Zarconia Web Hosting - Support/Questions Forum - part 2

 Hello Zarcon, that worked a treat. Not the same as before.

I just installed D7.1, it did 90% of the work for me (Or you and Nathon did when you set the server up.. sweet)

Many thanks,

Stuart

Hey Stuart038,

We have our servers optimized to the point where the customers have to do as little as possible to setup Dolphin and have it run efficiently.

Glad to see you everything is working out for you and thank you for the comments 

Switching the site over to a new IP address.  You may be unable to connect to our site for a short bit while DNS updates.  Note this only affects our site (all other sites are fine and are unaffected).

We have now updated our RMS to accommodate Dolphin 7.1

We have also installed a demo of Dolphin 7.1 at Zarconia for those that may want to test it. You can find it here:

http://dolphin.zarconia.net

First, a huge thanks to the team at Zarconia for helping me move a clone of my production site to the new dedicated server. The gzipped file for the site transfer was 7.6 gigs of pure hell but with Nathans help, we were able to SSH it from one server to the other successfully. MONSTER task that I failed at 4 times before I had to ask for help.

Plesk is a pesk (lol) but I'm learning. If you've never used Plesk, then I highly recommend you watch the videos. It's not like cpanel but can still do the same job. Plesk is free, cpanel costs money every month. I like free so I'm learning. My first ded server also saw me leave my email open to spammers until I figured out how to set up the protections like SPF, etc. Easy enough to do in Plesk, just created an email address before setting it up and right away started getting crap in my email.

The server seems fast, the help was far above what I would get anywhere else and my clone is now operational. The next test is to see just how badly I can farck it all up. !! lol

Thanks guys. At some point, I'll be moving all my other sites over as well --  Five starts from me!

 Like I said earlier in the thread, these guys ROCK. Thank You Zarconia. They are truly helping people better their sites and experiences with Dolphin. I have never been happier. My members are ecstatic and I have had a small surge of joins. I have very little complains and more compliments from my users and they are now starting to invite others to join. Of course cleaning up my cluttered site and adding EVO was a help too.

BUT THESE GUYS AT ZARCONIA ARE WONDERFUL (yes i needed to capitalize it in case it did not sink in, sorry)

Plesk is not free, they are just letting you use it without having to pay extra; which is a nice thing of them.

http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/pricing-licensing/

On the 3 higher end Dedicated Servers, I don't see an option to add cPanel. Does it come with them or is it not an option on those?

What exactly are the Plesk / MINIMAL / LAMP Setup Options?

If you were using cPanel, what is the Plesk Setup used for, I see in the 3 lower Servers you can select both options?

cPanel is now an option for the ZX series - sorry about that!

Plesk is our default control panel option, and is included free in the default setup.  We recommend anyone who's new to dedicated keep Plesk.  cPanel replaces Plesk if it's also ordered.

Minimal is a minimal setup where only the base operating system is installed.  There's no LAMP stack or control panel included - it's meant for advanced users.

LAMP is a minimal setup, but also includes a LAMP stack (Apache, MySQL, and PHP).  It's also meant for advanced users.

any december specials? :P

The November special runs until the end of December.

Great :) I ordered a dedicated from you :) and so looking forward to getting it up and running.

We look forward to giving you your new ZX1000 too :)

Thank you for your business!!!!

Which server is http://dolphin.zarconia.net running on?

The site works very quickly, just wondering which server I should order and the setup.

Currently I'm with EUKHost Hyper-V Cloud - Windows IIS, which runs 2 dolphin sites. 

http://www.eukhost.com/vmware-microsoft-hyper-v.php.

I'm looking to run 5 dolphin 7.1 sites, so I need to upgrade to a dedicated server.

Also I see from your posts that windows is not recommended with dolphin, but as my experience only extends to using windows (using WAMP server on localhost/ local computer then uploading to the hosted server), I need some guidance with working with linux or whatever.

On this basis, I'm not confident with ordering the server from you guys as I'm sure I'd mess up. Can you talk me through the options?

Looking at z900 but unsure of the setup...

I would like to ask a few questions as well.

1) You guys know that Im a super newbie.  Do you guys have the time to "baby sit"?

2) What about firewalls, security, ect.,? Is that something that is included or a paid for service?

3) Could you guys install nginx and php-fpm?  

dolphin.zarconia.net is running on our shared server, which we recommend for new/small sites and developers.

All dedicated servers include a 10 domain license for Plesk, so you don't need to learn any advanced Linux topics or commands (but we do recommend some knowledge of Linux for anyone who orders dedicated).  I can also answer any questions or assist with the initial setup to make sure your sites are running.  We never drop anyone onto a dedicated unless they have at least one site working on the server.

1. We offer a free site move or install for shared and often do work on sites for no charge (small work like troubleshooting).  For dedicated, we at least make sure one site is running fine on the server.
2. For dedicated, we expect you to be able to handle that.  Plesk includes a friendly interface to control the server's firewall.
3. We don't offer custom setups beyond the following:
   1. Minimal (Base CentOS/Debian/etc.)
   2. LAMP (Base CentOS/Debian/etc. with Apache, MySQL, and PHP installed).
   3. Plesk
   4. cPanel (+$38.00/month)

Anyone with experience is welcomed to choose a minimal setup and build their ideal environment.

