Thanks, UK2… No, really, thanks.
Sarcasm? No, that wasn't sarcasm. I never use that.
You may have noticed most of my websites have been very ugly for the past couple of days. The reason for this is that UK2 have seemingly used some very underhanded business tactics to shut down SimpleCDN, their customer and my Content Delivery Network responsible for delivering much of my static content.
Over the next day or so all of our sites should be fully back online, albeit temporarily without a CDN while we get set up somewhere else.
I'm not in a position to say that SimpleCDN has done nothing wrong, and that it's all UK2's fault (though that is what outward appearances make it seem). However, I would certainly recommend that anyone thinking about signing up with them watch this situation closely and use its final outcome as a determining factor in whether they are someone you wish to do business with.
You can follow the situation from SimpleCDN's perspective here. If you're as frustrated as me by the situation, I urge you to do as I have done and contact UK2 to voice your opinion.
Related articles
- What's a CDN? Content Delivery Network (marketingtechblog.com)
- SimpleCDN has been effectively kicked off the Internet by its ISPs w/o warning (admin.simplecdn.com)
Finally…
Though the title, and the fact that you're here now, says enough already, I am happy to announce my new server and websites are back up at yet another new host.
Over the next few days, I'll be tweaking things, updating my core WordPress and Drupal installations, and causing general mayhem throughout my entire environment. My monitoring systems need to be overhauled completely and until then I will not have any good monitoring in place.
Let me know if you experience any odd issues--I haven't changed anything in any of my databases or files on the new server, so it's possible something won't work right until it's updated. Although I've kept all paths identical to avoid many such issues.
CakePHP Project: WebManager
I have started work on a solution to a problem I have been searching for for quite a while. Finding nothing that satisfied me, a while back I started development on a new CakePHP project titled WebManager (DE WebManager to be precise).
The functionality will include the ability to manage the entirety of a business or individual's web presense, from domain names and websites to providers, datacenters, servers, and more. Manage them all in one place and interact with them in intelligent ways--get renewal reminders, login links to all services, relevant contact information displayed on related pages, and much more.
This project came about because I was tired of having to manage my various web assets in all different disconnected places--my registrar for domain names, my various hosting providers and control panels, all of my websites, pages, and projects around the web, and more. It was all just getting to be too much, and while there are a lot of organizational tools, none of them seemed to be designed for this specific type of management. In this, I saw a way to make something that works better for me.
The project is built with CakePHP 1.3, the MooTools Javascript framework, and the MochaUI interface to give users a full desktop-like experience on the web.
I am not sure yet what different versions I will offer, and whether this will be a locally-hosted product or SaaS (Software as a Service) hosted and provided by the Digital Empire. Only time will tell, and I should hopefully have some screenshots and more information posted soon.
Apache issues resolved, sites back online
Yes, finally, with a little help from the cPanel team, I got Apache/PHP to rebuild correctly, and my sites are again working properly!
Of course, I am still working on the slowness issue. Even with page caching, Apache and suPHP thrash the CPU for several seconds the first time a large dynamic page is loaded. I'm trying to narrow this down to either server configuration or a VPS issue.
I have definitely experienced this before on an over-allocated VMware array, so it's a possibility my web server is just on a busy host box. But I'm still tuning things on the server and trying to minimize the load in every way I can, because more often than not these things are caused by configuration oversight or lack of proper tuning (and user naivety perhaps, in my case).
Site back up again after a couple days
All sites hosted on nebula.desystem.net were down for a couple of days due to a server issue when attempting to update Apache/PHP.
This has just been resolved, and all should be back online to stay.
SingularityShift is now online
SingularityShift, a new open-source development hub I have been working on, is now open for business (figuratively speaking)!
Please bookmark the URL - http://singularityshift.com
I am managing the site and all projects that are currently there as of this time.
The main site is an open wiki format allowing all users to contribute equally to the direction of the site.
Each project gets a full Trac development site and Subversion repository, as well as web space, email, advertising, and more.
Feel free to post your project to the Wiki and I can create the development resources for it!