Hosting Reborn Blog

Now Live: Choose Your Own Hosting Account Password

2011-01-29T17:28:08Z

About 3 months ago we raced into the 21st century by letting you choose your own account password.

Following on from this, you can now choose the password for each of your web hosting accounts. Previously you could only reset a hosting account password without any choice of password.

Either choose your own password:

Or have a strong password automatically chosen for you:

Now Live: Choose Your Own Password

2010-11-07T18:17:46Z

The option to choose your own account password was released live just a few minutes ago.

Within the next few weeks we'll roll out a similar option for choosing the passwords for your hosting accounts.

Enjoy!

Coming Soon: Choose Your Own Password

2010-10-21T19:51:50Z

A password of your very own

You can't currently choose your own password for your Hosting Reborn account. It might sound a bit ridiculous, but we're only looking after your interests.

Your account should be safe and is only as safe as the password. We decided from day one that if we can't let you choose your own password and whilst ensuring it's suitably secure, we'll just stick to generating a secure password for you. Inconvenient but secure.

Choosing your own password - nearly there

We're close to releasing the option to let you choose your own password. It's taken a long time and we've put a lot of effort into investigating what it means for a password to be secure and how to check if what you choose is going to do the trick.

Here's what the interesting part of the password reset form looks like on our development system:

You get realtime feedback on the strength of your password as you type, as well as the option of letting us generate a secure password for you.

Hopefully we'll see this go live in the next couple of weeks, along with a selection of behind-the-scenes updates to make it easier for us to make things easier for you in a way that you'll never actually notice.

Old Nameservers Are Now Aliases For New Nameservers

2010-09-20T17:59:51Z

Prior to the recent server move we were using ns1.webignition.net and ns2.webignition.net as DNS nameservers.

We moved to using ns1 to ns4.hostingreborn.com, which required everyone using ns1 and ns2.webignition.net to make changes to their domain names' records.

Whilst a bit of a hassle, I thought everyone could cope - afterall, if someone can manage to set their domain's nameservers to ns1 and ns2.webignition.net, they'll be able to cope with changing them to ns1 to ns4.hostingreborn.com.

Well, some people can't, some people haven't and perhaps some people will forget.

So we've now set ns1.webignition.net to be an alias of ns1.hostingreborn.com and ns2.webignition.net to be an alias of ns2.hostingreborn.com.

So if you now can't or won't change your domain's nameserver records, you no longer need to.

Server Move Complete, Tidying Up Domain Name Records

2010-09-12T15:24:45Z

The server move announced toward the end of last month is now fully complete.

All hosting accounts have been moved, with email and database requests being transferred on from the old servers to the new servers to avoid anything getting lost.

We now just need everyone to ensure all domain name records are appropriately updated to prevent websites and email breaking when the old servers are finally decommissioned in about a month from now.

Changing nameserver records

If your domain names' nameserver records are set to ns1.webignition.net and ns2.webignition.net these must be changed to:

ns1.hostingreborn.com
ns2.hostingreborn.com
ns3.hostingreborn.com
ns4.hostingreborn.com

If you manage your own DNS records, you must change occurrences of 78.31.104.54 to 178.63.85.207.

We'll keep an eye on traffic reaching the old servers and get in touch with anyone who may not have yet made the appropriate changes.

Moving to New Servers, Important Information

2010-08-29T14:00:03Z

Our new web hosting servers are up and running, which should be an end to our performance issues over the last few months.

The new servers are in a new data center. Due to this, the transfer of data from the old to the new web hosting servers can't be completely automatic.

As a Hosting Reborn customer, there are two things you'll need to do following the transfer of your hosting accounts:

Update web application database settings
Web sites and web applications using databases will need to be pointed at your database on the new server instead of the old server.

Change your database host from localhost or 78.31.104.54 to 178.63.85.207.

This allows your web sites/applications to operate from both the old and new servers at the same time without any data loss. This is necessary as the relevant DNS changes will not be instant.
Update your domain's DNS settings
If your nameservers are set to ns1.webignition.net and ns2.webignition.net, update these to:
- ns1.hostingreborn.com
- ns2.hostingreborn.com
- ns3.hostingreborn.com
- ns4.hostingreborn.com
If you manage your own DNS, change 78.31.104.54 to 178.63.85.207.

Nothing needs to be changed just yet. This is just to let you know what to expect.

We will contact everyone via email before long to arrange a suitable account transfer time.

In the meantime, please contact enquiries@hostingreborn.com if there's anything you need to know now.

Performance Sucks, Time to Upgrade

2010-08-21T18:29:35Z

Could be better

The performance of our servers has, since Easter 2010, not been very good.

