As announced last month, tonight we completed the upgrade to the latest version of SmarterMail, version 16, on both our UK and US networks.

The new features and interface are available to use straight away. Please be aware that the login screen (and all other screens) will look different, as this is a complete overhaul of the look and feel for SmarterMail.

If you have any questions or problems with the new interface or any other aspects of your account, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We are currently receiving reports of packet loss on some routes on our UK network. Not all customers will be affected. Engineers at our network provider are investigating and working to resolve the issue.

If any customers are seeing issues, please open a support ticket with a traceroute that we can use to help diagnose and fix the problems.

UPDATE: Our network provider has now confirmed that this issue has been solved, and we have had no reports of any issues since then. If you are experiencing issues still, please contact us for assistance.

This month we are announcing a new feature included for all customers that have ASP.Net on their hosting plan - support for .Net Core, a new Microsoft open-source web framework. Some customers may already be familiar with the new technology, or actively developing for it. Now you can host your new applications with us on your existing account at no additional cost.

We are considering this new feature a beta for the moment, so if you have any issues with it, please let us know so that we can make any corrections needed.

If you haven't used .Net Core before, you can download it for your computer to try it out here:
https://www.microsoft.com/net/download/core

You can switch to using .Net Core from the "Website Settings" page in the control panel. You can view more details about how to host the new applications with us here:
https://support.liquidsix.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/108/0/hosting-net-core-applications-also-known-as-aspnet-core-or-aspnet-50

If you have any questions about this new feature, or have any problems with it, please let us know.

Also, we would like to alert customers that as from now, we are no longer using the 0845 UK telephone number that has previously been published as an option on our website. It has always appeared as one option alongside the standard telephone number - 01903 868 117, which will remain in use as the only telephone number available. We have taken this decision as the 0845 number is rarely used now due to changes in the way that telephone companies charge for calling these numbers making it a more expensive option.

We would like to thank you for your continued custom. If you have any questions about either of these announcements or need any assistance with anything else, please do not ehsitate to contact us via the helpdesk at https://support.liquidsix.com.

Starting at 11pm UK Time (GMT+1) on 25th April 2016, our network provider for the main UK network will be performing maintenance to improve their services. This will continue for 6 hours, until 5am. There will be a shorter period of downtime during this window, which we expect to be no more than 30 minutes.

The work is being performed overnight to minimise impact to customers. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused during these necessary upgrades.

We are currently investigating an issue with the mail server in the UK, please accept our apologies for the issue. We will update this post as soon as we have more information.

UPDATE: Our apologies for the delay, the issue has been identified as a major hardware problem. We are replacing the affected hardware at the moment, and will update this post once we have an ETA for the server being back on line.

UPDATE: The mail server has had to be completely reconfigured, a process that will be finishing shortly. We are ready to place the mail server back online as soon as this completes.

UPDATE: The mail server is now back online. Please accept our apologies for the disruption tonight.

Dear Customers,

We have some important updates for you this month about the move away from Windows 2003, and changes to our pricing for domain names and SSL certificates. All this information can be found below, but if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at https://support.liquidsix.com.

CONTENTS
I. Windows 2003 End Of Life Update
II. ASP.Net 1.1 & ASP.Net 2.0
III. PHP 5.2 & PHP 5.6
IV. Pricing Changes
V. New Windows 2012 Low Density Hosting

I. Windows 2003 End of Life Update
As you will be aware from previous newsletters, Microsoft will be withdrawing support for Windows 2003 later this year on the 14th July. From that time, they will no longer be producing patches for any security issues that may be found and so Windows 2003 will no longer be secure. Because of this, as from the 1st May 2015, we will no longer be allowing the addition of new domains to our Windows 2003 hosting. All new domains must be added to our newer servers after this date.

In anticipation of this, we introduced our Windows 2012 R2 hosting back in 2013. Many customers have already moved their websites onto the new improved platform using our automated migration tool. As the date gets closer, it becomes more and more important to do this. 

In order to help customers track their progress in upgrading, this month we have added an overview to the control panel home page, which shows how many domains remain on Windows 2003, and has a link to a list of them, so that you can take the appropriate action. 

In addition, to make the migration of existing sites easier for users with older websites, we have added ASP.Net 2.0 support and older PHP support to our Windows 2012 servers, so that you do not need to update older code (although it is strongly recommended). The migration tool will change the version of ASP.Net and PHP to the latest, but you can re-select an older version from the "Website Settings" page in the control panel. For more details, please see below.

II. ASP.Net 1.1 & ASP.Net 2.0
Our Windows 2003 servers have supported ASP.Net 1.1 since we started offering hosting. However, Microsoft do not allow the installation of ASP.Net 1.1 on Windows 2012, and with the upcoming withdrawal of their support for Windows 2003, it does mean that it will no longer be possible to run ASP.Net 1.1 after July 14th. It is important that all ASP.Net 1.1 scripts are updated to support a newer version of ASP.Net before this date so that they can be moved onto the Windows 2012 R2 based servers.

