I am paid up with Netfirms for another 7 months but honestly, I have had no problems with them. The tech support people have helped me fix so many things. I don’t think my permalink problem has anything to do with Netfirms. I think it has to do with permalinks in 2.0.2 not working for everybody and no one having a clue how to fix them. I did a search for 2.0 and permalinks and dozens of threads concerning this issue come up.
Previously I had installed Word Press through Netfirms (2.0.1) and my permalinks were fine. Then I thought I should upgrade because of the security issue. That is when I lost a years worth of blogs (my fault, but Netfirms helped me retrieve a back-up file).
As soon as I manually installed Word Press 2.0.2 everything went south. I have stripped my site down to the bare bones in an attempt to fix the permalink problem but nothing works and I have lost traffic as a result. Again, it is my fault that I lost a years worth of blogs and it was my choice not to try and get them back up. I just thought a fresh install might be all I needed.
I am not a code expert and I think I got in way over my head trying to manually install Word Press. If it were not for the tech support people at Netfirms, there would be nothing on my page right now. As for 2.0.2 I don’t know if the security benefits of having it are worth all the trouble I have gone through in the last 3 weeks trying to get it to work. If anyone finds a way to fix the permalink issue in 2.0.2 I hope they post it for those of us who still can not figure it out.