Brief outage on web11 server February 2, 2013 (resolved)

There was a brief outage on the web11 server today at about 2:42 PM Pacific time.

This was caused by a “denial of service” attack that increased the incoming network traffic to that server from the usual 5 Mbps or so to over 350 Mbps. Servers other than web11 were not affected.

This appears to be very similar to the attacks that occurred last Monday morning.

We are closely monitoring all systems so that we can see exactly how to block future attacks.

WordPress 3.5.1

WordPress 3.5.1 was recently released, and as always, we’ve updated our WordPress one-click installer to automatically install the latest version for new WordPress sites.

If you’ve previously installed WordPress, you can upgrade it from within your WordPress Dashboard.

As a reminder, you should always update immediately when WordPress tells you there’s a new version available in the Dashboard. Don’t let yourself get behind, because it gets more difficult to update smoothly if you’re several versions out-of-date.

In addition, don’t avoid upgrading just because the upgrade screen says you should make a backup of your WordPress files and database first: we already make backups for you, automatically, every day.

Brief outage on web11 server January 28, 2013 (resolved)

There were two brief outages on the web11 server on January 28, 2013, at about 8:09 AM and 8:46 AM Pacific time.

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PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.21

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.21 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.20 to PHP 5.3.21 on our servers as a result.

Brief scheduled maintenance on web04 server January 18, 2013 (completed)

Update: The maintenance described below was completed with less than 5 minutes downtime.

At 11:00 PM Pacific time January 18 2013, the “web04” server will be restarted.

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PHP eAccelerator change for low volume sites

One of the options we offer to speed up busy PHP sites is called eAccelerator. However, eAccelerator doesn’t usually help for low volume sites, so we’ve disabled it by default in those cases. The rest of this post explains more.

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WordPress 3.5

WordPress 3.5 was recently released, and as always, we’ve updated our WordPress one-click installer to automatically install the latest version for new WordPress sites.

If you’ve previously installed WordPress, you can upgrade it from within your WordPress Dashboard.

As a reminder, you should always update immediately when WordPress tells you there’s a new version available in the Dashboard. Don’t let yourself get behind, because it gets more difficult to update smoothly if you’re several versions out-of-date.

New Year’s (2012/2013) Holiday Hours

Our business offices will be closed on Tuesday, January 1 to observe the US legal holiday. As always, our support staff will be providing same-day support for time-sensitive issues via our ticket and e-mail systems. However, questions that aren’t time-sensitive (including most billing matters) may not be answered until Wednesday, and telephone support (via callbacks) will be available only for urgent problems.

PHP 5.3 upgraded to 5.3.20

The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.20 that fixes several bugs.

We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.19 to PHP 5.3.20 on our servers as a result.

Christmas 2012 Holiday Hours

Our business offices will be closed on Tuesday, December 25 to observe the US legal holiday. As always, our support staff will be providing same-day support for time-sensitive issues via our ticket and e-mail systems. However, questions that aren’t time-sensitive (including most billing matters) may not be answered until Wednesday, and telephone support (via callbacks) will be available only for urgent problems.