FlockHosting Blog

Spring Time @ FlockHosting

Spring Time at FlockHosting means some cleanup of the website, some clean-up of the servers, upgrades to software, some to hardware, and overall get some of the dust cleared up from the long winter months!

Email is still in the works, and while I had hoped things would of been done, sadly I hit some snags in the deal, and have been ironing things out and working towards a slow roll-out and hopefully a small yearly fee, vs that of a month to month fee, so stay tuned I hope to have some SOLID details and plans before mid-May.

Upgrades to you the customer! Expect some Storage, MySQL, and Software options from within cPanel, a new Application installer will be live by mid-May to compliment the already active Fantastico, thus offering you some of the same, but also a few more choices of easy to install applications to further enhance your website.

Lastly, some account options are going to be changed out, our Simple07 package will be tweaked a little, price will go up slightly but you will be getting additional resources, current Simple07 customers will continue to enjoy their package, there will be no forced upgrade to the new package/price, but at the same time our YourServer line as well as new options for e-Commerce and Business Class hosting will be up and online towards this summer.

So lots going on in the background, I appreciate everyone’s patience over the start of this year, but stay tuned, some great things are on the docket including some great partnership deals with a few missions out there to help support their efforts around the world while getting yourself, your church, your ministry web hosting!

So stay tuned! The blog should see more updates very soon, hopefully some more news on the email this week – so hang-tight! Good things are on the way! God is Good!

Network Issues Upstream

We have had reports of outages off and on, and some packet loss is being tracked across a few servers, we have a ticket open with the upstream and are watching the situation, hope to have more information on the issue soon. Your prayers and patience are greatly appreciated.

Update: Just finished up the ticket with the upstream, there were some backbone issues, most folks should see a new route to get around the issues at hand, I will continue to monitor things closely thru the weekend to be sure. Thanks for your patience and prayers!

New Email + Spam Filtering Options

After some testing, toying across not one, but three operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, Linux) there will be some new email options added to the server soon – and these will play out a little different than what we have now. Storage used via this email add-on will not take away from the storage on your website, so if you take this upgrade, you’ll be using totally separate storage.

The pricing has been a big big big issue, and I am happy to report that the pricing is now below $1.00, giving you 500MB-1GB of email storage, again, that is completely separate from that of your current storage, if you have mail on server, we can even move it over for you free of charge!

Full pricing will be on the site by mid-week, the service will not go online till April 20th, but there will be a form to pre-signup, and folks who do will get some additional storage at no cost, I am just looking to find those who have a interest in the product, more news will go out this week as well in the newsletter about some changes, upgrades, etc. so stay tuned for more information to follow! Hope you have a blessed Sunday!

Horde Restored

A day late, but a new patch was released last night after I updated, so I have been updating servers today getting things good to go, the core FH servers all should now have Horde back online, also I hope to roll out RoundCube WebMail to all servers by the end of this next week, some of the newer servers in the fleet have it installed, but I hope to expand and add it soon.

Also coming by Friday I hope to have news on the new mail plans, and I will be looking for folks to help test it out! So stay tuned to the blog, and a newsletter will be going out by Friday as well with some updates! Thanks again for your patience!

Horde Update

The final production patch should be going live tomorrow night during some software upgrades, I apologize for the delays in getting this all back online, but please understand the severity of this security issue was such a major hole, it could not be risked.

The patch seems solid in the testing area, and thus far no other alerts have come from Horde or cPanel in regards to the issue, so Friday night updates to cPanel will be processed across the board which will further lockdown the backend of webmail as well as update Horde to fix the hole.

I appreciate your patience in the matter, and I do hope to continue more rollouts over the next month as we expand the offerings to include Fantastico & Installatron, not to mention also the addition of external email services with enhanced spam filtering, webmail, etc. so stay tuned to the blog for more updates!

Horde Fix in Testing

This morning official word went out that the patch has been issued by Horde, and officially included in a newer release build of cPanel! Currently one of the test servers is upgrading to this patch to verify it is in working order before processing these changes across all servers.

I thank everyone for their continued patience in this matter, as security is a top concern in this situation, I thank everyone for understand the seriousness of this webmail outage, hopefully by this evening if all goes well all servers will have Horde access restored. Stay tuned here for the latest!

Horde Disabled

It has recently been announced that Horde in cPanel has some very very serious security concerns, so sadly effective immediately Horde will be disabled to avoid any problems with the safety & security of the servers.

I apologize for the quick-to-action nature of this shutdown, I do realize some of you utilize Horde on a daily basis, and have notes, contacts, etc. stored, I am working with some others to find a work-around to get those imported into Squirrelmail or RoundCube (not yet on all servers) – but rest assured, this is being worked on.

Other options are coming for email, I do hope to have them posted in the next few days, so hang tight! Been busy around here!

Spam Filters

Over the next few days a few blacklists will be adjusted in the anti-spam solution recently deployed – at least one of the lists has made it to where to get “unlisted” its $50 – and they have no record of why you were blocked in the first place – so very shady, and no matter how useful their blacklist might be, if folks can’t send or receive email due to that list, that’s no good.

I will point out that the BlackLists are still just a stop-gap measure to really hold out until I can find favorable pricing on spam filtering, so stay tuned for more information!

DNS Migrating!

Well the final things are falling into place, DNS was switched, and is slowly propagating across the web, this will do a few things, first of which is make deployment of new websites easier (Sorry to all customers new and old who had delays) – but it also allows once again the creation of Add-on, Parked, and Sub domains all from the cPanel interface without any interaction from me, so your good to go!

If you notice anything odd with your website, please do let me know ASAP, ticket system is up and online (it’ll be moving tonight to it’s new server) – but once all this has settled, things will move onto a few growth points, some new add-on’s which will be free to all, some upgrades to customers for their patience in this move, and some specials! The Simple package released in 2007 will be phased out, and a new Simple 2008 will take it’s place, so stay tuned for that as well.

Lot’s coming up, stay tuned for more!

Faith 100%

Well Faith is migrated! The SSL key has been migrated over, and the final DNS has been updated! And it seems if I leave in the next 10 minutes, I’ll make it to the early service, then I get to come home and fall asleep.

If you have ANY problems, please don’t hesitate to open a trouble ticket, please include any error messages – I did fix all the problems found from the last migration (as the cPanel installs were exactly the same) – so take a peek! Please do bear in mind it is Sunday, so my response may have some delay, traditionally I only deal with critical tickets on Sunday, so be patient just a little longer, this will all iron out over the next 24 hours for sure!

Have a Blessed Sunday! Thanks for your prayers and patience!