So let us start the new year with a poll. Is Geographical based hosting something you would be interested in? To clarify the question for those who may be unfamiliar with the term(s), we essentially mean would you prefer to see a choice of hosting servers based on different countries? That is, when purchasing hosting you could choose to have your account based in the US, Europe, UK, etc. Initially these options would likely be limited to the UK and US, but we would look at expanding them in future.

Please vote and let us know your thoughts! Additionally, if there is anything you’d like to see us offer in 2012, please let us know in the comments below.

Despite the holidays, we have been working hard on making some much needed enhancements and “fixes” for our PayPal users. For our billing system we run WHMCS, which we are fairly happy with. Unfortunately though there are some limitations when it comes to PayPal;

• If using a PayPal subscription to automatically pay for your service with us, when cancelling the service, you must cancel the PayPal subscription manually within your PayPal account.
• If using a PayPal subscription to automatically pay for your service with us, if you upgrade or downgrade your product, the PayPal subscription is not updated to match the new cost of your service and therefore you either pay too much or not enough when the subscription next occurs.
• If using a PayPal subscription to automatically pay for your service with us and you manually pay your invoice (forgetting there is a PayPal subscription setup), these additional funds are added to your account as a credit with us.

Admittedly these are not so much problems with WHMCS, but with the (previous) inability to do anything about these via the PayPal API. Fortunately, the PayPal API receives updates now and again which allow us to expand on it. Because of this we have now implemented the following changes;

• When cancelling a service with us, if you are using PayPal and have an active PayPal subscription setup, we will automatically cancel this subscription on your behalf. This should eliminate any invalid billing of accounts that are no longer active.
• When upgrading or downgrading a service, if you are using PayPal and have an active PayPal subscription setup, we will automatically cancel this subscription on your behalf. This will allow you to setup a new subscription for the correct amount when a new invoice is generated.
• If an invoice is accidentally paid for twice (either because of a subscription or manual payment), the duplicate payment will be automatically refunded back to you instead of being added to your account credit.

We hope that these new changes address some of the billing issues and complaints experienced by some of our clients.

At ThisWebHost we are more than happy to resolve any PayPal billing issues that are experienced by our customers. If, for example, you have accidentally paid an invoice twice – we will certainly refund the duplicate payment back to you if you contact us and let us know. Please be advised that opening a PayPal dispute (as per our terms and conditions) may cause your services to become automatically suspended. This occurs because of automated system that are designed to prevent possibly fraudulent transactions from taking place and to prevent people from trying to obtain free services with us. With the above new changes, this should be a thing of the past, additionally we believe we are the only hosting provider out there has such a system in place!

Please let us know what you think about these changes in the comments below.

Starting November 25th and continuing until the end of November 28th, you will be able to obtain 75% off all new shared and reseller hosting purchases with us. This is not a recurring coupon, but can be used to purchase hosting at any term. This means you can pick up a year of Starter/Blog hosting for just $8.97! How about a year of our Reseller Standard hosting, for just $41.85?

We expect this to the be last “huge” promotion this year, so if you’ve been thinking of getting hosting with us – this will really be the best time indeed. To take advantage of this promotion, be sure to take a look at our Promotions Page on November 25th through to November 28th.

• You receive a “trick” and a randomly picked message will tell you to come back again later.
• You receive a “treat” and are given a promotional code offering between 5% and 30% off any new purchase of our shared and reseller hosting packages, on any billing cycle, until November 1st.
• You receive a “golden pumpkin” giving you 1 years free Starter/Blog hosting!

Rules/Disclaimer:

You may take part once a day (every 24 hours). Any codes generated will expire at the end of November 1st 2011. You may give the codes to others if you wish. Please do not use proxies or web anonymizers to try and exploit the system (we do check for these). You do not need to be an existing client to take part – anyone can take part. Promotional codes are for purchases of new hosting accounts only and cannot be applied to existing active hosting accounts.

We are currently looking for someone who can make a more awesome Halloween themed image than the one that is currently on the promotional page, incorporating our logo. If you have the time and skill, please get in touch!

Click this link to access our Halloween promotional page

Pick up a new hosting account for your blog now for just 29c! Need hosting for additional domains? Try our Standard package for just 59c!

Now is a great time to move your sites to this*. Need help moving them? We also offer a free cPanel site transfer service! Our engineers will move your site data across to us, saving you the trouble. So what are you waiting for? Take advantage of our latest promotion today.

Due to the popularity of WordPress, and the severity of the exploit which can allow attackers to compromise websites, in order to protect our customers we have attempted to automatically upgrade any ‘timthumb.php’ files to the latest version with this vulnerability already patched against. As of writing this blog post, we have replaced any discovered timthumb.php files with the latest trunk version. Please be advised that whilst we have tested this forced upgrade in many scenarios and have not discovered any issues, there is a small risk that your script(s) or theme(s) may not function 100% correctly with this latest version. We strongly encourage all customers to check that their WordPress plugins and themes are currently working correctly, and if not, please communicate with the author of your plugin/theme to reach a resolution.

Whilst we have attempted to replace all vulnerable ‘timthumb.php’ scripts with the latest version, there is a possibility that some vulnerable versions remain. We strongly encourage and advise that all customers look for any copies of ‘timthumb.php’ within their WordPress installations and update to the latest version as soon as possible. Failure to do so increases the risk that your WordPress installations may be compromised in the future.

