OT: Mozilla Thunderbird and Bluehost.com

[Renfield]

So I (stupidly) agreed to make a website for a coworkers friend for a fair (raped me) price because I really needed the money for Christmas.

 

Turns out he is a totally nutjob and completely computer illiterate. Long story short, he can't seem to make Outlook Express work on his computer, some errors I've never heard of upon opening the program and so on.

 

So I had him download Thunderbird, I've never used it but heard it's a decent program, and I swear by Firefox, so I trust the name.

 

Now, I 'm by no means an expert on computers, but I can handle my own and follow instructions really well, but I can't for the life of me get the email account that came with the hosting I acquired through Bluehost.com to function.

 

I went with Bluehost on the suggestions of some here and am NOT happy thus far. For one, I can't find a contact number for them, or an email address or anything to call them and ask what is probably 1-2 simple questions to resolve this issue. Secondly, they have all these auto functions to get Outlook working, but not Thunderbird, which kind of scares me a little considering how many problems I am having. I can get Outlook working perfectly every time, but I can't make Thunderbird work to save me, and I've tried everything I can think of.

 

Has anyone else experienced these problems and know what I might need to do to resolve it?

 

So far I can get it to recognize the email address and check emails. At first that worked for about 5 minutes, then just stopped working. It seems to be working ok in that way now, but I can't make it send emails out for the life of me. It keeps giving me a password error, and I know for a fact I only used one password on the whole thing, the email account shares the same password as my Bluehost account. I've also changed the password just to make sure that I made no typos.

 

The asshat that I am doing this for (which setting up his email was NOT part of the deal) is now strong arming me into fixing his problems for him and until I do, I don't get paid. He waited until today to tell me of his problem when he's had the final project handed to him for 3 days now. I was supposed to get paid by today, instead I find out that today he finally got around to looking at it and is holding my money until I fix his problems for him. He lives 4 hours away and I don't own a car or I'd just go there with a copy of Outlook in hand and reinstall it and be done with things.

 

I work two jobs and had to beg to get tomorrow afternoon off entirely so I could finish my Xmas shopping, I needed that money to do it. So now, (assuming I can even fix this problem) I can't buy my son his presents because of this asshole until Christmas {censored}ing Eve, my next night off

 

Great, thanks to this {censored}-for-brains I have to go to Toys-R-Us and EB Games on Christmas Eve.

 

Thanks for letting me vent, and Help me HCBF, you're my only hope.

[mike fitzwell]

Prayers and mojo your way bro.

 

Some random motivational pictures to help you through your dark time:

 

 

 

 

[t3ch]

I told you to use surpass

 

 

Uhh as far as thunderbird not working I'm not sure, that's weird. I've never had any trouble with it, and I use both outlook and 'bird on different machines. Can you login with other accounts on his domain, or is it just the one specific user? Maybe try creating a test account and see if it bullies you around the same. I assume you've tried a completely blow away/reinstall of thunderbird?

[mike fitzwell]

Forgot the one of "our" girl. Oops!

 

[t3ch]

Also, you need to post what the original outlook errors are. Therein lies your problem. If there is something screw up with his program files, then throwing more {censored} on top of it probably won't fix it.

 

Setting up his outlook has nothing to do with getting a website ready, so I'd tell him too bad. But that's just me.

[Renfield]

I told you to use surpass Uhh as far as thunderbird not working I'm not sure, that's weird. I've never had any trouble with it, and I use both outlook and 'bird on different machines. Can you login with other accounts on his domain, or is it just the one specific user? Maybe try creating a test account and see if it bullies you around the same. I assume you've tried a completely blow away/reinstall of thunderbird?

 

Been there, done all of that 5 times over. I think I need to call Bluehost, but my tired eyes (16 hour days 7 a week for the last month) can't find a number for them anywhere.

 

It took a lot of monkeying around, but I finally got it to receive email, and that includes inputting a password, and it took it. I've sent test emails galore from my Outlook to it and gotten 100% of them. I've deleted and created new test email accounts to give myself a fresh start, and in all cases I can make it get emails, but I can't get it to send them, and it's all based on the wrong password for the outgoing side of things, or at least that is the final reason it gives when it fails to connect, it could be any number of things in between that is not quite right.

 

I've loaded the properties into Outlook and can send and receive endlessly with it, it's only 'bird that's not the word.

[Renfield]

Forgot the one of "our" girl. Oops!

 

Thanks Mike TAT definitely helps raise the spirits a little.

[Renfield]

Also, you need to post what the original outlook errors are. Therein lies your problem. If there is something screw up with his program files, then throwing more {censored} on top of it probably won't fix it. Setting up his outlook has nothing to do with getting a website ready, so I'd tell him too bad. But that's just me.

 

I need to get paid, he won't pay me until I can make his email work, even though it was nothing to do with the original agreement. And I'm not about to piss him off further, he's quite the piece of work (a UFC fighter, so just a little tempermental ).

