FlockHosting Blog

Blog has Moved!

If you are not a friend on Facebook/Twitter you may have missed the note, this blog has moved – navigation will be adjusted in the new website layout coming soon – but for now click the link below to be transported to the new home!

http://blog.flockhosting.com

Mid-Year Catch-Up

Man this year is just blasting by! Everytime it seems I start to get caught up with various projects I get hit with things again, I do apologize for some of the recent outages network issues at some of the datacenters I use seem to have had some issues, but most seem to be patched up and working smoothly again – So thanks again for your patience and prayers!

2010 – Part 2

The remainder of the year is going to bring some changes, some I have mentioned on the Facebook/Twitter account – for one this blog will be re-located to off-network location for ease of status updates, and should also line up with Facebook and Twitter – so across the board it should line up nicely.

After trying out a new pricing structure it’s become clear it may of helped 1 or 2 folks find a plan that “fit” their situation, however it’s simply over-complicated it for others looking for that “Easy” to sign-up hosting plan – so to that end I am creating 1 base plan, plenty of storage and resources for a Church, Business, or Personal – but offer easy to upgrade add-on’s which will include a new feature I have been working on for those wanting to do media, but not wanting to fiddle with 3rd party solutions which require complex keys, urls, which can be time-consuming, but rather simple high-traffic media solutions for Audio and Video, including mass storage & transfer quotas – so stay tuned for that.

To the current customers on the various packages and plans over the last few years, your going to be adjusted to a “LOYALTY” plan, which will get quarterly upgrades – so additional storage/bandwidth every quarter – so you’ll see your packages upgrade on server occasionally – but if you feel the need to upgrade to the new standardized package you can, but you’ll miss out on the increases – first one will be if your account does not have 1GB in storage (with the exception of tiny customized or under $5 a month packages) you’ll get 1GB of storage by the end of June – and your increases will go from there – there will be some caps on this, but I’ll have a full run down on that as the process moves forward.

Last upcoming change coming in June is the new website, should help in the simplify process – hope to get a lot of work done on it and avoid more projects and distractions this month as I write it up and get the code adjusted and site looking slick – also if you are a designer please drop me a email looking to get some contact information for a new “Find a Designer” section of FlockHosting, hopefully it can send some business your way!

Final Bits

There are a few other mini-bits which I would post, but I am still fine tuning things, but I appreciate everyone sticking with FH these past few years, and I do as always apologize for lag in billing issues – working to get that spruced up and back on track after the recent PayPal issues where payments weren’t getting posted, if your still having issues, cancel your subscription and re-create it on the next invoice, I apologize for the hassle, but just how PayPal works I guess – but things will get better in that area too.

If you have not checked out the Facebook Page or Twitter, I encourage you to like/follow them – most of the updates lately flow there quickly – so a good place to watch for news on outages, but soon that’ll tie into the blog as well – but stay tuned! More good things coming very soon! Thanks for your continued prayers and business – looking forward to a great 2nd half of the year here @ FlockHosting!

Network/Power Issue

As I have talked with more folks in the Data Center where the hardware is about what happened, appears first network issues were happening, followed by a power blip that caused many servers to shutdown, thus things have been coming back up and I am still working on the server Shepherd to come back online – I do apologize for the issue – sadly with all the storms and such, just happy this was handled quickly and for most without much downtime.

I am sorry I have not posted here sooner, but Facebook and Twitter were both updated as the outage occurred, if your not following the Facebook as a fan or Twitter – please take a minute to follow one or both Shepherd is doing some final disk checks and coming back online here soon I hope, as soon as I know more I will update Facebook & Twitter.  Stay tuned for more updates.

Emergency Maintenace [Update]

Tonight I received notification from hardware monitoring that one of the drives on Faith is currently experiencing errors, and instead of waiting a few days and replacing it, steps are being taken to have it changed this evening to avoid extended outage if the drive does fail entirely.

