Gripes about Homestead.com

Homestead is a web site that lets you create your own web site for free. It competes with Geocities and Tripod among others.

Homestead came highly recommended. Walter Mossberg recommended it in the Wall Street Journal in December 1999. PC Magazine said in May 2000 that it was the best free web site web site. PC World Magazine also recommended it. Unlike some of its competitors, you get a URL in the format www.yournamehere.homestead.com. My problems with it started immediately, during the sign-up process (names have been changed to protect the innocent).

I wanted to set up a web site called myname2. During sign-up, it said that myname2 has already been taken. Disheartened, I went to see who had already taken the name I wanted and what they did with it. I tried
   www.myname2.homestead.com
   myname2.homestead.com
   www.homestead.com/myname2
   www.homestead.com/myname2/index.htm

and none of them exists! I wrote to Homestead about this today (I forget if it was via email or a tech support web page).

I got the below automated email reply today. I did look at the FAQ web page it suggested, but none of the questions there addressed the issue of signing up. They assume if your asking for support, that you have already signed up. I must be the first person to ever have a problem or question with the sign-up procedure.

We apologize for the delay in responding to your message. Due to the extremely high volumes of support requests that we receive, we must occasionally send out automated acknowledgements like this one, just so you know that we did in fact receive your message. We're so sorry for this inconvenience!
If you haven't done so already, we encourage you to visit the new-and-improved Homestead Help section, which includes a "Search Homestead Help" feature, FAQs, and an online Tutorial. You may be able to find the information you need there and avoid further delays.
To access Homestead Help, please go to http://www.homestead.com/help
For troubleshooting tips, go to: www.homestead.com/~site/Help/faqindex_out.html#td_troubleshooting
If you continue to experience trouble or have further questions, please send an e-mail message to our Priority Support address: priority@homestead-inc.com
Many thanks for your continued patience and, again, our apologies for the delay.

As per these instructions, I emailed them again today at the "priority support address".

With millions of people using Homestead, it's not uncommon to discover that your first choice for a site name is already taken. Please note, however, that just because a name has been reserved by another member does not necessarily mean that the site name is currently in use as part of a functional URL.

In order to receive a URL, the site owner must first create and save a page within that site, which some of our members have not yet done. This explains why you may be receiving the 'Site Name Taken' message for a site name you can't find on the Web.

We do apologize for this inconvenience! We are currently developing ways to monitor accounts so that site names associated with empty sites are released for use by other members after a reasonable amount of time.

Duncan

I downloaded the Homestead Site Builder so that I could build my web site (with my third choice for the name) off-line. However, the first time I ran the program, it complained about my Java Virtual Machine (see the Warning message below). This despite the fact that I am running Internet Explorer version 5.01 (a.k.a. version 5.00.2919.6307). I had no problem using the Homestead online web site creation tools.

Before starting another download, I went to see what the Homestead web site has to say about this. Included with the instructions for downloading Homestead (their terminology, not mine) was the below:

Oh, I see. The System Requirements web page says nothing about the Java Virtual Machine. I went to the Help section of the web site and searched the Help for "java virtual machine". One document there has a Microsoft link to get a new JVM rather than the homestead link above.

July 18, 2000. Microsoft released a new version (5.5) of Internet Explorer just a few days ago. I asked Homestead tech support today about the impact of this new release on the JVM requirements. I said:
I am running IE5.01 and was told that I needed the updated JVM to run the offline version of homestead.
Microsoft just released version 5.5 of IE for Windows which raises two questions:
1. If I download IE5.5 will that automatically install an upgraded JVM that will work with the offline version of Homestead?
2. If I download the updated JVM from your web site, will later installing IE5.5 down level it?