 

At this point I don't want to even speak to him. I'd rather take an hour making screen shots how to walk him through it than call him for 2 mins and ask him to read off the error he gets, type it out and go on a quest to fix his computer from here. Because anything that will have to be done to resolve the errors, he will have to do it for me, and it took 2 minutes to walk him through how to find his Start menu. Swear to Jebus.

[collinwho]

 

I went with Bluehost on the suggestions of some here and am NOT happy thus far. For one, I can't find a contact number for them, or an email address or anything to call them and ask what is probably 1-2 simple questions to resolve this issue. Secondly, they have all these auto functions to get Outlook working, but not Thunderbird, which kind of scares me a little considering how many problems I am having. I can get Outlook working perfectly every time, but I can't make Thunderbird work to save me, and I've tried everything I can think of.

 

 

I can't help you set up Thunderbird, but if you can't find the bluehost customer service number you simply aren't trying. Its on the homepage. As is a live customer service chat box. I've used both and they were both very helpful.

[Renfield]

I can't help you set up Thunderbird, but if you can't find the bluehost customer service number you simply aren't trying. Its on the homepage. As is a live customer service chat box. I've used both and they were both very helpful.

 

Ah, that's my problem. I'm logged in to my account, and the number doesn't seem to appear anywhere in my screen, but is on the homepage . Yeah, and I just thought I was tired, man, I feel dumb now.

[Renfield]

Oh the irony.

 

I'm on hold with Bluehost tech support to try and fix this. I'm number 13 in line.

 

Funny thing is, that number is a good number in my eyes, so I am actually taking that as a positive sign that this will get fixed soon. It's still too late to get paid before the weekend, but at this point I just want to fix it so I can get paid at all. I already forked out the money for the hosting, I don't want to get stuck on this if the deal goes south entirely.

[t3ch]

They should be able to help out, post us on if they helped you and what the solution was; I'm curious. I wondered about that though, since I've only heard good things about bluehost.

[Renfield]

They should be able to help out, post us on if they helped you and what the solution was; I'm curious. I wondered about that though, since I've only heard good things about bluehost.

 

Well, 20 mins on hold and it was my turn. I'll give them credit, they are really personable to deal with, very patient in helping me. Now, as I said, I'm not a dummy with computers, and have a ton of patience myself and tried a ton of things already, so that kept it moving smoothly. Everything he wanted me to try, I knew how to do and tried it. It was a 25 minute call and we went through a lot of different things to try and resolve it.

 

By the end of the call, he set up a test account for the domain and sent/received emails cleanly on his machine, but nothing we could do would make it work on mine. We checked firewall settings, all kinds of things, nothing cracked that egg. He actually gave up and said I don't know what else to suggest. We did our best to work through it and both are stumped as to what could be wrong.

 

Really, I am not upset over the way it went, he was very knowledgeable, friendly and did his honest best to help me, can't fault a man for that.

 

He then helped me get things happening with webmail, and that is what I've pitched to dip{censored}, so fingers crossed that will be fine with him and I'll see my money some time in the next week.

 

Then there will be the inevitable follow-up next month as I try to get him to pay the hosting bill too, as he is trying to back out of that claiming he had no knowledge of it, so isn't paying it.

 

Meanwhile, even his friend, my coworker, who made the introduction for us, is saying he knew about it and agreed. He was on the phone with him, right in front of me when we finalized the price, and there was 2... one for making a website, the other for handling things to put it online as he is such a newb on computers and just wanted to pay someone to get his stores website online.

 

He now only wants to pay for the website design and expects it to be hosted as well indefinitely for that ({censored}) amount.

 

Fine, whatever, give me my money first, then we'll talk about that later.

[t3ch]

Yeah, the majority of hosts give you 2-3 options to different web-based mail clients to use. I liked Horde back when I checked it online.

 

And definitely dude. He's being pretty {censored}ty about this whole thing. And expecting something hosted indefinitely? lol yeah right. Although you know what? Once you get paid, you can turn the tables on him. If he wants something added or needs help with something, "I'm not helping you until I get domain/host payment" or whatnot.

[collinwho]

Bluehost has horde and squirrelmail available for webmail, but having tried both, I would recommend having it forwarded to a gmail acct, since gmail allows you to set it up so that you can send from your own domain. Its just a better interface IMO. Thats what I do with the email from my domain, its easier than running Mail on a Mac and then having to deal with web-mail and remember whether I responded to something or not when I am away from my home computer.

[t3ch]

 

Bluehost has horde and squirrelmail available for webmail, but having tried both, I would recommend having it forwarded to a gmail acct, since gmail allows you to set it up so that you can send from your own domain. Its just a better interface IMO. Thats what I do with the email from my domain, its easier than running Mail on a Mac and then having to deal with web-mail and remember whether I responded to something or not when I am away from my home computer.

 

 

+1

 

That's what I do on both of my domains. I rarely get mail sent to the domain anyway, so now I don't have to worry about checking it every once in awhile.

[misterhinkydink]

Perhaps your ISP is blocking port 25 (SMTP)? They have a solution.