6 ms·

2014

44 points by pothibo 13y ago

MartinCron 13y ago
Maybe this is just broad stereotype, but I don't see a huge overlap in "Ruby people" and "GoDaddy people"
- hartator 13y ago
  Yeah, it seems actually a good sign to the ruby community.
- Ricapar 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Most people cringe at using GoDaddy as a registrar. Using them for hosting your site? Double-cringe.
  - jmcgough 13y ago
    Yep - any site I've seen hosted on GoDaddy is LAMP or just plain HTML/CSS/JS. I had to do some LAMP work on a site hosted on GoDaddy and it was pretty annoying to configure, with poor support. I can't imagine any Rails developer using them for hosting over Heroku, etc - so if Rails is maybe 1% of their hosted sites, they might save money by not having to support it.
    - seancoleman 13y ago
      I'm a PM at GoDaddy. The number of Ruby sites we host that I last heard was far less than 1% even.
  - collyw 13y ago
    Ok, naive question, what would make one registrar better or worse than another. They all do the same thing, no?
    - Touche 13y ago
      They don't all kill elephants for fun.
    - evilduck 13y ago
      The user experience of buying domains through GoDaddy is very grating. They try to upsell and tack on services and features literally every step of the way. If all you want is a registrar, there are less annoying competitors at basically equal prices.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      Quality of user experience: Can I register a domain without being bombarded for ads for other add-on crap? Social responsibility: Am I supporting a company that relies on horrible and sexist and demeaning ads to get attention? Social cachet: Would I be embarrassed to have people find out who I was using for my domains/hosting? It may be shallow, but working with GoDaddy looks as sophisticated as having an @aol.com email address.
    - viraptor 13y ago
      Features like: Locking. Ease of transfers in and out. Properly authorizing requests for changes. Customer record privacy. Providing their own zone hosting. Not injecting evil wildcards/redirects. Supporting more than the basic record types when hosting the zones. I'm sure there are other things that could be added.
    - oliciv 13y ago
      The fact that this question is being asked illustrates that the Godaddy hate in the tech community is not as strong as some would think (hope?)
      - collyw 13y ago
        As the person who asked: I do in house database programming, so while I am aware of GoDaddy (they are the biggest registrar, no?), I wouldn't know what to expect differently from one registrar over another, as I don't use them. I registered a domain for my Mum's business over ten years ago, but haven't used a registrar since.
  - callmeed 13y ago
    I'm a Rails dev and use GD for all my domains and most of my SSL certs. The service and UI has actually improved drastically in the past months. But, yeah, I wouldn't use them for hosting anything.
    - Kequc 13y ago
      Holy god don't recommend people to use GD until you've at least tried a competitor yourself.
- talkingquickly 13y ago
  Exactly, I mentioned further down that their ruby customers are probably made up of people with very little experience. So these customers are probably characterised by quite low spend and very high support costs since they're still quite new to it. This is making the assumption that only someone who was quite new to Ruby (and development in general) would use GoDaddy for hosting.
- shrikant 13y ago
  Michael Hartl's immensely popular Railstutorial.org was registered thru GoDaddy. (Definitely doesn't use them for hosting though, as per http://builtwith.com/railstutorial.org http://builtwith.com/railstutorial.org)
- seancoleman 13y ago
  I'm a PM at GoDaddy and can verify that the number of Ruby sites we host is extremely low. There are a lot of great Ruby offerings (Heroku kicks ass) so we are focusing resources to be really great at fewer things.
laureny 13y ago
Yet another sign that Ruby's popularity is waning.
- duaneb 13y ago
  Ruby's popularity is pretty irrelevant to using it as a tool. It's incredibly well-supported, and there's talent for it abound.
- talkingquickly 13y ago
  My guess would be it's more that no experienced Ruby developer would use GoDaddy for hosting. So most people they've got using it are probably inexperienced people (on that basis if you had experience, you'd use something like Heroku) who would probably be characterised by low spend and high support costs.
  - seancoleman 13y ago
    You are absolutely correct (I'm a PM at GoDaddy). There are some terrific Ruby hosting offerings (personally, I love Heroku) so we are focusing on being great at a few things. We've come a long way in the past 6 months with our hosting performance, but still have a ways to go.