It's not been bad, we've not had anyone want to cancel due to the service quality and we're still growing. But not bad doesn't imply good. We want to do better, so we soon will.

Problems we've had this year

Our background processes enabling full automation started playing up. These processes run in the background, keeping everything slowly ticking over without getting in the way.

Except they did get in the way, after having otherwise run flawlessly for about two years. A process here or there would stall because some service it depended on got a bit stuck. A few minutes later another copy of the process would start, not aware of its stalled sibling, and carry on keeping things going.

Stuck processes would build up, each going nowhere and consuming resources as it went. Eventually every new process would get stuck straight away.

This vicious circle brought each server to it's knees roughly daily. From flawless operation to daily failure is really not a good situation to be in.

Optimising processes to half fix the problem

We re-wrote, tested, re-wrote, tested and re-wrote the automation processes. It was a tedious process of logging timings and resource usage levels, identifying poorly-performing areas of code and re-thinking how to perform operations more efficiently.

From around the start of June we've not had a single issue with stuck processes bringing a server down. Our service was no longer killing itself.

We still face issues with occasional excessively high usage levels, where free RAM decreases rapidly and the paging of memory to and from disk causes I/O bottlenecks that only add to the problem. Stuck processes or services can hog the CPU for far too long.

Throwing hardware at the problem

There's a limit to how efficient we can make our existing systems run, so we're upgrading all our web hosting servers over the next few weeks.

Thankfully we've found a way of doing this without increasing operational costs hence without needing to affect your costs.

Our new web hosting servers feature:

Intel Quadcore I7 processors
4 times the number of processing cores. At lot more can happen at once.

Stalled processes or services can kill up to 3 of the 4 processing cores before we run into problems.
8GB DDR3 RAM
8 times the amount of RAM.

We can handle at least 4 times the current amount of traffic per server before memory becomes a concern again.
100 Mbit throughput
Twice the current data throughput.
100GB additional networked backup space per server
Further flexibility for ensuring data is not lost.

How we're going to proceed

We're setting up a new set of web hosting servers in a new data centre. In essence, we're moving to an entirely new everything.

Within the next two weeks we'll have all of the Hosting Reborn services moved over. We'll then move each customer bit by bit, taking care to get in touch with everyone in advance and explaining what needs doing and how to minimise downtime and data loss.

For many people there will be no perceptible downtime or data loss - your website will be running concurrently from both the old and new systems and then eventually from just the new systems.

For some people there will be downtime and there will be data loss - mostly in the form of intermittent vanishing email for a brief period, some in the form of lost user generated content.

Some loss of email and user generated content is inevitable. We can't pretend everything will transfer perfectly. But this is something we're going to have to face otherwise in perhaps 6 months or 1 year we won't be here any longer.

And now?

We'll be in touch by email over the next two weeks and we'll let you know when your data is to be moved well in advance and what, if anything, you'll need to do.

In the meantime, please contact enquiries@hostingreborn.com if there's anything you need to know now.

Is Hosting Reborn Any Good?

2009-12-04T20:21:20Z

I periodically look at search terms through which people find Hosting Reborn and try to figure out how to get people the answers or information they want.

A new term I found today was "Is hosting reborn any good?", which had me lost for words.

How can you honestly address the question of whether your own service is any good? Can you honestly address the question?

Do I think my own service is any good? Yes, it works just fine for me. I use Hosting Reborn to host my own personal website, this blog, the Hosting Reborn public website and any personal project where I want to easily set up a separate hosting account to try something out.

I created Hosting Reborn to solve my own problems and from the perspective of a user of my own service I think it works quite well. But then that's a tricky thing to take at face value, which is the crux of the problem: I cannot avoid possessing a personal interest in seeing what I made become a success.

There is an unavoidable conflict of interest: can the owner of any service give a fair opinion? I'd like to think I can, but I bet there's some part of me, subconscious or otherwise, putting a positive spin on things. Even if I am giving a fair assessment of whether Hosting Reborn is any good, can anyone accept that as a fair and impartial opinion? It's hardly likely.

The best I can do is to market the service: to sell the benefits, to show you how it makes managing multiple hosting accounts easy and straightforward without lots hassle. I can hope to bring you round to the mindset that a hosting account on a shared hosting platform in not a product but a commodity, that a hosting account has no inherent value.

Of all the things I can do, the one thing I can never do is to tell you that the service is any good. I can try, but that's just not for me to say. It is at this point you come to realise that the service you created for yourself to use (and with the hope that others would want it too) grows up.

