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Mar 20 |
Domain Registration Changes
Posted by Paul Woodland on 20 March 2014 11:20 PM |
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Today we have implemented some changes to how we handle domain registrations. These changes are generally small, but important and come in response to customer feedback and new rules from some registries. The most obvious change is that when registering or transferring a domain, we now ask whether a domain is for your own use or whether you are registering it on behalf of someone else (for example, resellers selling to their customers). In the case of the latter, we need to hold information on the reseller so that we can assist the owner of the domain should they ever contact us. You will only be asked to provide this information once per account, so that any future domains you resell can be registered without filling in the information again. For customers with existing domain registrations, we need to establish which domains are for your own use and which are held on behalf of someone else. For this reason, the next time that you login to the Helm Control Panel you will be asked to complete a short form to provide this information. The other important changes include new buttons in the control panel to allow you to renew a domain at any time and to cancel a domain registration without needing to contact us. These can be found by going to the "LiquidSix Domain Registrations" icon in the control panel and then clicking on the domain in question. We will now send a renewal reminder to the account owner 45 days before the domain expires so that they can choose to renew the domain at their convenience, cancel the domain, or leave it until the billing transaction gets added automatically 10 days before expiry. If you have any questions about these changes or anything else, please do not hesitate to contact us via the helpdesk at https://support.liquidsix.com Read more » | |
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Mar 7 |
LiquidSix Hosting Customer Newsletter March 2014
Posted by Paul Woodland on 07 March 2014 05:35 PM |
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Dear Customers, We hope that 2014 is going well for you so far. With the launch of our Windows 2012 hosting and new plans at the beginning of the year, this has been a big year for us so far. Since our last newsletter we have launched a number of new features for all customers, so we would like to take a few minutes to share these with you below. As always, if you have any questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact us! CONTENTS I. Migrating Existing Sites to Windows 2012 R2
I. Migrating Existing Sites to Windows 2012 R2 The most requested feature since the Windows 2012 launch has been a way to move existing domains onto the new platform without deleting and recreating it. We have been working on a tool to do this for the last couple of months and we have today launched this for all customers. The tool can be accessed via a new "Move to Windows 2012" icon for domains in the control panel. This icon will show up for any domain on Windows 2003 as long as the reseller has enabled Windows 2012 support (for shared hosting customers it will always show up). As this is a complex process, there is a lot of information about what the tool will and will not do, and things to bear in mind to ensure a smooth process. All of this information can be found by clicking on the icon in the control panel. We recommend that the developer of the site read all this before any move is undertaken. If you need any assistance with the move, or you have sites with SSL & Dedicated IPs (which can not be moved automatically), please contact us and we will be able to assist you.
II. Mail & Database Usage Another highly requested feature has been a way to view the sizes of individual mailboxes without logging into them. In order to help customers manage their disk space usage, and that of their users, especially those customers on plans with mailbox and database size limits, we have now added this information and a limit system into Helm. You can view the usage of all mailboxes on a domain by clicking on the "POP3 Accounts" icon in Helm. More detailed information on an individual mailbox and its limit can be viewed by clicking on one of the accounts. The same applies for databases, which can be viewed through the "Database Manager" icon in Helm. As well as everyone being able to set limits for specific mailboxes and databases through these screens, resellers can also set limits on specific Hosting Plans or for individual customers by editing the new limit found on the "Resource Limits" icon for the plan or package in Helm.
III. Secure Folders At launch, Secure Folders was not available on our Windows 2012 servers. It has since been implemented and works in exactly the same way as for our Windows 2003 servers.
IV. URL Rewrite Another new feature for Windows 2012 is the availability of Microsoft's IIS URL Rewrite 2.0 module. This allows you to create rewrite rules in your website's web.config file, so that you can use search engine friendly URLs. It is available on all Windows 2012 sites with no additional settings etc in Helm needed.
