Alone With Support Again February 8, 2010
Posted by ismywebsite in general.2 comments
It would unfortunately appear that those who were most willing to commit themselves to helping with your website problems are now unwilling to commit to them.
Nick – Quit within 2 weeks.
Megan – Still inactive, and was in the process of being replaced.
Bobby – Now overwhelmed with studies and unable to properly commit himself.
So, that leaves essentially me to handle all the incoming mail while managing the remaining team, which is absolutely wonderful since we all know I get extra hours each day that nobody else gets. Oh right, that wasn’t it. I’m superhuman and don’t need any sleep. No wait, I remember. IsMyWebsite is my only commitment in life so I have all my time available to devote to that.
My guess is maybe support just isn’t for most people. The idea of working to help a very large number of people at the sacrifice of oneself just isn’t appealing. It’s not beneficial.
In fact it’s not nearly as much fun as it was when this site was tiny and there were maybe 20-30 really active clients who needed my help. Now that I get many more than asking for my help each and every day, it’s just not the same. I can’t relate to each and every one of them.
But I’ve had this problem before, and I came up with a solution earlier. And it did work a heck of a lot better than what I’m trying now. That was, the Advisor system…
Anyone remember it? You would have to be one of the really old clients. Anyways, basically, an Advisor is a client who volunteers to help other clients. In exchange, they get 5% of all credits that client gets. Not taken away from the client, but coming out of thin air. So, there’s a benefit to helping out.
And, if you don’t, then eventually your clients will just ditch you for another Advisor. It’s fairly simple. And plus, there’s a public rating system on your Advisor profile much like ours…
http://www.ismywebsite.com/testify
So yeah, I expect this system to considerably replace most of the need for support, however it’s not going to be instantly implemented. I’ve set a date of February 21st to complete a basic version.
Fun With Ruby On Rails January 25, 2010
Posted by ismywebsite in general.1 comment so far
It has recently come to question whether or not our servers actually support Ruby on Rails.
First off, Ruby on Rails is a feature that is presently enabled on request, so not available by default.
So, once you’ve asked us to have Ruby on Rails enabled on your account, you should be 100% set up and ready to go.
Being as I have never programmed with Ruby on Rails, I had previously trusted the claims of three separate providers, that it’s fully working on those servers. In our communication since, we have not been informed otherwise.
As far as I know, it’s also the case that no client appearing completely knowledgeable in launching Ruby on Rails through cPanel (without SSH access) has brought forward any story of successfully running Ruby on Rails on another server, in a way that doesn’t work on ours.
I did, however, have some tests done, and these were the results:
Node 1: Can’t start
Node 2: Can’t start
Node 3: Not installed
Node 4: Not installed
Node 5: Needs to install Ruby on Rails, but have RubyGems
Node 6: Port 12003 needs to be opened
Node 7: Can’t start
I knew Nodes 3-6 either didn’t have full Ruby support or it wasn’t working already, so I was only concerned with Nodes 1, 2, and 7. I asked for a more detailed description of the error, and got this:
“Under Software / Services, you click on Ruby on Rails. You should now create a new application. As appname, I choosed wishlist, Load on boot selected. I just took the suggestion it comes with as path. And the environment is production. It’s the same on all servers. Then you click Run. It tells you it was started, but it’s not when you go back.”
So I did some testing of my own. Here are the exact steps I did, as tested on Node 2, then Node 7, then Node 1:
1) Opened Ruby on Rails from cPanel.
2) Filled in the details as follows:
App Name: test
Load on Boot? X
Application Path: public_html/test
Enviro[n]ment: production
3) Confirmed the following text before returning to the main Ruby page:
Added Ruby on Rails Application
Your app is installed, its name is test
4) Under ‘APP STATUS’, it says ‘Not Running’, so I use the command ‘Run’. (The giant green ‘Play’ icon.)
5) I confirm the following text, which appears to indicate absolutely no problems running the application:
Start Ruby Application
The following Ruby on Rails application was started: test
6) Again, I return to the main Ruby on Rails page, and under ‘APP STATUS’, it says ‘Not Running’, so I use the command ‘Run’.
7) Output is as above, exactly the same, as I repeat these steps multiple times.
8 ) In addition, under ‘RAILS SERVER’, there is a link to a URL which times out when I try to load it, located at http://rubyonrails2.ismywebsite.com:12004/
So that’s the test which was performed. It appears to match the (vague) documentation from cPanel’s website:
http://twiki.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/RubyonRails/DeployingRuby
Unless we both did something wrong, it would appear that Ruby on Rails is in fact, not working, on any of the three servers, with any of the three separate providers. In other words, it would appear someone is missing something, whether it’s cPanel which has launched a feature missing more than the ‘n’ in ‘Environment’, all three of our providers making some sort of false claim, or just our own inexperience in how to run a Ruby on Rails application.
