Server Upgrade

Latest News for hosting customers

On this page:

• Switchover schedule
• What you need to know
• Stay up to date / Emergency contact details

Switchover schedule

Friday 8th January, 5pm
Website Freeze (see more below)
Email offline
Transfer starts

Saturday 9th January, 9am
Manual setup and tests by us

Saturday 9th January, 3pm(ish)
Websites offline
Start switchover

Saturday 9th January, 4pm(ish)
All done & online
Website unfreeze
We email you

What you need to know

Website Freeze Tonight 5pm: Once we start transferring accounts from the old server to the new one, it's important that no new changes happen on the old server.

Please be sure to complete all website updates you're planning before 5pm today.

If you try making changes after that time, nothing will stop you but a) your changes may not make it across to the new server and b) more importantly you could break your website if you happen to do your update mid-transfer.

Please wait until we inform you that the switchover is complete. All being well, you'll receive this tomorrow.

Email downtime: To make sure you don't lose any email, we have to shutdown email handling at the same time as the Website Freeze. This will remain unavailable until the switchover is complete. I know how important email is to everyone, even at the weekend, but this is the safest solution to avoid mail loss.

What happens to emails sent to you during this period? They'll be fine. They'll trickle in gradually after the switchover. Some senders may receive a message along the lines "We haven't been able to deliver your message for 4 hours. We'll keep retrying (up to 5 days)." However, even in these cases, the email will be delivered.

Can you send email during the downtime? You could send email via your own ISP. These days this is the recommended way to do things anyway, even though we've provided this service to-date. However, if you use our server to send email then the answer is No.

Can you collect emails during the downtime? No. Not while the service is down.

Website downtime: The website downtime schedule is different. We're aware that a number of our clients have websites that get significant traffic, even at the weekend, so we have planned things to minimise this downtime. Your website will continue to be available overnight tonight and during the day tomorrow (on the old server) up until the 'switchover'. There will then be downtime while we switch over the virtual cables. We're allowing an hour for this, but it could be a lot less.

If you have a website with a database that gets regularly updated (e.g. posts/comments from your online community, eCommerce transactions, etc.), we recommend you shutdown the facility for those updates at the time of the Website Freeze. In technical language, make your website 'read only'. Alternatively, as one customer has already requested, we could switch off your website at that time. If you are unsure, please contact us now. I'd rather answer a 'silly question' now than resolve an issue later.

I will confirm more precise timings in the run up to the switchover. Most likely the switchover will start around 7pm on Friday 8th January, with automated transfers running overnight. We will pick these up early on Saturday morning and do the finalising steps. With luck, we’ll be done by midday.

We have two levels of contingency.

• If the overnight transfer fails, we have Saturday (and if needs be Sunday) to retry.
• If, for some reason, we encounter a problem that can’t be solved before Monday, we can clear up space on the current server (now that we know it needs doing!) and keep everyone’s accounts on the current server.

My highest priority in this switchover is making the experience as smooth as possible for everyone concerned, even if it means waiting a little longer.

Stay up to date / Emergency contact details

During the hosting upgrade, our email and website will be unavailable like yours.

Instead you can track progress on Twitter. We'll post periodic updates so you know what's happening.

Follow us on Twitter to receive these automatically.

You can also contact us during office hours today and from 9am tomorrow on 0117 924 0030. Obviously any calls we take tomorrow will temporarily halt progress, so please only call if it's urgent.

A Gift for Our Existing Customers

Our new server gives us greater capacity all round.

Although you’ll benefit from this, obviously our aim is for it to give us new products and make room for new customers.

I also appreciate that the move is a hassle for you and I’d like to thank you for your patience and for being a loyal customer.

As a thank you, you will get a free upgrade to your account: in terms of hosting space, in terms of monthly bandwidth and in terms of mailboxes.

On top of that I plan to give you the choice of a ‘free for a year’ extra upgrade on your account. More news on that shortly.

Background

I’m pleased to announce that your web & email hosting will be upgraded shortly.
The good news is that as well as upgrading the software, we’re bringing in new, faster hardware.

The better news is that this upgrade won’t cost you a penny. We’ve always promised to make sure we have plenty of capacity on the server and this upgrade will enable us to fulfil that as the service grows.

What’s upgraded and how it affects you

1. It’s faster. Of course! We’re switching from a dual core processor to quad core with more memory and larger disk space.
2. The control panel is changing. I know it’s a pain to get used to something new... sorry! We’ve thought long and hard about switching from the current ‘Plesk’ control panel to ‘cPanel’. Although the layout will be unfamiliar at first, I think cPanel is easier to use and you’ll be up to speed quickly. Why change the control panel at all? Well…
3. The new control panel makes it easier for us to manage the server and allows us to improve the way we monitor and run the server, which means an even smoother service for you.
4. New features. It also enables us to introduce new features for you. Probably the first one will be WordPress. This has become a popular blogging engine and content management system over the past few years, and we’d like to make it available to you.
5. PHP and MySQL upgrades. If you have any forms on your website, from a contact form to a full eCommerce system, chances are you’re using PHP. If you have a database, it’ll be MySQL. The current server supports PHP 4.4 and MySQL 4.1, which are both rock solid, proven technologies, but they are gradually being superseded and we anticipate support for them will dwindle in the next year. If you think this might affect you, see more on this below.
6. Same service or better. You’ll still have access to the facilities you’ve been used to: creating new email accounts, handling email redirections, out-of-office autoresponders, etc.. We’re also planning some tasty service upgrades and we’ll let you know more about those as we roll them out.