Business Card Holder by SweetHeartSinner on Etsy

So we went to this little conference, you may have heard of it?  BlogHer was AMAZING this year.  Besides the fun and interesting things to see, we were surrounded by friends old and new, and had such a good time our ears are still ringing and our hearts are still full.

A lot of our cards were cut wrong - ironically they WERE a Craftastrophe. Thanks Kinkos.

Special thanks to Jon @ Toddlerpedes for letting us use his image for our cards.  LOVE YOU JON!  Those creepy buggers were a conversation starter, that’s for sure.

Necklace Courtesy of Lori at modadimagno.blogspot.com/

We tried to break Twitter using the #BlogHer09 hashtag.  But the fail whale was never seen. Not by us at least.

The Craftastrophe Chicks LOVED Chicago.

We also won an award from Socialuxe.  An award that easily weighs 10 pounds and could probably take you in a fight.

Oh! I can haz weapon?

Thanks to all of our readers, especially Suebob who helped us get started.  Without you, we’d be living in a cardboard box somewheres in the snow, eh?

Other fabulous winners included:

Blogs We’ve Learned the Most From: I Heart Faces & The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Most Inspiring Blog: Nie Nie Dialogues & The Spohrs are Multiplying

Most Provocative Blog: The Bloggess & Her Bad Mother

Tastiest Blog : This Week For Dinner & The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Funniest Blog: Cake Wrecks & Mommy Wants Vodka

Best Eye Candy Blog: I Should Be Folding Laundry & whatever

Guiltiest Pleasure Blog: MamaPop & Craftastrophe

Congratulations to all the winners.  Next year it’s a dance off.  Be ready.

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Clearly I am missing something here. Us? A guilty pleasure? I think it’s more like that trainwreck you can’t tear yourself from no matter how hard you try. Craftastrophe is the equivalent of toilet paper stuck to your shoe while you walk around the hottest most trendiest bar in the city. It’s the spinach stuck between your teeth when you smile at The Guy you’ve been crushing on For-Evah!

We’ve been a little slow around here (As if you haven’t noticed. Seriously? The emails begging for posts? So awesome!), we’ve broken our feed (Can’t seem to get that bitch back online. Feedburner is a red-headed step child. I’d so like to give it a beat down.), and yet you’re still here.

No I am not crying. I have something stuck in my eye. And I’m still sick, leemeealone.

So really, it’s not like I should even bother asking since you’ve done so much already just by hanging around while we get our poop together; but I’m going to. I’m going to ask you for one more teenie tiny little thing.

A vote.

Since we got our butts beaten so badly in the other award thingie. No matter. It’s not like we didn’t have some stiff competition – like um, ETSY! Seriously. No one has a chance against a gem like that.

Especially one that showcases beauts like this:

{image source}

I think of both a neti pot and tea when I see this: and that’s not very comforting. Not in the least.

Can I just say that I worry that the refuse from the nostril opposite the neti pot would drip in my mouth and I ain’t havin’ none of that.

{image source}

Um. What the what?!

That how you Craftastrophe lovers make my boogers feel. Like dancing.

Git down wit yer bad self.

So, if you have a moment, please stop by and vote DAILY for Craftastrophe at the Social Luxe Lounge.

Click the image at the top of the post (OR THIS LINK), or the one in the sidebar (OR THIS LINK) and help us beat the pants off those other wannabe Guilty Pleasures.

HALP!

HALP!

HALP!

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Editor’s Note: In an effort to help our readers understand why we had recently moved hosting companies we are cross-posting this entry from my personal site, Temporarily Me. Our intentions being that the hosting company should be held accountable for their actions and to let it be known that when dealing with smaller sites, the repercussions can be similar, if not greater than that of a large website.  It’s important for corporations to note that a little compassion is exceedingly more beneficial than forgetting about the ‘little guy’, because eventually? That ‘little guy’ may not be so little and could turn into a political nightmare.

Compassion and understanding can mean far more than money or policies never will.

Sam

*****

It’s normal to hear varying degrees of discord from clients of different hosting companies, that’s really the nature of the beast. It goes for pretty much everything in life. Some love it and some hate it. We make our assumptions based on our personal feelings of someone else’s situation. You can choose to draw your own conclusions from this post I have no control over swaying your decision one way or another.

This is merely a one three six -sided account of what we’ve experienced while dealing with BlueHost regarding this one particular account.

For full disclosure I will tell you that I have not paid a red cent to BlueHost for service. I have had a site hosted through their web hosting via an account belonging to someone else. Also, I waited to post this until said site – as well as both Heather and Mike’s sites were removed from BlueHost service.

Now that the business is out of the way, let’s discuss.

I hate to go back to this day, but that’s where the story begins….