    - talkingquickly 13y ago
      Was not expecting a comments from someone at GoDaddy here, appreciate the response.
- asveikau 13y ago
  I suspect the downvoters need to have more of a sense of humor.
  - laureny 13y ago
    Yeah, I don't know what's most predictable about some Hacker News readers, the fact that they are in love with Ruby or that they are not good at detecting sarcasm.
ddoolin 13y ago
I dunno. This is probably better for both communities. Better to offer no support than offer terrible support anyway.
- seancoleman 13y ago
  We (GoDaddy) agree. We are radically improving our hosting and focusing on fewer areas helps.
tempodox 13y ago
Maybe this post exists only to convince us that there actually are Ruby devs using GoDaddy. Never underestimate the value of counter-intel!
kenkam 13y ago
Feels like GoDaddy tried desperately to gain mind-share of ruby/rails developers, realised it was costing more than it was making and hence shutting it down.
5vforest 13y ago
> Rails version 1.1.6 is supported in the default directory So yes, I doubt anyone is still using GoDaddy for Rails hosting.
xacaxulu 13y ago
This is like someone breaking up with you on Facebook when you left them 2 years ago hahaha. I think we'll get through this tough time! sniff
DorianMarie 13y ago
This is hilarious: "If you have Java enabled for your hosting account, it will conflict with Rails." "Currently, Rails version 1.1.6 is supported in the default directory, while Rails 2.2.2 is considered an alternate "development" environment" etc...
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Yeah, I mean, that's not really "supporting" Rails in any meaningful sense to start with, so its hardly significant that they are ending "support".
seancoleman 13y ago
Hi everyone, Product Manager from GoDaddy here. A lot of you have made the correct assumption. We simply host very few Ruby sites. We are radically improving our hosting, and with all the great offerings like Heroku (kicks ass) it doesn't make much sense to continue to invest in what will be a less than great user experience for Ruby developers. I'm happy to answer any more questions here!
- adnam 13y ago
  You're keeping PHP support because you like elephants, right?
- MartinCron 13y ago
  While I'm not a GoDaddy fan by any stretch, I think it's pretty cool that you're stepping up here to answer questions.
  - seancoleman 13y ago
    Thanks! I joined GoDaddy 6 months ago, and although 7 months ago I would have laughed if you told me I would be working at GoDaddy, the company is undergoing a remarkable transition with new leadership. We are becoming hyper customer focused and making our products world class.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      I know the organization is changing, may I respectfully suggest that you suggest someone take a look at this language on the web site? Like a Stanford dorm room on steroids, our Sunnyvale office is 40,000 square-feet of Bay Area badassery, brimming with some of the biggest brains on the planet, dreaming up digital masterpieces and keeping time in agile sprints Because... yuck. I get what you're going for, but I'm sure you can do better. http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/about-godaddy.aspx?ci=9079 http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/about-godaddy.aspx?ci=9079
      - seancoleman 13y ago
johnward 13y ago
It seems like a lot of the ruby community would use PAaS solutions. Even if they wanted to run their own server It's highly unlikely that they would be using a shared godaddy server. Not really that big of a deal.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Even if they wanted a shared server, I suspect that the number of people who'd want a shared server with primary support for Rails 1 and alternate, "development" support for Rails 2 is vanishingly small.
Smudge 13y ago
I had the pleasure of trying to get a Rails site running on GoDaddy, primarily because my client had already purchased their hosting plan. This was circa 2009, and it was the first and last time I'd ever attempt such a thing. I don't really blame GoDaddy, since their shared hosting infrastructure is just not built for long-running processes. For rails, CGI is laughably slow, and FastCGI, while faster, still wasn't performant enough and was causing intermittent 500 errors. I ended up converting the entire project to static HTML (getting rid of the rails CMS component) and it was smooth sailing from there. Thankfully the client required very few updates to the site after that (otherwise I might have tried to move it onto Drupal or something).
elwell 13y ago
"GoDaddy ends support for Clojure as of null"

