We are very excited to roll out our new billing and support system for our existing clients, and new ones, as well. The really nice thing about it, for us and for you, is that account creation is completely automated with instant activation for all new accounts.

For our existing clients who are used to our old Client Desk ticket system, we now have a new Client Area where you can:

• Manage your billing and invoices
• Submit support tickets
• Directly login to your web hosting Control Panel
• Join our NEW affiliate program and earn 5% on all payments your referred clients make for the lifetime of their account!
• Access our knowledge base **Coming Soon**
• Access our helpful downloadable files to include free blog themes for your WordPress blog **coming soon**
• Access tutorials and helpful resource links **Coming Soon**

All of our existing clients have been migrated into the new system and you should have recieved an email with your login information for the new client area.  The emails were sent to the email address that you have set up as your contact email in your Control Panel.  If you did not recieve the email or do not know what your login/password is, you can visit the Client Area login page and request a password reminder - - be sure to use the same email address that you provided to us when you initially created your account.

Eventually, we will be cancelling all existing PayPal hosting subscriptions for existing clients, as all billing will be handled via the new system.  We expect this to happen by June 1.

For now, we will continue to use our existing/old Client Desk support ticket system through June 1 to answer your questions about the new system, but as of June 1, 2009 - the old Client Desk support ticket system will redirect to the new system.  If you have questions or need clarification - visit that Client Desk and submit a ticket and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

This new system puts everything you need to manage your hosting account, data/files, billing and support all in one convienent place!  We think you will find it very easy to work with!

Server Alerts: for those clients whose accounts are on the following servers (*):

• OZ - 72.51.46.32
• TALIS - 72.51.38.154
• BUBBA - 72.51.34.113

We are performing a server migration to new, more powerful server system.  Skipping all the geek speak - basically it means more RAM (memory), more processors (CPU) - which means better, faster and more powerful, overall.  Accounts backups to an offsite location have been completed and we expect very minimal (if any) downtime for accounts on those three servers.  If you experience any problems with your site, please understand that the server migration is necessary to upgrade the equipment across all our server systems to better serve our clients and improve performance, and ultimately your hosting experience.  The migration will be taking place in the wee hours of the night/morning - we chose these times because they are the lowest in terms of web traffic and readership (when *most* people are sleeping..except me, I’m always awake when the rest of the world sleeps.  heh)

Currently, we are having an unrelated hardware problem on the TALIS server that our techs are working on, as I type this.  The migration of the accounts off TALIS to the new server will remedy the problem - however, we are working on getting TALIS fixed to remedy server load issues in the meantime.  As always, we appreciate your patience and your support!

Over the next 24 - 48 hours, our techs will be prioritizing questions and requests for support on an ‘urgent‘ basis only.   Questions and support requests requiring urgent attention will be attended to immediately.  General inquiries, requests for design assistance, upgrades to software, etc will be attended to starting Monday morning.  This weekend, our focus is on making the migration go smoothly for everyone and emerging on Monday morning with some powerful new systems over here!

* - If you do not know what server your account is currently on - you can locate the IP number of your server in the left menu of your CPanel.  Compare your IP number with the three I’ve listed above to find out which server your account is currently hosted on.  Or, leave a comment on this post and I’ll do my best to help you determine your server assignment.  Thanks!

I did something on our site that I should have done a long, long, long time ago! I added a site uptime monitoring tool that will allow our clients (and potential clients!) to check up on the progress of our servers! The service is provided by SiteUptime and you can view server stats here.

We currently have 5 of our shared servers we are currently monitoring and good question might be… “How do I know which server my account is on?” - which would be an excellent question! The servers on the Site Uptime monitoring page are listed by name and IP address:

• KIWI - 76.74.159.114
• JINGLES - 66.135.55.41
• BUBBA - 72.51.34.113
• TALIS - 72.51.38.154
• OZ - 72.51.46.32

It is the string of numbers to the right of the Server Name that you need to worry about. The IP of the server you are on is listed in your account CPanel, in the left menu. Find that IP - compare it to one of the 5 listed above and BINGO! You know which one you are on! Feel free to bookmark our uptime monitoring page so you can visit it and check up on our regular progress of uptime! Those uptime stats are refreshed every 5 minutes!

Small triva that most of you don’t know: The names of our servers: Kiwi, Oz, Bubba, Talis, Jingles - those are all names of our pets. Yes, we’re pet people! We have three birds and three cats - so far!

Kiwi - our conure parrot; she recently died after choking on a seed
Oz - our Military Mackaw
Jingles - our Chattering Lorikeet
Bubba - our adopted kitten from Alabama
Talis - our Abysynnian cat

But there are only 5 servers, you ask?? Yes - we recently adopted a Pionus Parrot named Pinki who doesn’t have a server named after her yet! All in good time, Pinksters!

Today, we’ve launched the new layout and design of our site - we hope you like it! We’ve always had a blog on this site - - but only used it for updates and news. Now, we intend on using it a great deal and blogging about topics that we think our clients may find useful - - especially in the areas of web hosting, WordPress and other blogging platform information, blogging technologies, social media and anything else we can think of to make managing and maintaining your site more fun and easy! We’re open to recommendations from YOU, our clients, on what information you would like to see here. We’re all ears!

In addition to the new design and layout - we’ve launched our CPanel Video Tutorial Section where you will find very helpful video guides on how to do all sorts of things with your hosting account, via your CPanel. Video guides include information on:

• Email Creation and Management
• FTP Account Management
• MySQL database creation and management
• Using the File Manager
• Password Protect Directories
• IP Deny Manager
• …and more!

We realize that not everyone is a ‘guru’ when it comes to managing and maintaining a website and/or blog - so we hope that these videos teach you how to do some of the back end administration stuff that needs doing, saves you some time and helps you along your way!

As we announced in an earlier post, you can follow BlogsAbout on Twitter - our Twitter will always update when there are new posts made here, but more than just post announcements - we just like to Twitter..and we’d like to see you Twitter, too - - so, add us and we’ll add you!

We hope you like some of the new changes around here! We’re working behind the scenes to bring additional features to this site, and to your accounts - - things like an affiliate program, more video tutorials and we are currently at work at an integrated billing system that will allow our clients to manage their billing and add/edit features to your account all through your own CPanel! We’re busy bees - but we like it that way!

Hoping you all had a GREAT weekend!

Yes - we’ve finally joined the Twitter revolution over here! You can follow us on Twitter here: BlogsAbout. We’d love to see you there!

PLUS! We’re gearing up for a completely new site design around here — it should be launched pretty soon. We’re looking to make this site more useable, informative and beneficial to our clients and visitors!

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