V. Sending E-Mail from Websites (US Servers Only) At the end of last year, Script Mail was made available in the US. To bring the US servers in line with our UK ones, the use of Script Mail will become mandatory in just over 2 months on the 15th May 2014. Anyone who is sending out emails from their website on the US servers will need to make changes in order for it to continue to function, as we will be removing the "localhost" SMTP servers on that date. For details on what Script Mail is, how to use it, and the changes that are needed, please see this article here: There are also examples for different scripting languages here: We will send out another reminder closer to the deadline to ensure that people do not forget, but we recommend making the changes as soon as possible so that you get the benefits earlier.
VI. 2014 Hosting Plans We would like to take this opportunity to remind customers about our new range of hosting plans that launched at the beginning of the year. Our full range can be found at the links below: Single Domain Plans: http://www.liquidsix.com/hosting/single So that customers can get the best deal for them, we are allowing all customers the choice of whether they would like to stay with their existing plan at their existing price, or change to one of our new plans. For a full FAQ on this, please see here: For details on how to change your plan, please see here:
VII. Testimonials A question that we get asked is whether we have a testimonials page where customers can make comments about our services. We do not believe that these sorts of pages are useful, as they are controlled by the company being commented on. However, in response to these requests, we would like to invite anyone who wishes to to leave a review and share their experiences on a third party review site such as the one below: http://www.serchen.co.uk/company/liquidsix-hosting/ We would like to extend our appreciation to anyone who submits a review to this, or any other site. Helping new customers to find honest reviews of our hosting helps us to grow our services and continue to expand and improve our service offerings.
------------------------------------------------------------------- We would like to thank you for your continued custom and as always, should you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact us via the helpdesk at https://support.liquidsix.com.
Kind Regards, Read more » | |
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Jan 7 |
Windows 2012 R2 and New Plan Launches!
Posted by Paul Woodland on 07 January 2014 02:55 PM |
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On the 6th January 2014 we officially launched our Windows 2012 R2 hosting which has been in beta during 2013. At the same time we also launched a complete new range of plans, redesigned from scratch to give you the latest technologies and the resources that you need to take advantage of them. For details on our new Single Domain shared hosting plans, please see this page: For Multi Domain shared hosting plans, please see this page: Or for our brand new Reseller hosting plans, please see this page:
We understand that many existing customers might have questions about the new plans. We have put together a list of some common questions here: For details on changing your existing plan to one of the new ones, please see this page:
We would like to wish all of our customers a Happy New Year 2014 and thank you for your continued custom. If you have any questions about the changes, please do not hesitate to contact us! Read more » | |
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Feb 12 |
New VPS Plans, Half Price for 6 months offer, US Server Upgrades & DNS IP Change
Posted by Paul Woodland on 12 February 2013 09:58 PM |
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I. New VPS Plans
I. New VPS Plans
New this month is our revamped range of Virtual Private Servers. Now running on HyperV 3.0 and all including Windows Server 2012 Standard, the amount of RAM and hard disk space on all the plans has been increased. Normally starting at just £29.95 a month, they are available this month from just £14.98 with the offer in section 2 below! Remember, all of our servers come with a SmarterTools bundle of software worth about £500 included at no extra cost! For full details of the new range of plans, please see this page:
II. Dedicated, VPS and Low Density Offer
Have you considered upgrading your hosting to a Dedicated Server, VPS or Low Density hosting? For this month only, you can try out one of these services at half the normal price for your first 6 months! You can also save even more by paying yearly and taking a third off your first payment. Try out your new service today from just £5.98 for low density, £14.98 for VPS and £24.98 for Dedicated Servers, with no contract! Remember, all of our servers come with a SmarterTools bundle of software worth about £500 included at no extra cost! http://www.liquidsix.com/februarysavings/
III. Sending email from websites (UK)
As previously announced, the old method of sending emails from websites in the UK has now been retired after 4 months of running side by side with the new method. Any websites sending emails from scripts now need to be using the new Script Mail service, details of which can be found here:
IV. US Server Upgrades
As part of our continual service improvements, we will be replacing all of the servers on our US network with new upgraded hardware this month. This will be being done over a 3 day period on the 20th to 22nd February. Details of each day's migrations are listed below. As part of the upgrades, all the IPs for US services will be changing. If you are fully hosting your domain with us, all these changes will be handled automatically for you and you will not need to do anything. If the DNS is hosted elsewhere (which we do not recommend, in case of IP changes such as this) then you will need to manually update the IPs at the correct time. The new IPs are listed below for each migration. After a successful deployment in the UK, we will be expanding our Script Mail service to the US network as well. It will become available after the final day's migrations are complete. We will be sending an additional email to all US customers at the end of the month to detail the new service. The old "localhost" SMTP servers will be available until the end of May 2013, to ensure that customers have plenty of time to make any changes that they need.