44 points by pothibo 13y ago

MartinCron 13y ago

Maybe this is just broad stereotype, but I don't see a huge overlap in "Ruby people" and "GoDaddy people"

hartator 13y ago
Yeah, it seems actually a good sign to the ruby community.
Ricapar 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. Most people cringe at using GoDaddy as a registrar. Using them for hosting your site? Double-cringe.
- jmcgough 13y ago
  Yep - any site I've seen hosted on GoDaddy is LAMP or just plain HTML/CSS/JS. I had to do some LAMP work on a site hosted on GoDaddy and it was pretty annoying to configure, with poor support. I can't imagine any Rails developer using them for hosting over Heroku, etc - so if Rails is maybe 1% of their hosted sites, they might save money by not having to support it.
  - seancoleman 13y ago
    I'm a PM at GoDaddy. The number of Ruby sites we host that I last heard was far less than 1% even.
- collyw 13y ago
  Ok, naive question, what would make one registrar better or worse than another. They all do the same thing, no?
  - Touche 13y ago
    They don't all kill elephants for fun.
  - evilduck 13y ago
    The user experience of buying domains through GoDaddy is very grating. They try to upsell and tack on services and features literally every step of the way. If all you want is a registrar, there are less annoying competitors at basically equal prices.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Quality of user experience: Can I register a domain without being bombarded for ads for other add-on crap? Social responsibility: Am I supporting a company that relies on horrible and sexist and demeaning ads to get attention? Social cachet: Would I be embarrassed to have people find out who I was using for my domains/hosting? It may be shallow, but working with GoDaddy looks as sophisticated as having an @aol.com email address.
  - viraptor 13y ago
    Features like: Locking. Ease of transfers in and out. Properly authorizing requests for changes. Customer record privacy. Providing their own zone hosting. Not injecting evil wildcards/redirects. Supporting more than the basic record types when hosting the zones. I'm sure there are other things that could be added.
  - oliciv 13y ago
    The fact that this question is being asked illustrates that the Godaddy hate in the tech community is not as strong as some would think (hope?)
    - collyw 13y ago
      As the person who asked: I do in house database programming, so while I am aware of GoDaddy (they are the biggest registrar, no?), I wouldn't know what to expect differently from one registrar over another, as I don't use them. I registered a domain for my Mum's business over ten years ago, but haven't used a registrar since.
- callmeed 13y ago
  I'm a Rails dev and use GD for all my domains and most of my SSL certs. The service and UI has actually improved drastically in the past months. But, yeah, I wouldn't use them for hosting anything.
  - Kequc 13y ago
    Holy god don't recommend people to use GD until you've at least tried a competitor yourself.
talkingquickly 13y ago
Exactly, I mentioned further down that their ruby customers are probably made up of people with very little experience. So these customers are probably characterised by quite low spend and very high support costs since they're still quite new to it. This is making the assumption that only someone who was quite new to Ruby (and development in general) would use GoDaddy for hosting.
shrikant 13y ago
Michael Hartl's immensely popular Railstutorial.org was registered thru GoDaddy. (Definitely doesn't use them for hosting though, as per http://builtwith.com/railstutorial.org http://builtwith.com/railstutorial.org)
seancoleman 13y ago
I'm a PM at GoDaddy and can verify that the number of Ruby sites we host is extremely low. There are a lot of great Ruby offerings (Heroku kicks ass) so we are focusing resources to be really great at fewer things.

laureny 13y ago

Yet another sign that Ruby's popularity is waning.

duaneb 13y ago
Ruby's popularity is pretty irrelevant to using it as a tool. It's incredibly well-supported, and there's talent for it abound.
talkingquickly 13y ago
My guess would be it's more that no experienced Ruby developer would use GoDaddy for hosting. So most people they've got using it are probably inexperienced people (on that basis if you had experience, you'd use something like Heroku) who would probably be characterised by low spend and high support costs.
- seancoleman 13y ago
  You are absolutely correct (I'm a PM at GoDaddy). There are some terrific Ruby hosting offerings (personally, I love Heroku) so we are focusing on being great at a few things. We've come a long way in the past 6 months with our hosting performance, but still have a ways to go.
  - talkingquickly 13y ago
    Was not expecting a comments from someone at GoDaddy here, appreciate the response.
asveikau 13y ago
I suspect the downvoters need to have more of a sense of humor.
- laureny 13y ago
  Yeah, I don't know what's most predictable about some Hacker News readers, the fact that they are in love with Ruby or that they are not good at detecting sarcasm.