In that case, I'll be ordering the shared server for 1 domain to test with, then upgrade as needed.

Will be in touch soon!

Just order the shared hosting, but can you please give the Zarconia IPS TAG ?

Thanks

We're not a domain registrar, nor do we offer any domain-related services.

 Try www.9XDomains.com for Domains & Such

Just wanted to express my satisfaction with my server. After a couple network hiccups in the beginning the speed, performance and stability are all fantastic. It's great not having to worry about the equipment and network... and bandwidth!  :)

uptime: 69 days, 20 hours, 57 minutes

Thanks!

 Thank you. We are glad you are enjoying it!! :)

guys wandering to use yoour shared... but wandering about real speed with site with live users .. will be site for example with 200 or more online users still have fair speed ? Also wanna ask if I later would like to switch to more advanced shared it prolly will be not problem but what if I will need switch from shared to dedicated - do you transfer site from shared to dedicated for free ? Hope u dont end up like Terrabyte - Im a bit scared from services ran by 1 or 2 people as if something hapopen to one .. that can leads to big problems... do you take some prešcautions if something happen to one from you so clients will be safe from problems ?   thx

Shared is meant for new sites and developers.  It depends on the installed modules and user activity, but 200 users is roaming into VPS or dedicated territory.  We use CloudLinux, so you'll know if you've outgrown shared when your resources are throttled.

When it's time to move, we do offer free transfers from shared to dedicated (indeed, even new orders include a free transfer for one domain).  It depends on the setup of the server, but cPanel -> cPanel is the most seamless method, and includes email accounts with the move.  cPanel -> Plesk is a more basic site files and database move.

THS/Root Baron was an unfortunate disaster, and I'm still helping out victims with moves and misc. assistance.  Part of the reason for it's demise was careless spending and lack of communication, among other things.  Lessons have been learned and applied to Zarconia, whose finances are run like a tight ship and kept in the black, for example.  If it turns out that neither of us can keep the operation afloat, or something happens, customers will be allowed to remain until the end of their billing cycle, or refunded for the remaining time in their term.

Kind of grim, but I hope that answers your questions.

  How many users at once would be considered a safe threshold?

Where are you both (Zarcon and Nathan Paton) located; ie. on what timezone, should there be issues that need immediate attention?

We're located on the east cost, so Eastern Time is the timezone we use. Normal business hours are 6 AM to 12 AM. After hours, we still answer tickets, but we may not respond immediately unless it's critical or otherwise requires our immediate attention. We have an average response time of 5-10 minutes. For after hours, we still respond within about two hours, unless it's a ticket that requires immediate response.

Edit: To answer your threshold question, it depends on the Dolphin site. We have some sites on shared that only use the blogs and forums, so they can have more users on at once, while sites using video uploads and RMS will run into problems with higher load and resource limits. Generally if you expect to have hundreds of online users and use video uploads and RMS, you should really consider a dedicated server. But you're welcomed to try out shared and upgrade when needed.

We've added APC and other enhancements to our newer servers, so that will certainly help with larger sites on shared. You can also switch PHP versions to take advantage of enhancements from newer releases (our shared uses 5.4 by default).

I love Zarconia :) 

Nathan has been a huge help. It's refreshing to have found a host that actually knows Boonex. 

I recommend Zarconia to anyone using Boonex. 

Cheers, 

Automation is great; until computers start getting too smart.

As I travel a lot, I started to go off sites like Google and TravelNow when they kept presenting foreing language versions of their webpages depending on my location; even when they knew who I was logged in as, and that my prefered langauge is English.

IP address overules identity? Stange!

Now orderering online just got a whole lot more complicated as well.

'The country of your IP address did not match the billing address country you entered so we cannot accept your order'.

Come on, I run a travel site. I'm in Hungary, often in Switzerland or France but home address is in England.

No worries, Nathan answered that one fast enough.

Then I had to confront the numerous automated e-mails and work out which ones actually knew where we were in the process.

Replying to one of them didn't work though.

Your email to our support system could not be accepted because it was not recognized as coming from an email address belonging to one of our customers. If you need assistance, please email from the address you registered with us that you use to login to our client area.

Thank God we're on different time zones, I can go to bed and ignore everything. It always works out in the end.

@TravelNotes

I'm sorry to hear that you ran into some issues. In the case of the IP address check, this was from our fraud check which is run on all orders. Usually a mismatch of order location and address on file is enough to trip it and flag the order for review. Whenever that happens, we try and reach out to the customer as quickly as possible to get things rolling again. We're looking into ways we can lower the sensitivity while still being effective.

In the case of our ticket system emails (hosting, billing, and sales), we only allow email addresses on file to reply to them to cut down on spam. You can add a Contact from the client area, so any email addresses you use will be able to reply without issues. Emails from our service account can take any reply, and route back to our own inboxes.

With those issues out of the way, I hope you can start enjoying your service. I've said this before, but please contact us if you have any questions or run into any issues (excluding the above ).

More than satisfied with the fast, personal responses from Nathan.