Our New Websites

I am a very patriotic person. So, the first website I built through DIY is registered as .ng. Yes, .ng. I am from Nigeria. It makes a lot of sense that I should wish to Promote my country, right? So, I registered the domain name http://www.akewoauthe.ng with Mydot.ng, a Nigerian company I expected so much from. However, it turned out to be a mistake and a waste of my hard-earned money. You ask me why? I will be glad to explain.

I registered and paid the N9000 for the domain name. I then went ahead to ask them for hosting. Cheap article wey dey run belle. I saw they have affordable rates as low as N2500 a month. I looked at it and it made sense as a trial run. So, I started with that. Enjoying the excitement of building my own website from scratch, I decided to upgrade to the Business account, which was N40000. I also paid for the SSL certificate of N20000, which they refunded, by the way.

Anyway, that is how we started o. Unfortunately, two things now happened I do not find palatable at all.

First, I continued to receive an invoice for the monthly subscription, even after I had upgraded. They even started charging me for late payments or for defaulting on the invoice. I am like: What is all this? Naturally, I reached out to their support services. The staff member that I interacted with explained that the finance department would take care of it. Till this week, I still received another invoice.

Mind you, all this was after I decided to register for the Business package. In addition, I paid the invoice for August, thinking it would be deducted from the Business package payment.

It makes me sad to have to say all this about a Nigerian company. I am an ardent believer in the Nigerian dream. I also believe that we should support one another to succeed. But this is no reason to take one another for granted.

In the first place, is it too much to set up a system that automatically moves a customer to an upgraded account once the person has paid for it? The worst part is that I even called the number on the website when I could not seem to be getting much headway. The person on the other end said he was not in the office but would ensure it was attended to when he got to the office. It was never done as I continued to be sent new invoices every month, even after I upgraded my account. How do you run a business in such an unsatisfactory manner?

Secondly, the hosting platforms that I was given were two options. One is supposedly WordPress while the other was something else. Being more familiar with WordPress since 2014, having been using it for my free accounts, I chose that. I worked day and night to get the website running with a lot of content uploaded frequently. All of a sudden, I found that my website had a funny image on it. I tried to find out why. It said my account was suspended. I was like: with a one-year business subscription till August 2025, how is that possible? I desperately sought answers. The answers were needed because I was going to share the website for people to visit during my then-close Inaugural Lecture. I actually gave out that website during the lecture. However, every effort I made to recover my website and content proved abortive. I decided to migrate it to the other platform. However, it was not only very inconveniencing because it is not as easy to use as WordPress, I was also desperate to recover all the beautiful write ups I already made on the website. I could not. I attempted to also populate this new hosting platform, it was not easy for me as I had to be saving every minute. It was really stressful.

I then realised that the WordPress they used must have probably been a cracked version. In addition, it was when I demanded for them to refund my money before I got the website released back into the system. It shows that someone was not doing their job. I have no issues with how the company chooses to run itself, but it should not be at the expense of other people’s money and precious time.

Indeed, I was forced to go back to WordPress to buy another website. Of course, the problem with paying in dollars is still there. So also the problem of the costly nature of the enterprise. However, if the WordPress had been keeping my content of more than 10 years free of charge, I am glad to spend my money on that platform now. All I know is that God in His infinite mercies will have mercy on me and make it possible to earn enough in the foreign currency to mitigate whatever costs I have to bear in order to maintain the website. I thank God for His faithfulness that I was able to finally pay the money with my Visa Gold card. That was a major challenge for years.

We encourage you to visit our new websites: http://www.akewoauthe.com and http://www.princeofpeacepublications.com. Do not forget to drop a word for us on your experiences when you browse through our websites. We will be glad to receive your feedback.

Lara Authe