April 7th, the day that sweet Madeline passed away and the news was making waves around the internet, her parent’s sites were inundated with comments and visits of support from concerned people around the globe; so much so that BlueHost – their web hosting provider – couldn’t handle the amount of traffic arriving at The Spohrs Are Multiplying. Their only option was to suspend the account in order to re-instate service to the other sites on the shared hosting server.

When Meghan called trying get somewhere with a BlueHost support technician, she was told that the site was running outdated scripts (Heather had Wordpress 2.5+ running on her site at the time) and that it needed Super Cache. The plugin was apparently then installed by a BlueHost support technician then the site re-instated. Success!

But it was very short lived as the amount of load on the server increased, BlueHost again locked down the sites. Friends of the Spohrs swooped in hoping to help out by contacting BlueHost directly and asking, pleading that something be done for their sites so people could offer their condolences. A number of people were inundating their call lines and live chat with requests, which were all met with a cool “No” since none were able to provide the vital information needed for BlueHost to allow access to the account.

I, as well as Meghan, had that information – so I tried my hand at getting some help and made a call to their customer support. The support technician was for the most part, polite but not at all understanding of the situation. There was no way they were able to re-instate the Spohrs’ account. No way. No how. Not until all the traffic was diverted from the BlueHost server would they even consider turning the account back on. By this time both Heather and Mike’s site had been shut down for the second time.

I said to the lady, “Please? Anything? It’s not like they’re email spammers. They’ve lost a child and we’re trying to have the site available even just as a condolence page. Just the last post would be fine as a static page so people could still comment and leave a note for Heather and Mike. Something.”

The response was they cannot do that. Sorry. That’s the rules.

So you’re aware. BlueHost has a ‘three strikes you’re out’ policy when it comes to the number of times your site is suspended. Regardless of the reason for suspension you will be required to find hosting elsewhere after the third time the site adversely affects the other users on the same shared server. Despite our best efforts to get something up and running for Mike and Heather – or even the reason for the spike in traffic – BlueHost verbally notified me they would terminate the account based on this ‘three strikes’ rule should the surge of traffic crash the server again therefore could not activate the account.

I tried to purchase a package upgrade by changing the account’s credit card information to my own but was denied as they didn’t have another package option to offer. I tried to buy dedicated hosting, a virtual private server, even a chunk of a shared server – something – to move their sites to keep them up and running. I was coldly informed that BlueHost doesn’t offer those service and our only option was to find Heather’s site service elsewhere.

Section 7.02 Paragraph 3 of BlueHost.Com terms and services reads:

BlueHost.Com will make every commercially reasonable effort to provide additional resources to Subscribers who are using their website(s) consistent with these Terms, including moving Subscribers to newer and bigger shared servers as necessary. However, in order to ensure a consistent and quality experience for all Subscribers, BlueHost.Com does place automated safeguards to protect against any one site growing too quickly and adversely impacting the system until BlueHost.Com can evaluate said sites resource needs.

As far as I’m concerned they did not efficiently evaluate the site resources nor the previous years service Heather has had with their company. Based on the telephone conversation I had with the technician they were not even willing to attempt any rectification.

Prior to Maddie’s passing, Heather’s blog was a small to medium sized site with approximately 500 – 800 page views per day. Two days prior to April 7th there was 233 page views. I’m simply telling you this because Heather’s site was by no means a drain on their system, but under these extenuating circumstances BlueHost simply washed their hands of the site and their client, leaving Heather stranded without the only means she’s been able to express herself – to help herself grieve the loss of her daughter.

(Thankfully two wonderful people stepped in and offered their own dedicated server to host Heather’s site, for as long as it was needed, in order to allow Heather to post and friends and family to send love and support from afar.)

In the meantime, BlueHost’s political blunder and sloppy handling of this situation had been broadcast across Twitter leaving their president to try and pick up some pieces.

Pieces such as this one from Gary:  (the highlighted part was done by me)

From: Gary Dawkins, Bluehost Support Team <support@bluehost.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 7:07 PM
Subject: Re: [#YDF-67126-157] outraged

To: XXXXXXXXXX

The employee’s here at bluehost followed the correct procedures for an account that was causing problems on the server. Once a supervisor was notified of the “situation” that was going on that’s when they went out of their way to help by reactivating the account and even fixing the outdated version of wordpress that the customer had set up. The (sic) surely didn’t have to do this but did so because they had compassion for the customer’s circumstances. I’m sorry if other technicians were not as compassionate as you would have liked them to be, but they did follow company policies about the technical difficulties that were occurring at the time. Please have a great day and we are sorry for any misunderstanding.

They went out of their way? They were not as compassionate as you would have liked them to be? Really? Way to save face Gary.

