Announcement for Venus Server Customers. for 12/14/2004

WHFI_Beth · Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2004 Posts: 166

We are please to announced that on Tuesday December 14th, your web hosting account with us will be going though some enhancements which will improve functionally as well as provide you with additional options and better control for your account. Additionally, the hardware of the machine has also been upgraded to a larger and faster machine.

Many of you have been here though the years when we have performed previous upgrades and know that you will not see any difference in your site and your Email because we make great effort to think things through when we do upgrades. We have taken every precaution to complete this process as flawlessly as possible. The downtime will be no more than 30 minutes and that should occur at approximately 4 a.m. Tuesday morning. However, despite the extreme caution we exercise, we expect that some of you will have some questions or issues that may need to be addressed when the new server comes up. Because of how we set this up there should be no risk of data loss because the old server will remain intact and available to us for 7 days allowing issues to be addressed.

A final server backup will be completed on Sunday and Email will be backed up and restored to the new server Monday. If at all possible, we are asking you to keep changes to a minimum during this time, but are prepared for that not to be an option for some of you and will require us to move files/changes from the old server to the new server.

Following are answers to some questions you may have:

Question: How do I work the new control panel?

We have provided a full Tutorial w/ Flash demonstrations of how to work with the updated control panel, as well as other aspects of your hosting plan. Those tutorials are located on our helpdesk or can be accessed directly here: http://www.webhostingforidiots.com/tutorials

Will I lose data or Email:
Most of you will NOT be missing emails. If anything it will be the spam you receive in the middle of the night. But we have preserved the system, incase you have some concerns.

To access the old server you will need to edit the incoming mail server ONLY in your Outlook or Outlook Express program. Once you check your mail from the old server you need to return the incoming mail server to your domain name.

To do this you will need to go to tools, accounts or Email accounts and choose the Email account you want to check. From there you will need to go to the servers tab and change the INCOMING mail server to 63.111.67.249.

Once you receive your Email, IMMEDIATELY change the mailserver back to your domain name. If you do not do this you will not receive NEW emails.

If you are a webmail only user, to access the old server please go to http://webmail.migration.actwd.net.

DO NOT Reply to mail from this interface. Instead forward the Email to your self and it will arrive @ the new server.

If you have questions on either of these two functions, please feel free to contact tech support.

What do I do if I have a problem:

If you have an issue we have four vehicles for you to get help immediately. We are asking that you try the steps in the order below to help us help you as fast as possible.

As some of you may know already we have added a searchable forum for support issues
It is located here: http://www.webhostingforidiots.com/blog. We have added a topic named migration for migration related issues. In addition, there is a technical support area to help with support issues you may encounter that aren’t directly related to the migration.

We suspect that the issues that may present themselves will show up in multiple cases. With that in mind we felt that to open the forum up for migration issues as well as normal support issues would allow you immediate answers. If your specific problem is not there, feel free to post your problem there and we will respond as rapidly as possible.

Second, we have our online trouble ticket system. We ask that you use that to submit a problem. We think that the above two methods will allow us to expedite support issues and allow a more rapid turn around on problems. The link to submit the trouble ticket is here: http://www.actwdsitehosting.com/helpdesk/trouble_ticket.html

Third, you may Email techsupport@actwd.com
Lastly, of course you may call us but this may not lead necessarily lead to a quicker fix of issues and in fact cause a delay of the repair.

Why are you doing this?

We are doing this to upgrade server side and control panel software as well as provide you with a faster server/larger server to accommodate the growth of your websites. Also the enhancements that to the control panel add a host of features and the only way to upgrade this was to move sites to a new machine so your website was not down while the upgrade was being preformed. We think you all will be very happy with what’s been added.

Finally, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your business. We value our relationship with each of you and want to wish you a very Happy Holiday Season and a Joyous and Prosperous New Year.

WHFI_Beth · Site Admin Joined: 29 Sep 2004 Posts: 166

Sites should be restored within the hour. It took a little longer to update the new machine. site were not taken off line @ 4 a little later and thus the delay.

Robyn · Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 4

Beth,
I would really have preferred that this be done some time other than during the Christmas shopping season. It's causing extra work effort and time at a time that's super inconvenient for my business. If there's not a crisis that forces the timing, in the future please consider not doing upgrades during peak seasons for holiday shopping.
Thanks Smile

Robyn

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