Well, first let’s state the obvious reasons. We like to keep out servers using the most up to date supported software and recommended server configuration to maintain server stability. We like to keep our servers fast, but most of all, our clients happy, like always. And one of the ways we do that is by periodically updating the backend server software.
MySQL 5 has been available for over a year and is now the standard, recommended version, according to the company that makes MySQL. Any modern script that uses databases should work properly with MySQL 5, but we should mention that we’ve heard reports of MySQL 5 database incompatibilities with a very small number of older scripts. That’s why you may want to check with the authors of any scripts on your site to verify that they are compatible with MySQL 5, as we’ve previously suggested. If you do have any errors, we ask that you open a ticket immediately. Free Hosting or shared hosting we’ll work with you to get your website back up and running.
If you’re a technically advanced customer and you want to know exactly what changes need to be considered for this upgrade, the MySQL 4.1 to 5.0 upgrade page has plenty of details. Where possible, we’ve taken care of the obvious things (for example, we’ve already converted any ISAM tables to MyISAM), but there’s a long list of rarer, subtler issues that are impossible for us to check without examining each SQL query that a script makes on every website we’re hosting.
In the very worst case of a customer using a script that simply will not work with MySQL 5, we are keeping a separate MySQL 4.1 server available that we can temporarily use for that customer’s databases to for up to 30 days, giving such customers a chance to resolve the issue.
We apologize for any inconvenience this upgrade may have caused. We tend to be very conservative about major upgrades, and we don’t undertake them lightly, but this one is definitely necessary.
Read More in the News.
Chris PurgeHosting
After many requests to get this module installed with PHP, it’s finally been done. We’ve installed the following components for FFMPEG on the PH02 server.
MPlayer, Essential Codecs, Flvtool, Lame, Libogg, Libgsm, Libvorbis, Vorbis-tools, Libtheora, FFMPEG, ffmpeg-php, wmf Lib, faad2, facc, a52dec-0.7.4, xvid/div decoder, x264, AMR 3gp, Encoder and decoder
So, it’s official! As of today, paid clients can stream, upload and convert flash content on their website! This is very exciting. We’ve tested it on a few of our own websites with complete success.
Chris PurgeHosting
We’re currently under a very large DDoS attack. This is why we have had limited to no connectivity all day today. We’re currently working on fighting this attack with every resource we have. We’ve blocked thousands of IP addresses and ranges, but they just keep coming. I can assure you that we are making progress, as you can see I was able to post in the blog.
I will keep everyone updated as things progress. We’re also under the GUARD thanks to ThePlanet which is able to mitigate a large portion of the attack.
UPDATE (1pm): 9 More IP ranges blocked.
UPDATE (2pm): 247 More IP Addresses blocked.
UPDATE (3pm): 632 More IP Addresses blocked.
UPDATE (6pm): 292 More IP Addresses blocked.
UPDATE (1am): The Attack Appears to have ended.
Update (05/04/09)
The attack is still continuing, we’re making large efforts to block the attack.
Update (05/05/09)
The attack is still continuing, we’re making large efforts to block the attack.
The Attack has ended, 05/06/09 – Services returning to normal.
If anyone would like a discount to cover the last few days of questionable connectivity, I understand and if you wish, can be applied to your account. I sincerely apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused you, but I assure you we had every resource available to rectify the situation.
Chris PurgeHosting
As always, more good news and updates. A few nights ago we recompiled apache and PHP on all our servers to the latest PHP version 5.2.9. During the recompile we included a few new modules and services, and also updated some previously installed modules.
These updates include, but are not limited to:
PDO drivers, GD, iconv, phpsuhosin, and mod_security..
There are several other minor background updates regarding the mail servers and DNS changes. We also updated cPanel and a few monitoring services to help reduce the server load. Last but not least, something worth mentioning is that we’ve been re-arranging some of our accounts between servers to help with load balancing.
Chris PurgeHosting
Great news everyone. iPanel was just updated! A long with plent of minor improvments, there was lot’s of other big fixes and enhancements made to the billing system. We’re not going to list all of the issues, but there’s one bug which has been making things complicated over the last few months..
As of this update, when or if you cancel your free hosting package, you can then re-register a new free hosting package using the same iPanel account. Some of you may remember that we had to recreate the entire billing account in order to sign up for a new free website, this has sicne been corrected.
And there are dozzens of minor bug fixes regarding invoices, subscriptions and some UI updates.
Chris PurgeHosting