What Hit Tokyo Mango? Blame GoDaddy!

Last week, while checking my favorite blogs, I found -- to my horror -- the Tokyo Mango blog replaced by some generic GoDaddy page. Of course, I immediately blogged the discovery. After a day or two, Tokyo Mango was back. I didn't want to be spreading now-false information, so I removed my blog post. Today, the editor of the blog, Lisa Katayama, shot me a note explaining what happened, so I thought I'd pass it along:

Hey there Mike,

I saw your post on The Raw Feed about my blog. Thank you for calling Tokyomango one of the coolest Japan blogs, that's nice of you. It's true — for the past week, my blog has been dead, and I haven't had a chance to tell my sob story because I've been too busy trying to fix it. But I finally decided that it's time to speak out. Feel free to post this on your blog. My word of advice to the masses: Don't Ever Go to Daddy. He won't help you when it need it most.

Here's what happened: I signed up for Free Hosting on GoDaddy.com, which is where I bought the domain name Tokyomango.com. As soon as I did that, Tokyomango.com died. I was like, hmmm. So I called customer service. They said, oh ok no problem. We'll fix it. Messed with the DNS settings, asked if there was anything else they could help me with, and then sent me a customer satisfaction survey. I didn't fill it in because my site still wasn't up. Opened a help ticket with TypePad to make sure everything was kosher on the blog side. They said, the mapping is off. Called GoDaddy again. They said, the last person you talked to had it wrong. Now we'll fix it. Then wait 48 hours. I waited. Nothing. Consulted TypePad again. Repeat. It's been a week of talking to GoDaddy every day and each and every person has said something different. Ditto with TypePad—their people seem a little brighter but they don't have a phone number so when it comes to shitty customer service and stupid people they pretty much cancel each other out to be just as shitty as the other.

In the meantime, this glitch has left a huge void in my professional life. Posting on Tokyomango.com has been my source of fun and refuge in an otherwise much more serious career as a writer. I'm hoping it will be back up by the end of the week, but I also realize I'm at the mercy of a bunch of people who don't really know what they're doing.

But I'm working on a new and improved kick-ass redesign, and when I launch that I'm moving to WordPress for blog software and Laughing Squid for domain and hosting.

Thanks Mike!

Lisa

Thanks for the info, Lisa -- we're looking forward to your redesign!