And for the record: “when the supervisor was notified of the ’situation’ and went out of their way to help by reactivating the site and even fixing the out-dated version of Wordpress….” that was NOT done by BlueHost staff but instead by Jennifer and Bil when they moved Heather’s site to their personal dedicated server. Not only did BlueHost misrepresent their “help” by taking credit for someone else’s work, they LIED about it. They presumably thought they were talking to people who were not all that tech savvy and would be able to get away with misrepresenting their “support” of the site.

Additionally, when I logged into Heather’s site via FTP (file transfer protocol) I found that the SuperCache had not been installed either, just the .zip file of the plugin had been dumped in the root file of their domain (for non-techies: They did nothing except upload a file. It wasn’t even activated).

The DAY AFTER Maddie passed, the president of BlueHost (who is Matt Heaton, though Heather can’t confirm for sure if he is in fact the person that called, because well, she was a little pre-occupied – but KNOWS he identified himself as the President) called her at home. Though his call may have been made with good intentions, it was cold and based solely on a sad attempt to right their social blunder. Based on what Heather’s told me, Matt’s cold, canned response was a typical public relations nightmare recovery speech. It was a sorry-to-see-you-go-but-we’re-really-not-that-bad type call. Even though Heather had decided she was no longer using BlueHost’s service, this ill-timed phone call was final the deal breaker.

I understand that there are rules in place to protect the users of the shared server. These rules are typically meant to protect BlueHost subscribers from email spammers, as well as sites which have grown too large to be located on a small insufficient shared server. Heather’s site had grown in astonishing magnitude in a matter of hours due to Maddie’s passing, and though she had been a loyal subscriber for the better part of two years and had no previous issues with any of their domains, both Heather and Mike were treated as a nuisance and hindrance on BlueHost; Heather and I wholeheartedly believe that they paid any attention to this “situation” (as Gary called it) simply because of the negative comments flooding twitter and other social media sites. Had we not voiced our dissatisfaction with their handling of the site and service I truly believe they would not have thought twice about their hasty decision to shut down the sites of parents, who only hours before, had lost their daughter.

Why am I telling you all this? BlueHost should be held accountable for their actions. Not only did they provide inconsistent service to their clients, they lied: they made assumptions and, for the most part, misconstrued information. As a community it is our duty to make fellow users aware of these attempts at taking advantage of us.

Due to the amount of traffic Heather’s site has seen over the past month and a half, BlueHost would not have been able to handle the traffic anyway. The site had to be moved to accommodate the more than 10.7 MILLION hits and over 2 MILLION page views it’s seen since Maddie passed away. Regardless of this fact, the way BlueHost went about handling the situation was still less than stellar. They could have been upfront about the fact that they were no longer able to support the site, or maybe moved it to an empty or less populated server in the meantime while an alternative arrangement was made.

Maybe offered SUPPORT rather than wash their hands of the issue.

Would it have truly killed them to take a more compassionate route to fixing the issue? Probably not. Sure, there are rules – but rules are meant to be broken: and if the President of the company is going to take time out of his day to call and “apologize” for their mishandling of this account maybe he could have taken a moment to try and right it by allowing their site to move to a different server with less load or subscribers. How about reimbursing the Spohrs’ their fees for the trouble?  Even some sort of condolence would have likely been appreciated had it not been made out of desperation to stop the hateful twitters and negative reviews of BlueHost’s service.

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Wow!  You guys really love your Twitter!  It was neat to read all your comments and I went through and added you all throughout the day.

I’m sure you want to know who the winner is….

…but before I tell you the winner, I have to tell you some good news.

The lovely and generous Lori, creator of the Frail Whale Necklace that you so love and adore?  Has decided to pick TWO winners.

Yes, I love her too.

Frail Whale is made of .999 fine silver (all silver) and are handmade by Lori. Each one comes on a Sterling Silver chain.

Please don’t forget that if you want to order your own Frail Whale, the first 20 orders via the button in the sidebar of Lori’s blog will receive free personalization!

Now, without further adieu, the winners of the Frail Whale Necklaces are:

#13 – Laurie of Laurie Writes!

and

#60 – Kim of Live From the 205!

Congratulations ladies!

Please send your shipping info to Craftastrophe (craftastropheblog AT gmail DOT com)

A special thank you to Lori for hosting this giveaway.  We had a blast!

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So Sam and I have been working tirelessly on this site for months now, and today we have to talk to you.

Seriously, sit the heck down.

In the words of the Wonder Pets, this is sewious.

On April 7th, the lovely Heather and Mike lost their baby girl, Madeline Alice Spohr.  The internet community came together and has raised quite a bit of money for both their family and for their cause, the March of Dimes.  The March of Dimes was there for them in the early days of Maddie’s life when she was born pre-mature, and still is for them now as they cope with the loss of their beautiful daughter.