Please do not contact us requesting specific instructions on how to upgrade your ‘timthumb.php’ script(s) as ThisWebHost is not responsible for this script in any way. We have taken basic precautionary steps to try and prevent widespread website compromise, however ultimately it is your (the client’s) responsibility to ensure that any scripts you use are up to date at all times.

Semi-dedicated means that each server is effectively broken up into a very low number of clients. This allows each individual client to consume more resources than they typically would on a shared hosting account, because more are available. Additionally, because it’s semi-dedicated, many of our shared restrictions will not apply, namely;

• No MySQL database size restrictions.
• InnoDB is available.
• No restriction on the number of hourly e-mails that can be sent.
• No CPU limit (in minutes).

We’re happy that this new product now almost completes our product range, providing customers with all of the options available to host anything from a simple private website to a fully fledged several million post(s) forum.

What Happened?
It seems that some (not all) DNS records in our cluster had been reset to cPanel defaults. cPanel defaults in this instance meaning a standard cPanel template, where the MX records default to the local server and with the most basic of cPanel A and CNAME records. As such, any modifications made from this default template were removed.

Why did this happen/Why were custom changes removed?
To prevent a fully corrupt record from occuring, cPanel appears to reset the DNS zone back to default on what it considers a critical error. This actually makes sense, because of the DNS record is corrupt to the point of not working, then no DNS would be resolved at all. Resetting it back to a template will at least obtain basic functionality.

A “critical error” in this instance does not mean user error, and we are in no way stating that these records were broken or corrupt due to end user modification. Unfortunately it’s impossible to tell exactly why these records were reset, because nothing is logged by cPanel in this instance and all other diagnostics are proving futile. We are in communication with them to try and determine the cause and to obtain information so we can try and prevent this in the future.

Custom changes were removed because when cPanel resets a DNS zone, it does so based on very basic information formed from the account. Typically, the IP address that’s allocated to the site on the server and any addon/subdomains that were setup on the account. Things like MX changes are not stored anywhere at all so cPanel cannot rebuild a record containing this information.

Why didn’t you e-mail me/tell me?
Firstly, this issue did not affect all of our customers, so a global mailout was deemed excessive. Secondly, we simply had no way of knowing which records were affected. From a server point of view, records appeared to be fine and standard. Additionally, when discovered that MX entries were also reset we decided that attempting to mail those with potentially affected MX entries would prove illogical. How would they receive the e-mail if the MX entries are pointing to the wrong place?

What now?
Some of you may have missing or incorrect A, CNAME, MX or other DNS records from your domains. We strongly recommend that you recreate these records from within cPanel or WHM as soon as you can in order to restore service and resolve problems with those.

Since clients have full control over their DNS, ThisWebHost staff will not be able to assist you with the recreation of this data.

What are you going to do to stop this from happening again?
We understand your frustrations, and we apologise for the inconvenience if you were one of those affected. However, this is a very very rare and isolated incident (something I and even others have never experienced before in our duration of the hosting industry) and we anticipate that we’ll never experience this again. That said, we are taking steps to implement additional backup functionality for DNS records so that if for whatever reason we need to, DNS data can be restored relatively easily on a global scale.

You suck/I hate you/I’m leaving for another host/Etc
Once again, we’re sorry for the inconvenience here. Problems do happen from time to time in hosting, and in our case we feel that whilst this incident was problematic, our track record and reputation speak for themselves as a quality hosting provider. Many of you have been with us for several years, and I honestly can’t recall very many (any?) situations that have globally and negatively impacted our customers. It would be a shame of you to consider this one incident your primary view and experience of our service.

Automated and Automatic Affiliate Payouts
I’m pretty sure we’re the only one, if not one of the very very few hosting providers out there who have any kind of automated affiliate payout system in production – and we’re proud of that. This means that without needing to get in touch with us, you can view your affiliate account balance and either send the money directly to your PayPal or add it to your balance with us. All in a few seconds and a few mouse clicks.

Redesigned Ticket System
We’ve redesigned our ticket system slightly so that whilst submitting your ticket and before it is sent to us, you are prompted with possible suggestions and solutions to your questions or issues you may be facing – with information pulled directly from our knowledgebase. This is primarily to reduce the number of what we refer to as “obvious tickets” containing very common questions which are already covered within our knowledgebase. We’re really trying to push our knowledgebase as the first port of call for any questions clients have, and we’re always adding to it. Many companies have knowledgebases and Wikis detailing how to complete common tasks, and the intent is to reduce support time.

I’m very happy to say this is working well, and our support times are lower than ever

Automated Domain Name Changes
Previously a feature we’d charge for (due to the Administration involved), we’ve now developed a system where you can modify the domain name of your account from within the client area. This is to assist those who may “flip” their websites regularly, or want to let their domain expire and utilise their hosting account on another domain instead. You can find this by selecting ‘My Hosting Accounts’ and then clicking the ‘Manage’ button next to the hosting account in question. At the bottom there will be a new button allowing you to change the domain name.

Promotions Page
Many people ask or want to know if we’re currently running any promotions. To aid those and to boost the use of our promotional codes, we’ve created a page on our website that pulls currently active promotional codes out of our system and displays it on the website, along with the value of the code and the expiry date(s). Never miss a promotion again! Don’t forget, there’s currently 50% off all hosting accounts throughout April.

As always, we’d love to hear from you if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks for being a part of this*.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause those currently trying to reduce their CPU usage and are relying on this information, but the changes we’ve made have fixed a few inconsistencies and make future deployment of this information far easier.