People I don't know are asking other people I don't know if Hosting Reborn is any good. That's just not a discussion I can join.

So what can I do? Nothing, really. I can't say that Hosting Reborn is any good because you don't want to hear that from me. And I can't prove it's good - that's just not possible. I can't even prove it's not bad.

I can't dig through customer feedback and see if anything or merit is said because that's not what happens - people get in touch when things go wrong or when they can't figure things out. If all is well, if everything works and everyone's happy the world of feedback is a very quiet place - how often do you choose to take the time to tell any service provider that things are going well? That just doesn't happen.

So, is Hosting Reborn any good? That's not for me to say - I'm always going to say it's good, aren't I? That's not really for others to say. People only get in touch when they need support - we're not generally in the habit of sending love letters to service providers.

Can you foster a community of interest around something that's not really terribly exciting, like shared hosting or bug tracking?

Or are you just at the mercy of a tiny vocal minority to say something good in a way that others can find? And how does that all start?

We Don't Want Your Money

2009-06-14T19:26:06Z

Hosting Reborn is an enterprise where people exchange money for services. And strange as it sounds, we don't want your money.

Of course that's not strictly true - without money coming in there would be no Hosting Reborn. So what I mean to say is that your money is not what I'm looking to acquire.

That still sounds a bit odd, so let's try this: earning money is not the goal but instead a by-product.

There's a subtle but important difference between having a goal of earning money and having a goal of something else that happens, as a consequence, to earn money.

The goal of earning money goes something like this:

We want to make money, so let's create a product and then charge people for the it.

Our goal is more aligned with:

We want to make a product so useful that people will be pleased to pay money for it.

This is a very important belief at Hosting Reborn. The main focus is always the product, not the money.

If the product is not good enough, if the product doesn't make your life easier, if the product doesn't disappear into the background and let you get on with what's important to you, if the product doesn't fit around your world, then we don't deserve to take your money from you.

Seriously, we don't deserve it. The money is your way of showing your respect for the service you receive. If you don't feel the service you receive is a fair exchange for the cost, why should we take your money?

For a service, if money's the goal there's always going to be conflict between the business and the customers.

If a service you subscribe to (satellite/cable TV, ADSL/cable broadband, telephone landline) is unavailable for a day or so, do you want a refund? Do you expect to get a refund? Are you entitled to a refund? Will you get a refund?

The answers are commonly: yes, perhaps, no and no.

Do you want a refund? Of course! If I'm paying £20 per month for ADSL broadband and it is unavailable for two days, in what way does my provider deserve the full £20? If I get 28/30 days of service in a given month, should I not pay £18.67? In what way does the provider deserve £1.33 for two days of non-service?

Do you expect a refund? I generally don't, I'm afaid. I think I've been conditioned into thinking this is normal.

Are you entitled to a refund and will you get a refund? No, you're generally not. Take a look at your terms of service, your contracts and your agreements. Your provider will certainly ensure that they're not liable for any interruptions to the service they provide.

Hardly sounds very fair does it? If something doesn't work out right for you, if something is faulty and doesn't provide, within reason, what you expect, you still have to pay whether you like it or not. Hopefully you're too tied into the service, or the friction of changing providers is too great, that you'll stick with it whether you like it or not.

Perhaps you can appreciate now why we don't want your money. We need your money to make Hosting Reborn happen, but if in any way it fails you, we can't deserve your money.

If we don't help you, if you don't find in Hosting Reborn something great that makes things easier, can we conciously take and enjoy your money and pretend we don't care?

If something goes wrong, or if any way Hosting Reborn is not right for you, would you want a refund? Would you expect a refund? Are you entitled to a refund? Will you get a refund?

Yes, to all questions. If we haven't given something of value to you, where you are the only person capable of judging the value, in what way could we expect you to give us something of value in return?

If you decide to leave Hosting Reborn because it's not right for you, you're always entitled to a full refund of every single penny you've paid. We won't ask why, we'll just give you your money back.

Unless, of course, you've done bad things or are simply trying to take advantage of us. After all, that's only fair, isn't it?

Where Traditional Shared Hosting Failed

2009-06-10T13:45:42Z

In a typical shared hosting environment, you pay a fixed fee for a fixed-resource hosting account.

The main resources provided to you are disk space, data transfer and domain name hosting, and so you might, for example, pay £5.95 per month for a hosting account that lets you store 500MB of data, transfer 3GB of data per month and host 5 domain names.

This worked well 10 to 15 years ago but has since failed the customer in four areas:

you can't use what you're paying for
you can't tell what you're paying for
you don't get what you're paying for
your hosting account resources are fixed but your traffic and customer patterns are not

This is fine for the service providers, but for the customers it's hardly a fair situation.