You may have noticed Sam hasn’t been here much lately.  And she might smack me for writing this, but in the days following Maddie’s unexpected death, Heather’s website was crushed by the traffic.  Sam took hours and hours to work on the problem and move Heather’s site to a more secure server for the time being. Further to that, Sam created yet another site for Heather & Mike to work toward helping other families in Maddie’s name. I know, Sam is practically an angel and I love her to pieces. How could you not?

Both of us have donated money both to Mike & Heather and to the March of Dimes, but we wanted to do more.

So, thanks to Casey of Moosh In Indy, Sam and I are driving six and a half hours into the big scary U S of A, invading her home to walk alongside her this weekend in the March for Babies in Indianapolis.  Our team name?  Hoosier Favorite Preemie?

We’re asking you for one dollar.  A DOLLAR.  We’re on our knees (shuddap!) begging you for a BUCK.

Here’s my donation page:

And Sam’s:

(I don’t know how to get the code for the team…DUH)

If you need another reason to help, here it is:

The Tribute to Our Madeline from Mike and Heather on Vimeo.

Want to walk in your town? Check out how you can do that, here.

If you can pass this on, stumble it, share it with friends and family, we would be so grateful. The March of Dimes helps so many families and so many babies.

Thanks guys. We truly appreciate it.

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Thanks to those of you who participated in our giveaway sponsored by edenfantasys.com! It was great reading all your responses! Hopefully you are able to find something from edenfantasys.com that suits your *ahem* needs.

The winner of The Cone:

Beverly says:

April 8, 2009 at 8:38 am (Edit)

Most interesting item? I vote for the “Five Gates of Hell”. It really made me stare wide-eyed. Like so: O_O

I don’t have a penis, and that little gem makes me grateful.

Congratulations Beverly! I’ll be in touch to get your contact information to have your item sent out!

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Before I get to today’s Craftastrophe (which really, you should stick around for because OH MY DAYS it’s funny horrifying), I must tell you the good news!

Craftastrophe was nominated in the Best Art, Craft, or Design Weblog category in the 2009 Bloggies.

Yeah, we don’t know what the hell they were thinking either.  I mean really, they must be on some sort of drug that makes them all shaky and weird.  Probably they read our blog and immediately sought medical help for mental anguish and then got these little pills but because they were so traumatized, they shook too many pills out and overdosed and SLAMMO! Down the gullet with a cocktail of FUN, and next thing you know, this blog is in a contest.  Druggies are really unpredictable.  Don’t loan anybody money over at the 2009 Bloggies.  They’ll just use it all for blow and hos.  Is that how you spell ho, plural?  See, we’re not even good writers.  We don’t even know our grammar.

We’re also guessing the “Blog Most Likely To Warrant Therapy” category was nixed at the last minute.  To be in the same category with big blogs like Post Secret, Apartment Porn Therapy (omfg we love them), and Yarn Harlot scares the pants off of us.  And that’s saying something nothing because we often blog without pants.  We’re big fans of pantsless blogging. With glitter.  And warm glue.

ANYWAY.

In order for us to win the 2009 Bloggies, we’d probably have to resort to some sort of showing of our tits.  I mean, we’re up against POST SECRET, for goodness sakes.  Dude does a great service to the blogging community once a week and donates a pantload of money to suicide prevention.   So even showing our tits won’t work.  Besides, we’re both raging feminists and well, the other ladies would be pissed if we did that.

Instead I’m just going to say, “We’re heads over tits that we’re finalists in the 2009 Bloggies!  Vote for us!”

See what I did there?  Heads over tits?  That oughtta do it!

Oh and while you are voting – please note that our very own Sam (of Temptation Designs) designed Blog Nosh Magazine, who are nominated for “Best Designed Weblog,” and my cousin Sarcastica is up for “Best Teen Weblog.”

GO VOTE!  Vote daily and remember to floss!

{pig head bra source}

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We’re not saying you have to nominate us, but what we are building here is so much fun!  If you’re a fan of snarfling coffee out your nose, or swallowing bile in some cases, then please, by all means, nominate us for an award.

Like this one:

Or blog about us.  Twitter about us – Guy Kawasaki did. 

Submit our site to the big boys. Stumble us, Digg us, throw us on Buzzfeed (spank us too while you’re at it).

Subscribe to The Feed, it’s quite yummy.  Consider making pillowcases with our faces embroidered on your pillow.

Perhaps a tattoo?  A cake?  A cupcake cake?

Lastly, thank you.  Really, from the bottom of our sick, twisted hearts.  Because YOU have made this site so much fun to do everyday.  We love you.  A lot. And there is so much more to come.

*smmmmmmooooooooch*

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