Although replaced by ASP.Net 4.0 some time ago, ASP.Net 2.0 is still used by many websites. Where possible we recommend upgrading, however in order to make the migration to Windows 2012 as easy as possible for customers, we have this month added support for ASP.Net 2.0 to our Windows 2012 R2 servers. You will now be able to select this version using the dropdown box on the "Website Settings" page for a domain in our control panel. With this update, we encourage all customers using ASP.net 2.0 to move their websites to Windows 2012 R2 as soon as possible, to be ready for the end of life of Windows 2003.

III. PHP 5.2 & PHP 5.6
Our Windows 2012 R2 servers have now been updated to support PHP 5.6. It will become the default for all new domains from now on. The existing version of PHP, 5.5, will remain in place for existing domains unless a new version is selected using the dropdown on the "Website Settings" page for a domain in our control panel. 

The 5.2 version of PHP has not been updated in a number of years now, and we are now considering this version to be out of date and encourage all users with websites that still make use of it to upgrade to a later version of PHP.A warning will be displayed on the control panel home page, to show which domains need updating.

Despite this, in order to make upgrading existing sites to Windows 2012 R2 easier, we have now added older versions of PHP to those servers. All domains will be able to select from versions 5.2, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 using the dropdown box on the "Website Settings" page for a domain in our control panel.

IV. Pricing Changes
As our long term customers will know, our domain registration prices have only changed once and this was about 5 years ago. We set the prices as low as possible, as we consider the registrations to be a service to customers rather than a way to generate profit. Unfortunately, over the years the various domain registries have increased their prices to us and our suppliers on a number of occasions. We have absorbed these costs and kept our prices to customers the same. But over time, the many increases, coupled with exchange rate fluctuations has meant that we have no choice but to increase the amount that we charge, as some of the domain extensions were being sold below our cost price which is not sustainable.

The majority of our prices have had to be revised upwards in order to cover the increased costs. The UK domain registry, Nominet, have not increased their prices during this time and are unaffected by exchange rate changes, so there have been no increases for these domains. In fact, in order to bring them in line with the other prices, the cost has been reduced slightly (by a penny) for a 2 year registration.

Despite these increases, our domain registration prices for common domains such as .com remain below many of the large UK registrars and our prices continue to be the same for both new registrations and renewal - we do not charge you a higher price after your first year is up, unlike some competitors. We hope that you will allow us to continue to provide domain registration services to you, but we do understand that the price increases may affect your plans. If you find that you have domains that you no longer wish to keep as a result of the increase, you can cancel any domains that you wish through the "LiquidSix Domain Registrations" icon in the control panel so that you will not be charged for their renewal.

A similar revision has also been done on SSL certificates as well as taking the opportunity to expand the range. Our range of GeoTrust certificates have remained at approximately the same price, and some additional certificates have been added. We have also added a new range of Comodo certificates to our list. Unfortunately due to supplier changes, the prices for Thawte certificates have had to be increased. If this increase changes your mind about what sort of certificate you would like (possibly switching to a cheaper brand, such as GeoTrust), please contact us and we can arrange to change the type of certificate that will be used the next time it is up for renewal.

These pricing changes will apply to both new orders and renewals of existing domains that are paid for from the 6th April 2015. We are giving notice of these changes as we are aware of the effect that they may have and that some resellers who sell our services on may need to adjust their own pricing. We do apologise for any inconvenience caused by these changes and we hope that you can understand the reasons why we have been forced to do this and appreciate that we do so as infrequently as possible. Please be reassured that these increases do not affect the services that we provide directly, including our hosting plans, as these have never been increased for existing customers.

For full details of the price changes for each type of domain and SSL certificate, please click the link below:
http://www.liquidsix.com/domains/changes.asp

To view our new range of SSL certificates, please click this link:
http://www.liquidsix.com/services/ssl.asp

V. New Windows 2012 Low Density Hosting
Also this month, we have launched our new range of low density hosting based on Windows 2012, which replaces our older Windows 2003 low density offering.  The new plans, which include more space and bandwidth, also feature Application Initialisation, which ensures that your website is always loaded in memory and ready for a visitor. This improves the performance of all websites, but is especially helpful for ASP.Net based sites as the compilation time on the first visit can delay the page loading. To view our new plans or to make a purchase, please see the following page:
http://www.liquidsix.com/ld

We will be sending all existing low density customers an email in the next few days detailing how to move from the existing Windows 2003 platform to the new Windows 2012 one to gain the new features.

As always, if you have any questions or comments about the contents of this newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us via the normal methods, including the helpdesk at https://support.liquidsix.com.

Kind Regards,
The LiquidSix Hosting Team