20th February 12.30am to 6am (UK Time): Databases We will also be migrating all MS SQL Server databases across to the new servers and upgrading to SQL Server 2012 at the same time. The new external access IP will be 69.162.70.141 after the migration. Please ensure that you are connecting from your scripts using "sql01" as the server address, as this is (and always has been) the only officially supported address. The downtime during this upgrade will be approximatley 1 hour. Once the upgrade is complete, if you are managing your database from your PC (other than using our web tools), you will need to install the latest version of SQL Server Management Studio. This can be installed from SQL Server 2012 if you are using it on your PC, or the express edition can be downloaded from Microsoft:
21st February 12.30am to 6am (UK Time): Websites, FTP & Mail The new IPs will be:
22nd February 12.30am to 6am (UK Time): Helm, Stats and Misc Services Helm IP: 63.143.54.147
V. DNS Server IP Change
As a result of the US server changes, the IP address for the third of our DNS servers will be changing. The old IP will continue to function until the 27th February alongside the new one, which is available now. Most customers will not need to make any changes, as they will be using our nameservers (either ns1.liquidsix.com to ns4.liquidsix.com for shared customers, or ns1.yourwebservers.com to ns4.yourwebservers.com for reseller customers). If this is what you are using, then you can ignore this change. For resellers who are using personal nameservers, this will require IP changes. If the domain that you use for your personal nameservers is registered with us, and you have properly setup the nameservers with us, we will handle this change automatically for you. If you have registered the domain elsewhere, you will need to ask them to change the IP for you. The details are listed below: Nameserver: ns3.yourwebservers.com If you need any assistance with this, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Thank you for your continued custom and if you have any changes relating to anything in this newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us via the support desk at https://support.liquidsix.com. Regards, Read more » | |
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Jan 14 |
Upgrades & Important Reminder About Sending E-Mail from Websites (UK Only)
Posted by Paul Woodland on 14 January 2013 12:33 PM |
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Dear Customers, Happy New Year 2013! We hope that you are well and enjoyed the holiday period this year. For our first newsletter of 2013, we have a number of upgrades to communicate, as well as a reminder about script mail. So let's get started! As all of the following only applies to our UK customers this time round, this newsletter is not being sent to US customers. If you have an account on both networks, please note that this only applies to the UK for the moment and that we are planning US upgrades for the next few months that we will communicate nearer the time. I. Sending E-Mail from Websites I. Sending E-Mail from Websites ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back at the beginning of October (and then again during November) we notified all customers about changes to the way emails are sent from websites, with the introduction of our new "Script Mail" service to combat the risk of spammers. At the time, we gave customers 3 months to make the necessary changes to websites to ensure that their emails were delivered once the existing "localhost" method is removed from the servers. These 3 months are now up, and we can see that many customers have switched to the new service. We have heard from a few customers who are finishing off the changes, and as such we will be waiting a further 2 weeks, meaning the "localhost" servers will be removed as from the 28th January 2012. This will be the last reminder, so it is very important that sites be switched to using Script Mail before then, or any emails sent from websites will fail as from that date. We would like to thank those customers who have changed for their co-operation and helping to improve email delivery for all of our customers - which is what Script Mail's target was, and which it has achieved so far. If you need more information on Script Mail and the changes that you need to make (which will often be as simple as giving your script the SMTP server details), please see either the original message from October: Or the Script Mail section of the knowledge base here:
II. Shared & Reseller Hosting Server Moves ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As part of our regular maintenance, we will be relocating shared & reseller customers from two servers this month. These will take place on the following dates: Domains currently on "EUROPA", moving to "THEBE": Thursday 17th January between 12.30am and 6am To view what server a domain is currently on, please click on the "Website Settings" page in Helm. The IP address will remain the same, so there are no changes required. We will be using a process to move the domains that means the actual downtime should be less than 5 minutes, at some point during that window. FTP will be down for longer, so that changes aren't being made to sites whilst they are being moved. Any IIS configuration will be moved across to the new server automatically, the only configuration that may be lost is if you have requested non-standard permissions on your domain by contacting support. If so, these will need to be re-requested after the move is complete.
