcome to UK2 E-commerce, the most versatile and user-friendly shop builder available. UK2 Ecommerce
is completely customisable, and can be modified to suit any purpose. Both advanced users and
complete beginners can use the system with the greatest of ease and minimum training.
To help you create the most efficient online shop possible, we’ve created this user manual that takes you
through the steps of building your shop. Since UK2 E-commerce has many advanced capabilities, these
steps are just suggestions. If you have the knowledge, you can use the UK2 E-commerce tools to create,
or enhance a more complex shop.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
I am really trying with this product.
I want to change the basic shop from fixed with to fluid width.
These are the instructions for doing so as contained in the support ticker I raised to them when it would not work. Please bare in mind the above post. “Welcome to UK2 E-commerce, the most versatile and user-friendly shop builder available. UK2 Ecommerce
is completely customisable, and can be modified to suit any purpose. Both advanced users and
complete beginners can use the system with the greatest of ease and minimum training.”
THE TICKET the first is the instruction paragraph.
This package comes with additional templates beyond the default that
is currently selected. Please copy this note to a safe location for reference.
To change the template in use you need to edit the configuration.php file
in the root of your ecommerce installation, this can be done via SSH or
any other method you prefer.
NEW: You can now change your template using our easy wizard, simply enter
the url to your shop and add templatechooser.pl to the end, e.g. if
your shop url is http://www.mydomain.com/shop then you would enter:
http://www.mydomain.com/shop/templatechooser.pl
DOES NOT WORK
see result
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@yorkshirecraftsupplies.exquisiteonline.co.uk and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8b DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at http://www.yorkshirecraftsupplies.co.uk Port 80
So I went and tried there old method instructions they have listed ” Old method:
On line 34 you will see a line like this:
define(“DEFAULT_CSS”,”plain.css”);
To change the template, simply replace plain.css with one of the following
included choices:
“brown.css”
“business.css”
“clothing.css”
“jewellery.css”
“plainfluid.css”
”
This is the next ticket Isent to them I cannot even change the template.
already submitted a low priority ticket ot say that your template chooser does not work and now look your alternative old methode does not work either
sao hey what do I do now with this rubbish that I have had amonth and still not got a shop ]
as basic editing does not work
/*
==========================================
Revision: 5.0.5
Copyright: UK2 Ltd
Function: Configuration file-store various settings
1.SITE URL-
2.Sitepath-
3.Sitename
4.Emails
4.Payment gateway settings
************************************
* 5. Database settings in /config/dbConfig.php *
************************************
default css,default tax,default currency
==========================================
*/
#INCLUDE LIBRARY FILES
include_once(“libs/database.php”);
include_once(“libs/template.php”);
include_once(“libs/upload.php”);
include_once(“libs/htmlMimeMail.php”);
@include_once(“config/dbConf.php”);
include_once(“FCKeditor/fckeditor.php”);
$position_uri = strrpos($_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’],’/’)+1;
$request_uri= substr($_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’],0,$position_uri);
$request_uri=str_replace(‘installs/’,”,$request_uri);
$siteUrl=”http://” . $_SERVER[‘SERVER_NAME’] . $request_uri;
$partsurls=parse_url($siteUrl);
define(‘REAL_PATH’,$partsurls[‘path’]);
#DEFINE DEFAULT CSS
define(“DEFAULT_CSS”,”Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@yorkshirecraftsupplies.exquisiteonline.co.uk and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8b DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at http://www.yorkshirecraftsupplies.co.uk Port 80″);
My frustration level is getting higher every day.
and what they use is actually easy to customise – I know because I have used it elsewhere!
*sigh*
Hi there,
I have recently purchased the UK2 net quarterly ecommerce package and having trouble.
I have been advised by tech support that the ecommerce CSS template can be edited in dreamweaver. Being a novice this seems difficult !!
Is there another package I can edit the ecommerce css templates in that is free and easy ish to use ?
Any advice aprreciated !
Paul
If you are a novice then being able to edit CSS isn’t going to help you. Most ecommerce systems will allow editing a few things, but the CSS is what you really need to be able to edit to change the look and feel of the site.
Black Widow Web Design Ltd would be able to help you out, but obviously they will charge. I just happen to be married to the manager, so I know they are good 🙂
Hi there, not sure if anyone knows how to answer this… or if this is applicable to this forum ?
I’m a newbie and having trouble !
The trouble I’m having is directing products to the correct department from my csv file using the product importer. (Pick from CSV)
All product info seems to display correctly – except the product ends up in a few other departments that have a similar name.
Product name is “Adam Ant”, this product should be directed to “Adam Ant” Department within the “A Artist” Department.