So, how have our providers handled this issue? (All were sent the same message.)
Node 1 (SmokyHosts) – As of today, no reply to our support ticket.
Node 2 (Felweb) – Seems to have some difficulty grasping this concept: No account works. All accounts display the same error. I suspect perhaps, they are as lost as we are, and may need cPanel to help them.
Node 7 (HighLayer) – Response received in 45 minutes:
Ruby on Rails Applications are based on the Rails framework. Rails applications must be run like any other application. After creating an application, you will need to populate it with your code. Then, you can choose to start or stop the application and even to load the application every time the server reboots.
So maybe cPanel, instead of displaying any sort of error, is just starting the application and it stops on it’s own because there’s no code (which is something like I originally thought). And nobody who’s tested anything so far knows how to code properly, or there is some kind of unreported error.
I’m completely lost as to exactly how to code it. Apparently, it’s not as simple as opening a text editor, typing the Ruby code, and visiting a URL. All tutorials I’ve located need SSH, to set up ‘controllers’, which isn’t going to be much use. I’m sure there has to be a way to code without it. Perhaps someone is able to successfully set up a Ruby on Rails application, and run it through our service, and can share that experience with the rest of us?
Any help guys?
Are We Meeting Your Needs? January 18, 2010
Posted by ismywebsite in general.1 comment so far
Obviously, there was a point when we were. I can still remember 4 years ago, when the world actually trusted the free hosting industry, when the largest paid hosts actually had limits, when nearly every free service blasted obtrusive advertising in your visitors faces, and when PHP, cPanel, and MySQL in a free host was a dream come true for absolutely anyone.
Times have changed, of course. There’s absolutely no surprise there. Free hosting of today is an industry plagued in mistrust, a place full of liars and deceit, but all in all, the average person can get a whole heck of a lot more for free if they only know where to look. Everyday I hear and see more and more downright awful things, and when those come from the apparent industry leaders, the largest free hosting providers, it’s no wonder free hosting is a shrinking industry.
But what can I do? The iceberg seems to be melting below my feet. The client base is shrinking rapidly and there’s almost nothing I can say about it. And I wonder sometimes if it’s something I’ve done, some way I’ve changed. I wonder if somehow in breaking even each month instead of sustaining a loss as before, I somehow lose support, that people somehow see a massive difference in things.
So I ask everyone, what is it that should be done to bring us back up where we need to be, effectively competing against the hosting industry as a whole instead of shafted into a corner of having whoever can’t sign up with anyone else. I mean, we have among the highest ratings anywhere by our clients. We have some of the best servers with all the way to 99.99% uptime. We have pretty much every feature anyone has asked for (except JSP, ASP, and SSH). And so what is it that’s causing people to consider us subpar to anyone else?
Thanks for staying with our blog. 
Expanding Our Team – Exciting New Openings November 18, 2009
Posted by lakridserne in volunteer.add a comment
We’re working on collecting new team members. We can see that there are many members who want to help, so that’s great. We need 3 council members in every department. The 3 members will have one weekly meeting at the time that’s best for the council members.
Here are our departments. We’ve marked the departments that are open for members to join with green and the rest with red.
- Administration – Consists of Matt (Azoundria), Brendan (Cobrastrike), and Kris (Lakridserne). Our goal is to ensure the success and coordination of all departments.
- Welcoming – Ensure all websites are reviewed and the registration process is as smooth as possible.
- Support – Ensure all client issues through PM or email are resolved.
- Marketing – Increase the knowledge about our hosting and attract new clients.
- Development – Build new features and pages for the website.
- Abuse – Find and deal with abuse. Review accounts and attempt to resolve issues as they come up.
- Success – Create new client tutorials, layouts, and other tools to help our clients succeed.
- Sustainability – Make sure our hosting is financially stable, and look into long-term solutions to ensure we are here for years to come.
We need at least 24 volunteers, so we don’t hire everyone at once. Therefore we’ve made a plan to hire volunteers.
NOVEMBER 2009
12th – Applications open for Development and Support.
16th – Announce openings to previous volunteers.
17th – Announce openings to full community.
20th – Applications are closed for Support and Development.
21st – Support and Development councils are announced and begin to take office.
22nd – Applications open for Welcoming and Abuse.
24th – Announce openings to previous volunteers.
25th – Applications open for Success department.
26th – Announce openings to full community.
