FlockHosting Blog

Server Work & Upgrades

Over the next week or so I am working with one of the companies FH’s servers are located with to spread out servers a bit – no changes/updates are required of any FH customer, but there will be some downtime as things are re-located within the datacenter – a full game plan will be made and posted breaking down when each server will go down in the evening, but once the re-location of things is done, you’ll be right back up and running! Looking at as little as 15-20 minutes of outage in the evening, but I’ll have a firmer time-table soon.

Also more batches of upgrades are in the works, and things are progressing nicely – next week pricing for SSL, Add-on Domains, and more will be added to the options for packages, so stay tuned for more additions as the site continues to take off, and also prepare for the return of a FlockHosting classic “Crazy October”! Already working on not only deals, but giveaways this year, so stay tuned!

Have a Blessed and Wonderful Weekend everyone!

Free Upgrade Status

A few customers have emailed in asking about the free upgrades, they are coming slowly but surely – it is an account by account free upgrade not a blanket upgrade process, so I am checking accounting -> current package -> manual upgrade – if you have not already done so, please check your account information and ensure it is up to date, and that you have no outstanding invoices – accounts in good standing are going first, if your having problems logging in or making payment please don’t hesitate to open a ticket.

If you have any questions about upgrades or any of the other recent changes, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Welcome to the New FlockHosting!

Many months in design/re-design, and finally I have settled on this lovely layout. A tremendous thanks goes out to Josh Renaud who gave FlockHosting an amazing site for the last few years, it helped re-brand and step up the site a notch, if you need a website designed, be sure to check him out and tell him Chuck from FlockHosting sent you!

Change is a tough thing! As FlockHosting has grown these past few years – boy howdy can it be tough! Going from a single server, to two, to three – new anti-spam, new webservers, new php, its a field which is always moving! By the grace of God alone have I made it this far and kept my remaining bits of sanity This is a big year of change for FlockHosting as like many of you I too have had to tighten the belt as many sites have shut down and thus the budget shrinks up a little bit – but never fear! Even if we have to scale back down to 2 servers (very BEEFY servers), I am dedicated as long as the Lord would have me to, continue working on FlockHosting, and he keeps opening new doors.

So new things! Upgrades, Upgrades, Upgrades. In a effort to streamline things a bit some old packages are being retired, but current users will retain those account types – plus some un-disclosed upgrades to each account type – so over the next 14 days watch for your account to get a little adjustment or two – the new accounts being offered, are some new eCommerce and Church focused options which are now open to the public, in a goal to help both Christian Owned Businesses and Churches get steady email and high-capacity storage for Video/Audio – doors are opening!

Email was another area folks were looking for some relief and upgrade, now FlockHosting offers a new email solution with accounts with up to 10GB of storage that is separate from your website storage, so if you have 1GB of storage on the website, you would separately have up to 10GB of storage for just email! It works on the iPhone, T-Mobile G1 (Any Android Phone), Windows Mobile, and Blackberry – great setup! In testing I setup local churches with it, and have had great response thus far!

Also as a added bonus – all packages for the remainder of the year have free setup, and a free domain when you pre-purchase a semi-annual or annual package. No coupons, no codes, just simple savings! More fine tuning to come over the next few days and some additional options and more…

So look around, see what you think – and as always if you find something wrong with the site, do let me know, I am sure there will be some blips here and there for a few days as I get everything moved in, thanks for your prayers and patience, and if you need any help – as always check the left hand side for some contact methods – or open a trouble ticket!

Take Care & God Bless.

Preparing for Site Re-Launch!

Software is getting updated as I wait for the final servers to reboot, upgraded the backend, uploading the new theme, transferring the content from the dev. database – it’s like preparing cookies, putting all the ingredients in, baking, and tasty perfection with that first bite!

I am very excited to get this new website up and running, again I can’t say thank you enough to Josh Renaud for the FH logo, the great site layout that has served FlockHosting these past few years, it was an amazing blessing.

So stay tuned, as things lead into the weekend it will start to pan out with a time table for upgrades (also starting slowly this weekend) – also watch for new support ticket for the department “Upgrades” to appear as your hosting accounts get your free resources upgrades! Lots to do, and eventually I am going to get the sleep to do it

Thanks for your continued prayers in all of this! Much appreciated! Take Care and see you on the new website!

Server Security Updates

This coming Wednesday and Thursday night servers will be going thru some rolling reboots to apply some recent security updates – this will cause some minor disruptions in service – tops is 30 minutes, but I am hoping for much much less.

Each night it will start around 6PDT/8CDT – so hang tight, and watch Facebook/Twitter for more news as it happens or any extended outages are expected and this page is offline.

FlockHosting.com is Back!

I apologize for the day of outages, several things just went very very wrong – and I have come to the conclusion some changes are needed to keep things running smoothly if and when there are outages, originally it was make this site a separate server, but for the first time in 3 years it went down as well – so the flow of information quite simply was not there.

The long-story of it all is some maintenance that was meant to be quick, wasn’t so quick – some network issues with Shepherd persisted and resulted in a large number of domains being un-accessible for a few hours in the AM – most customer sites were returned to normal in the early afternoon solving the network issues, however FH was left offline doing a disk check (required every so often) however it took much longer than expected leaving FH.com offline.

Some changes will be made in how all of this is handled, I do apologize for everyone for the outages if they were effected, if you are having problems please email me directly or open a ticket for further assistance.

Emergency Updates [All Servers]

Tonight starting at 9PM (PST) there will be some rolling reboots through out the evening. Total downtime for each server is expected to be 10-30 minutes, and I can’t say for sure when each machine will go down for it’s window, just going to keep going thru the night.

I do regret the short notice of this announcement, but as this is in part a security patch, it couldn’t wait. I appreciate your understanding, and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause, but things are getting upgraded and ready to move forward into 2009, newsletter, new site, new packages many things on their way! Stay tuned for more!

Mixed Outage

One of the upstream providers our DC uses (NTT) had a outage this morning, and has caused several outages – I have beent old the DC is cutting from NTT->Sprint, this is filtering down and should be to most networks soon.

I apologize for the continued outages due to attack/network issues – I am hoping things are going to be fixed up here soon – I will update with more as soon as I get it.

Massive DDoS Attack

As many have noted over the last few hours things have been slow to offline, I apologize for the outage, our upstream was having a massive DDoS attack on going, they have re-routed a lot of traffic, and things are starting to smooth out slowly but surely.

I do apologize for the outage – things should continue to level out over the next few hours as traffic returns to normal! Your prayers and IM’s were appreciated during this time.

Upgrades, Audits, Crazy!

Well it’s nearly that time again! Crazy October is right around the corner! Specials are going to be coming to the second full week of October (Monday the 13th) as well as a promotion to tie into the usual Crazy October specials!

A new site look and feel is underway, and it’s coming along quite nicely (if I do say so myself) but I am actively working to get some of the front-end of FlockHosting caught up as my primary goal has been the backend which has been coming along nicely, new enhacements are working nicely, and new mail options are nearly out of the testing phase – special thanks to testers!

I had hoped to have a newsletter out, but the joys of working everywhere lately, busy, which is good, but sometimes time isn’t always available, spent nearly 12 hours sleeping Sunday->Monday, so a nice catch up – but it’s time for some FH TLC! So stay tuned here for more! Off to update the site’s backend in prep for the upcoming changes, so things may be a little out of sorts for a bit.