The product ends up in another artist department called “A Certain Ratio” and a few others.
I have attached a screen shot of excel and the ecommerce software showing the excel columns relating to the product importer. I’m sure the fault lies with me !
Hope someone can help !
Picture link…http://forum.tradingeye.com/showthread.php?t=2017
thanks
Paul
I first dealt with Uk2.net a few months ago when I registered two domains with them, one included a web hosting package. From the start it was a disaster, the web-hosting wasn’t working and thus my first battle with support ensued. After having sent about 10 emails/support tickets and getting nowhere I decided to cancel my web-hosting and cancel the domains.
Unfortunately one was a .com which I decided to leave with them and wait for the 60 days to expire before I could transfer. Then comes battle number two with their so called support, where I was provided with the “cyber move” process and details of how I should pay my “cyber move” fine. More support tickets raised and alot more stressing later I seem to have completed the transfer.
Thankfully I’ve escaped, but to all others out there DO NOT USE UK2.NET!
Don’t do it!
Don’t even dream of signing up with UK2.net, I went with them 9 years ago and got too-invested to want to change, but they are a disaster of poor management. The web mail is the slowest most cranky system ever – don’t even consider it. They seem to go down every other week and give zero feedback. I am now looking for somewhere else to go to.
UK2.net – awful webmail service, awful customer response system. I don’t even want to waste my time writing about them but would like to warn others about signing up and going through the same pain many of us here have.
Lord give me strength! I too have used UK2 for more than 10 years now and I have to say that in the beginning, it was all so easy. I hardly ever had to contact support as it worked, was easy to follow and anything I wanted to do took minutes to acheive.
Now I am pulling my hair out! I have just bought a new domain name with webspace from them. I tried to upload my site using their new, totally useless and utterly confusing control panel. After several days of different attempts to decipher the process of a simple ftp, I resorted to contacting support. Lo and behold without acatually having to do anythingn my website suddenly sprung into action! Ok, first problem solved.
My problem now is I just want to divert my old url,which is my business name and thus on all my correspondence (adminoverload.co.uk ) to my new one (audiotypingtranscription.co.uk). How hard can that be? Extremely, is the answer! There used to be a free diversion that was so easy to configure, but now it seems to have diappeared although UK2 assure me it in my control panel. It is not. Have they hidden it in order to force me to buy their bannerless one?
Can anybody please, please tell me how to do this?
I have also been charged for random services that I did not know about and did not ask for recently.
Where did it all go so wrong?
Any advice gratefully received.
Kate
I have used UK2 for over 10 years now and this is the worst it has been
I can’t send email using SMTP and I can randomly connect to my POP3 accounts
I used to get an email back when a support issue was raised – even this has packed up now
I will have to move from UK2 as this is no good – If you haven’t signed up -DON’T…
Just wanted to add my comments:
I too, like many others, have used UK2 for webhosting for years but lately have become very disillusioned.
On 16/10/09 I reported via support ticket that we were having tremendous problems accessing our emails via POP and had been experiencing these problems for a couple of weeks but that now access had stopped altogether. I was invited, a couple of days later, to accept a non-chargeable upgrade to resolve the problem. An email arrived saying that the order had been completed, LOL, it hasn’t even been started yet. I too am unable to get any response from support and, like others, I am about to pull all my customer websites and take the business elsewhere. Eight days of waiting with no resolution is not acceptable in anyones eyes. Neither is waiting four days for the problem to be posted on the status blog.
Yep, UK2 are bad !
Emails not working properly now for at least 4 weeks. Had a reply from support saying “I’m sorry, but at this time we do not have an ETA on the mail server issue. Our admins are working hard to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience.”
Patience !!!!! It’s ridiculous, I’m trying to run a business ! but can’t use emails all day.
Not sure what to do now, but will most likely be taking my business elsewhere for the future unless theres a rapid rectification.
Dedicated servers from UK2
As well as email not working I thought I would also share my latest venture with UK2.NET dedicated servers.
I developed a remote people counting system where people counters would post their data back to a mySQL database so that a local council could see footfall data for a number of sites without having to manually collect it. This worked fine until the site grew to over 180 counters and 40 users. The site on a shared server just slowed down so much it was unusable. I contacted UK2 to see how easy it would be to move to a dedicated server. They said they would give me 1 month free Supreme support service who would do it all for me. What a load of rubbish. They could not copy the database so I had to do it, they could not get email working (even though they said it was) so I had to do it, in the end I spent 2 weeks setting up the sever so that it worked. The supreme support people I have delt with knew less about mySQL, webservers, and php than me, and I am an electronics engineer. They have no clue. I wish I had never started to use them. VERY VERY POOR SERVICE.