This will mean an outage this evening, and I do apologize for the late notice  at 8PM PST (10CST) the server will be taken offline for ~30 minutes to swap out the drive, 30 minutes is of course the best case scenario the Datacenter could provide me with, so I ask for your prayers over this transition to the new drive that it goes smoothly and things come back up quickly – and that the hands of the crew in the data center are blessed with a smooth replacement.

As soon as the server is back online and things are operating properly I will update this post as well as statuses on Facebook and Twitter – I am also working to label all customers in the newsletter database with which servers they occupy so that I can send out targeted email notes to folks on when things are going up/down or changing, so thanks for your patience and prayers! I’ll update with more in a few hours!

UPDATE: Looks like things have started to level out, monitoring things closely still – Watching things for next few hours closely as things finish up entirely, but so far so good! Thanks for the prayers!

Sites are Moved!

The servers have been re-located, things look good, later tonight the server will stop serving websites after the sites have had some time to find their new IP address – but for now everything is moved over, data will remain on server for a few days, cPanel on the old server will be disabled, but its all smooth sailing from here! Thanks to everyone for their patience & prayers!

If you notice anything not quite right, please open a single ticket and document any issues you may be having.

Titus to Solomon

Earlier this year Titus was setup, it was a move in how hosting “could” be done using a 64bit platform – for the most part things have gone smoothly but in the realm of upkeep, security, and issues like modules, backend support etc. have made me have to re-focus and stick to a 32-bit setup.

So to that end Titus will be de-comissioned this Saturday after a migration of data to Solomon, all customers on Titus should have received a email with this information – but for those who may not of, this is being cross posted here on the blog, as well as Facebook and Twitter. Read the email that was sent out below.

Read More

A Crazy October!

So October’s specials were not what I had hoped, too many misc. server issues seemed to get in the way, but I want to give things one last chance to really be crazy!

For the next Week (ends Tuesday 11/10) you can use the discount code GETCRAZY on any current package (includes Email) to save 25% off the package when you pay for 1 year in advance (or two) – PLUS your domain is free!

For those just looking for some savings, across all packages purchased for 6 months, you will see a FREE domain as well. So something hopefully for everyone!

If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Faith Outage

I do apologize for the outage this morning, the team at the datacenter worked to try and resolve the problems as quickly as possible – sadly the issue wasn’t as clear-cut as one would hope in getting a server back online, several solutions were tried and seemed to work briefly – thus why some of you may of noticed things come back online, only to go offline again.

The latest fix appears to be the ticket, they of course as well as me are watching the issue closely – I do apologize for not putting information up on the outage as it happened, last night after a few months of mixed sleep, I got to sleep early, and apparently deep enough to sleep thru alarms going off that a server was down – thankfully I do have a team who keeps an eye on the servers and they were working on it even then, just no way to throw you guys updates.

I do appreciate the continued patience of folks as these moves/hardware issues have happened – I am very blessed with some amazing customers! If you have any questions about the outage or are having ANY problems, as always feel free to open a ticket.

Crazt October Package!

So it is here – I had a web site launch yesterday which took more of my time that expected as it included a presentation to a group of church members and pastors – but it went well, and after a hefty nap, here we go!

The Package

2GB of Storage
30GB of Bandwidth
10 x 1GB Enhanced Email Accounts (Unlimited Aliases)
10 MySQL Databases

The usual package bits are included (nightly backup, Fantastico, Installatron, etc.) – it’s only going for $7.77 a month – no coupons, no additional tweaking, quick and easy.

If your interested in this package click here! And your off and running!

First Promo, Late – but here!

My apologies for the delay in the posting of this, I had hoped to get this online sooner, but it has been busy around here for me! But better late than never! Remember 10% of all proceeds are being donated to the Hands and Feet Project!

This promo is 15% off any service purchased for a year, so if you pre-pay for a year you get 15% off the price, that’s for the new email service and the new hosting packages! It can only be used once per customer (open to customers New & Old!) so give it a whirl, at check out use code CO15FOR12 – this is valid until 10/31 or 25 uses, so please don’t delay!