ddoolin 13y ago

I dunno. This is probably better for both communities. Better to offer no support than offer terrible support anyway.

seancoleman 13y ago
We (GoDaddy) agree. We are radically improving our hosting and focusing on fewer areas helps.

tempodox 13y ago

Maybe this post exists only to convince us that there actually are Ruby devs using GoDaddy. Never underestimate the value of counter-intel!

kenkam 13y ago

Feels like GoDaddy tried desperately to gain mind-share of ruby/rails developers, realised it was costing more than it was making and hence shutting it down.

5vforest 13y ago

> Rails version 1.1.6 is supported in the default directory So yes, I doubt anyone is still using GoDaddy for Rails hosting.

xacaxulu 13y ago

This is like someone breaking up with you on Facebook when you left them 2 years ago hahaha. I think we'll get through this tough time! sniff

DorianMarie 13y ago

This is hilarious: "If you have Java enabled for your hosting account, it will conflict with Rails." "Currently, Rails version 1.1.6 is supported in the default directory, while Rails 2.2.2 is considered an alternate "development" environment" etc...

dragonwriter 13y ago
Yeah, I mean, that's not really "supporting" Rails in any meaningful sense to start with, so its hardly significant that they are ending "support".

seancoleman 13y ago

Hi everyone, Product Manager from GoDaddy here. A lot of you have made the correct assumption. We simply host very few Ruby sites. We are radically improving our hosting, and with all the great offerings like Heroku (kicks ass) it doesn't make much sense to continue to invest in what will be a less than great user experience for Ruby developers. I'm happy to answer any more questions here!

adnam 13y ago
You're keeping PHP support because you like elephants, right?
MartinCron 13y ago
While I'm not a GoDaddy fan by any stretch, I think it's pretty cool that you're stepping up here to answer questions.
- seancoleman 13y ago
  Thanks! I joined GoDaddy 6 months ago, and although 7 months ago I would have laughed if you told me I would be working at GoDaddy, the company is undergoing a remarkable transition with new leadership. We are becoming hyper customer focused and making our products world class.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    I know the organization is changing, may I respectfully suggest that you suggest someone take a look at this language on the web site? Like a Stanford dorm room on steroids, our Sunnyvale office is 40,000 square-feet of Bay Area badassery, brimming with some of the biggest brains on the planet, dreaming up digital masterpieces and keeping time in agile sprints Because... yuck. I get what you're going for, but I'm sure you can do better. http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/about-godaddy.aspx?ci=9079 http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/about-godaddy.aspx?ci=9079
    - seancoleman 13y ago

johnward 13y ago

It seems like a lot of the ruby community would use PAaS solutions. Even if they wanted to run their own server It's highly unlikely that they would be using a shared godaddy server. Not really that big of a deal.

dragonwriter 13y ago
Even if they wanted a shared server, I suspect that the number of people who'd want a shared server with primary support for Rails 1 and alternate, "development" support for Rails 2 is vanishingly small.

Smudge 13y ago

I had the pleasure of trying to get a Rails site running on GoDaddy, primarily because my client had already purchased their hosting plan. This was circa 2009, and it was the first and last time I'd ever attempt such a thing. I don't really blame GoDaddy, since their shared hosting infrastructure is just not built for long-running processes. For rails, CGI is laughably slow, and FastCGI, while faster, still wasn't performant enough and was causing intermittent 500 errors. I ended up converting the entire project to static HTML (getting rid of the rails CMS component) and it was smooth sailing from there. Thankfully the client required very few updates to the site after that (otherwise I might have tried to move it onto Drupal or something).

elwell 13y ago

"GoDaddy ends support for Clojure as of null"