29th – Applications are closed for Welcoming and Abuse.
30th – Welcoming and Abuse councils are announced and begin to take office.
DECEMBER 2009
2nd – Announce success openings to previous volunteers.
5th – Applications closed for Success.
9th – Success council is announced and begins to take office.
The schedule above is subject to change and expansion (but mostly expansion). There’ll be more openings if someone leave a department.
Follow the instructions below if you want to be a part of the IsMyWebsite Support- or Development-team:
- If you don’t have filled out the volunteer application, do it now (it’s very long, but it’s the point – if you fill it out, you show us that you want the job a little more) here
- Reply to this topic, where you fill out the following:
[b]Name:[/b] Your name.
[b]Username:[/b] Your username on the site.
[b]Department:[/b] Which department(s) are you applying for? If more than one, specify your top choice first.
[b]Conflicts:[/b] What would interfere with your contributing to IsMyWebsite? For example, school, work, etc...
[b]Changes:[/b] Any changes since you submitted your volunteer application. Put none if everything is the same.
Good luck!
Uptime November 17th November 18, 2009
Posted by ismywebsite in general.add a comment
It’s been a long time since I posted the last update, but there hasn’t really been a lot of problems. So overall, excellent to see.
Node 2 – Felweb
Uptime last 14 days – 100.00% (Up 0.31%)Node 4 – AquariusStorage
Uptime last 14 days – 100.00% (New Node)Node 7 – HighLayer
Uptime last 14 days – 99.84% (Down 0.16%)Node 6 – Nixism
Uptime last 14 days – 99.84% (Down 0.16%)Node 5 – Addora
Uptime last 14 days – 99.84% (Up 0.16%)Node 3 – OSHS
Uptime last 14 days – 99.69% (Up 5.92%)Node 1 – SmokyHosts
Uptime last 14 days – 98.43% (Up 0.51%)
Please let us know if you ever need any assistance with your hosting.
DNS Analogy November 12, 2009
Posted by ismywebsite in general.add a comment
Some people still don’t get what happened. Here’s an analogy:
Imagine if every Monday, you ask how to get to school. But one day the information booth is closed. So you give up and collapse at the side of the street in a heap. That’s what any computers that couldn’t access our domain or your websites did.
And also consider this. That whole thing happened because the person operating that information booth didn’t have directions to one location. They didn’t know how to get to the theatre, let’s say. That operator doesn’t know how to get to the theatre, so he refuses to come to work, and everyone collapses in heaps at the side of the road because they don’t know how to get where they need to go. Not only that. He doesn’t call in sick. He doesn’t complain. There aren’t any errors. He just doesn’t come.
Sound absurd? Well, that’s why I’m a little bit more than upset about what happened. I checked. I made sure school was open for the day. I made sure the teachers were ready to teach. I made sure that the grass was cut, the flowers watered, the gates open. But none of that mattered. The guy at the information booth wouldn’t tell anyone how to get to the school, so they didn’t go, even though it’s at the same place it’s always been.
Well, guess what? I’ve hired someone new to man the information booth, and this guy WILL tell me if things go wrong and he can’t come to work, something that has never happened since we first created the DNS system 9 months ago. I’m also building a second information booth, so there will be no collapsing in a heap by the side of the road for anyone anymore.
Some people are leaving, and I guess that’s fine. They have a right to be upset. But not my fault everyone decided to collapse in heaps at the side of the road. I only forgot to tell the information booth operator where the theater was, one line in over a million lines of DNS configuration. And it wasn’t even that I didn’t specify that. It was a glitch in the commercial control panel I used to set the DNS. The entry disappeared after I set it.
That’s DNS for you, one of the most frustrating and difficult to manage systems on the face of the planet. There are probably only a few thousand people in the entire world who even know enough to build a system like ours, so I’m sorry that it took a little over a day to fix it.
Preventing Future DNS Problems November 12, 2009
Posted by ismywebsite in general.add a comment
Any complex system that accepts dynamic input is subject to the possibility of wrong output. Any precautions would be to prevent the occurance, and improve the resolution.
Prevention:
- Once this situation is resolved, build the solution into the system, so that any future cases are not subject to human error.
- Not use the commercial control panel for DNS modifications.
Resolution:
- Create an alert to be generated anytime to DNS regeneration has resulted in an error. It would mail me automatically with all applicable details. I would immediately know what and where the problem is.
- Keep a log of the DNS launch sequence, which can be loaded among detection of the error, and contains full details.
- Store DNS entries in alphanumeric order instead of by ID number. This will make it faster to find the problem zone among the thousands of entries that are currently active.