You can't use what you're paying for

Imagine you're limited to 500MB of data and 3GB of data transfer per month and you hit one of these limits. What happens?

If you store inbound data you get into quite a mess. If you sell products or services and you've hit your storage limit, where do your customer orders get stored? Where does all your inbound email end up? Will new emails simply dissappear, or will they magically arrive once you delete some old files that are perhaps not as important as you thought they were?

The data transfer limit is messier still: your hosting account will be suspended. If you're lucky you'll get away with simply paying for the excess usage.

Whatever the result of reaching either limit, the consequences are too severe if you run a small online shop and so you simply cannot afford to reach or exceed any storage or transfer limit. Your only option is to choose a hosting package that has limits you cannot reach, which means you cannot use what you're paying for.

You can't tell what you're paying for

It's just too technical to understand.

The more straightforward hosting accounts place will limits on how much data you can store and transfer along with a clear regular cost. Most people can appreciate the cost and many can appreciate what the limits really mean. How many people cannot comprehend the two resource limits?

How does 500MB translate into web pages, pictures, video clips or products? How does 3GB translate into how many customers can be served each month? If you understand what these limits mean you can appreciate how there is no real answer to those two questions. If you have no idea what these technical limits mean, how can you understand what you're getting?

The less straightforward hosting accounts detail limits on databases, email accounts, hosted domain names, dedicated IP addresses and any number of properties that become more and more technical, precise and incomprehensible.

It's hardly friendly to the general consumer when you can't tell what you're paying for. Nor is it good business sense to limit your target audience through technical barriers.

You don't get what you're paying for

It gets trickier when you consider 'unlimited' hosting accounts. With shared hosting being a highly competitive market, providers aim to out-do each other by offering greater and greater volumes of resources. This has led to hosting accounts offering unlimited storage and data transfer.

We all know that an unlimited hosting account is impossible - a given server will not have infinite disk space, nor an infinitely large network connection. In this context 'unlimited' translates into 'no artificial limit applied beyond the capacity of the hardware'. What a provider is really meaning to say is that a hosting account has plenty of whatever it is you need and that you'll never run out of whatever that might be.

Just to make sure that you really don't try to use too many resources, your unlimited hosting account will have some fair usage policy associated with it, with penalities applying if you regularly exceed what is considered to be fair.

When your unlimited hosting account is in fact limited in ways defined only in small-print legalese, not only do you not get what you appear to be paying for, but you also can't tell what you're paying for.

We all know that people don't read terms and conditions, and those few that do struggle with the legalese. To lock details away in hidden places, to ignore the way people behave and to blame the customer for not reading all the fine print is hardly a good way to make friends and money. It's hardly usable or fair. It's not quite a scam but it's not far off.

Your hosting account resources are fixed but your traffic and customer patterns are not

Online shops are busier around Christmas than at all other times of the year. Many online shops have further large variations in customer levels with the passing of various shopping holidays.

Non-commerce websites face similar but less predictable problems. If your company, or some of your content, becomes the focus of media or online attention, your visitor levels, and associated data transfer levels, increase way beyond what is normal.

This is a special case of the you-don't-get-what-you-pay-for problem, as if you have to plan for the worst-case usage levels you end up getting nowhere near what you're paying for at anything but the busiest times of the year.

Working towards a solution

It was for these reasons I started Hosting Reborn - to offer a service focussed towards the needs of the users of the service in a way that fits the users not the provider. It's by no means revolutionary. You've had pay-as-you-go mobile phones for years. My landline calls have been charged by the second for as long as I can remember. But shared hosting seems oddly stuck in the monthly contract world of business models.

A pay-as-you-go hosting service tackles 3 of the 4 problems. It's impossible not to be able to use what you're paying for, it's impossible to not get what you're paying for and your costs fairly reflect how busy your website is.

We're still working on the problem of making sure people can tell what they're paying for. However this one pans out, we'll need to figure out how to express what a hosting account provides in everyday terminology. What does 1GB tranlate to in family photos? When is a website 'small' or 'big'? There's no precise answer to these sorts of questions but that doesn't mean there's no answer. We'll continue to work on that.

The problems of pay-as-you-go hosting

Whilst Hosting Reborn removes, by definition, most of the problems of fixed-resource fixed-price hosting, new problems arise. How can you tell how much you'll be paying from month to month or day to day? What will next month's hosting costs be?

We haven't figured out a solution to these problems either, but at least we recognise the issues. It's still early days.

It's still early days.