III. SQL Server 2012 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We will be upgrading all UK shared & reseller customers (low density please see below) to SQL Server 2012 on Wednesday 30th January between 12.30am and 6am. All of the IPs and connection details will remain the same. Please ensure that you are connecting from your scripts using "sql01" as the server address, as this is (and always has been) the only officially supported address. The downtime during this upgrade will be approximately 1 hour during the window. Once the upgrade is complete, if you are managing your database from your PC (other than using our web tools), you will need to install the latest version of SQL Server Management Studio. This can be installed from SQL Server 2012 if you are using it on your PC, or the express edition can be downloaded from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=29062
IV. Low Density Server Moves ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All low density customers currently on the server "CHARON" will be moved onto a new upgraded server "OPHELIA" on Wednesday 23rd January between 12.30am and 6am. All the software used will be being upgraded at the same time, including PHP and MySQL. As described above for shared and reseller customers, we will also be moving to SQL Server 2012. This will all be done during the window on the 23rd. Please ensure that you are using "sql08" for the SQL Server address from your scripts, which is (and always has been) the only officially supported address. There will be no IP changes for websites or FTP. There will be an IP change for SQL Server, but the official access addresses will be updated at the time.
V. VPS Server Moves ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We will be moving all VPS customers onto some new upgraded hardware, that will be using Windows Server 2012 as the host, with the latest version of Hyper-V. This provides some new advantages and performance increases over the older versions of Hyper-V. Each VPS will be being moved over individually, and the downtime will be as short as possible. The larger the VPS, the longer it will take to move across to the new server. Because each VPS is being done individually, it may take longer than one night to get through all of them (VPS's will only be affected at the time that they are being moved, they will not be affected whilst other VPS's are being moved). For that reason, we have scheduled two dates for this move, but we hope to have it completed on the first. The dates are Thursday 24th January and Thursday 31st January, both between 12.30am and 6am.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To summarise, here is a list of all the upgrades going on this month, in date order: Domains currently on "EUROPA", moving to "THEBE": Thursday 17th January between 12.30am and 6am Domains currently on "CHARON", moving to "OPHELIA": Wednesday 23rd January between 12.30am and 6am VPS Moves: Thursday 24th January between 12.30am and 6am Domains currently on "CALLISTO", moving to "DIONE": Friday 25th January between 12.30am and 6am From 28th January: "localhost" SMTP servers switched off SQL Server 2012: Wednesday 30th January between 12.30am and 6am VPS Moves: Thursday 31st January between 12.30am and 6am
We would like to thank you for your continued custom, and if you should have any questions about what is mentioned in this newsletter, or any other subject, please do not hesitate to contact us via the helpdesk at https://support.liquidsix.com. Regards,
Read more » | |
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Mar 19 |
Upgraded Helpdesk & Issues
Posted by Paul Woodland on 19 March 2012 03:29 AM |
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We apologise for the helpdesk being unavailable this weekend. This was due to an issue with the old helpdesk which meant that it needed to be rebuilt. Whilst this was being done, we also upgraded to Kayako version 4. All previous tickets have been imported. This took a long time to complete, which is why the helpdesk was unavailable for the weekend. Whilst the helpdesk was unavailable, all support was done via email. We have replied to all emails that we received during the period. If you have contacted us and not received a response, please contact us again using the new helpdesk. We will be customising the helpdesk over the next few weeks, to provide a more integrated support site. Read more » | |