In 9 days, we mark the first anniversary of the most successful system implemented throughout our 3 year history. For many of our clients, this will be the first time they have ever experienced something like this.
On the plus side, I did get to meet quite a few of our clients today for the first time. I’d really like to thank everyone who took the time to let me know their little tidbit of information. That was all quite helpful to put together the full picture of what was going on, and I hope everyone will continue to provide feedback all the time, and not just when things go horribly wrong.
Fun With DNS Configurations November 11, 2009
Posted by ismywebsite in general.3 comments
I just want to thank everyone who’s still here. Interestingly enough, our ratings have been HIGHER as a result of this situation. So thanks everyone for all your wonderful support and patience as we worked to resolve things.
For those curious about the details, I can give you a few of those. When you visit ismywebsite.com, or something.ismywebsite.com, or anything.ismywebsite.com, your connection is first routed to our DNS server, which basically tells you where to find the resource. Then, you look at that server.
Most of the time, your computer only needs to look this information up once. It just remembers from the last time. It caches the data and goes to the same place time after time. But, as you can imagine, this creates a problem when a website moves to a new server, so that’s why your DNS records are updated every 24-48 hours.
As a DNS server does not need to be visited every time you visit the site, downtime and unavailability SHOULD have no effect if you’ve already visited the site. The real mystery is, why our computers all eventually declared mission failure without even checking the CACHED location, which was up and completely operational throughout this time. Yet this is apparently how DNS is implemented in most networks.
So, sometime early yesterday morning I was messing with the DNS for one of our clients who wants to use their IsMyWebsite.com domain on another hosting provider, but the other provider isn’t cooperating very well. After some degree of fidgeting, the DNS ended up with an unusable configuration, but no errors or indication of any kind was given by the commercial control panel we are using.
Yesterday was a very busy day. I had 2 assigments, a quiz, and a midterm all within the one day. So, when some support mentioning our server being down started to come in, I did a quick check and found only the main domain (ismywebsite.com) down, and all servers online, so I assumed it would sort itself out since the main site server is managed by VectorLevel to maintain a high degree of uptime at all times.
Finally, last night I spent a total of 2 hours playing around with the configurations, before noticing that the DNS server’s main domain was down. Then I spent 3 hours struggling to figure out what was wrong with that server. Finally, at 5 AM, I resigned myself to the fact that a half night’s sleep would best enable me to function for the rest of the day.
And I was right. When I woke this morning, I managed to solve it within 30 minutes, thus ending 36 hours without DNS functionality, the first time anything of this nature has happened in recent history.
Thanks Everyone! October 27, 2009
Posted by ismywebsite in general.6 comments
I’ve just spent the whole morning practically answering the endless bombardment of emails. I haven’t even been able to catch up on the latest website requests to come in… This is basically every day, but none of you can really see what I do because I only help each of you for 5 minutes or so.
I’m sorry my donation requesting email wasn’t perfect and sounded like some kind of sales pitch or begging. Thanks to those who asked to have their accounts deleted and all communication with me removed for good, and double thanks to those who came back with comments such as the one I got here:
make money for us instead of relying on donations.
Make money for you? Is that like the thousands of dollars of my own personal income that I’ve poured into this hosting over the past 3 years, and am probably never going to get back, or is it more like getting meaner with the ads policy and dealing with comments like these:
“i hate adwertising. !!!HATE!!! !H!A!T!E!”
“Well, the ads is in any case a limitation”
Anyways guys, I’m sorry I tried. Really. If you can’t afford to help out with financing, that’s fine. If you can’t possibly place ads on your site, whatever. If you can’t find the time to stay active on the forums, I understand.
But surely you have to be able to help with something…
Otherwise this just isn’t going to work…
Uptime October 14 October 17, 2009
Posted by ismywebsite in general.add a comment
Lots of changes in uptime so quickly. Here’s the latest:
Node 7 – HighLayer
Uptime last 14 days – 100.00% (Up 0.23%)No current issues. Not open to new accounts.
Node 6 – Nixism
Uptime last 11 days – 100.00% (Up 3.18%)No current issues.
Node 5 – Addora
Uptime last 14 days – 99.69% (No Change)cPanel license error resolved.
Node 2 – Felweb
Uptime last 14 days – 99.69% (Up 0.23%)Uptime tracking now back online.
Node 1 – SmokyHosts
Uptime last 14 days – 97.91% (Down 0.75%)No current issues.
Node 3 – OSHS
Uptime last 14 days – 93.77% (Down 6.23%)We are planning to discontinue this node in the near future.
Please let us know if you ever need any assistance with your hosting.
