We will be performing a server migrations for some of our accounts beginning tomorrow, Saturday January 22nd.

This migration will be to upgrade the server that the affected accounts are on. The newer server offers increased processing power and storage capabilities. All affected account will see an increase in overall performance on the new server.

The migration process itself may take several hours to fully complete, but each account is migrated independent of the others. This means that while the migration is ongoing, your account may resolve to the new server or the old server. Each individual account move only takes a few minutes. Downtime will be minimum for your account, and typically no downtime is noticed.

To see if your webhosting account is part of this upgrade, we have created a migration tool at:

http://amssupport.info/migration

Where you can go to check and see if your webhosting account is part of this migration and it will also give the current status of the migration process in terms of your account.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact support.

Scott

We will be performing a server migrations for some of our accounts beginning tomorrow evening, Saturday January 15th.

This migration will serve to upgrade the server platform for the affected accounts. The new server offers better processing and storage capabilities and is just a newer and better server. The affected accounts will see an increase in overall server speed as part of this upgrade.

The migration process itself may take several hours to complete, but each account is migrated one-by-one, so some accounts may resolve to the old server while some accounts resolve to the new server, until the process is complete. Downtime will be minimum per account and typically no downtime is noticed by the user.

To see if your webhosting account is part of this upgrade, we have created a migration tool at:

http://amssupport.info/migration

Where you can go to check and see if your webhosting account is part of this migration and it will also give the current status of the migration process in terms of your account.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact support.

Scott

We are seeing a lot of webhosting accounts with Joomla! scripts installed being exploited. These exploits are either sending out spam or being used to host phishing sites on the affected webhosting account.

In order to get ahead of these exploits, we may have to start disabling websites that are using old, outdated, and insecure Joomla! scripts. We have to keep the integrity of our servers in good standing. If our servers are continually being flagged as hosting phishing or spamming sites, then this affects how our servers are viewed by security firms on the Internet.

This is why it is so important for you to keep your scripts up-to-date with the latest version.

We will be going through our servers and looking for outdated Joomla! scripts. Users should receive an e-mail notice about these outdated scripts on their webhosting accounts.

The latest version of Joomla! at this time is 1.5.22. For information on the latest version of Joomla! see:

http://www.joomla.org/download.html

Additionally at this website you will find a form where you can subscribe to be notified by the Joomla! developers when a new version is release:

  

We would encourage you to sign up and subscribe to this list.

We are also seeing that the exploit is through certain components installed in the Joomla! script. It is important to note that in addition to keeping your Joomla! core script up-to-date, you also must keep any components that you install up-to-date.

Scott

UPDATE Jan 9, 2011 10:34PM CST – These upgrades have been completed and all servers are operating normally now.

UPDATE Jan 9, 2011 9:50PM CST – These upgrades are commencing now.

We will be performing a mail server upgrade on our servers:

liquid1.wznoc.com
server.avdns4.com
server.wznoc.com

Tonight, January 9th between the hours of 8PM and 2AM (January 10th) CST. The actual upgrade should only take 30 minutes to an hour to complete, but we are setting aside this 6 hour maintenance window meaning that the work will be done sometime during these 6 hours. During the actual upgrade process SMTP, POP3, and IMAP services will be shut off on the server, so users on the affected server will not be able to send out mail or check their mail. No mail will be lost during this process.

This upgrade will consist of changing the POP3 and IMAP services to a more up-to-date and faster system. We have tested this system with other servers and found the new system to be superior. This upgrade will provide this system for these servers.

With this upgrade, some users may experience some issues detailed below:

• Users who have their IMAP account set up to automatically purge their trash may notice issues with this with the new mail server software.
  
• Users who use the POP protocol to check their mail, but leave a copy of the messages on the server, may see all of their mail downloaded into their e-mail program once again.
  
• Users must use either email@domain.com or email+domain.com as the username when checking e-mail. We did identify an issue where the old mail server software allowed you to use a colon (:) to separate your email from your domain name in your username, but this will not work with the new software.

However it has been our experience that MOST users will not be affected by this. The only individuals that would be affected by any of these potential issues would be users who have their accounts set up with advanced settings.

To see if your webhosting account is affected by this, use our Server Identification Tool:

http://www.amshelp.com/identify.php

If this says either liquid1.wznoc.com, server.avdns4.com, or server.wznoc.com then your webhosting account will be affected by this.

Steven

EDIT: Dec 12, 2010 12:03PM CST – This migration has been completed successfully. If you are experiencing any problems, please submit a support ticket. Thanks.

We will be doing another set of account migrations starting tonight, December 11th.

As with the previous account migrations, the process is fairly quick and painless and most users will not notice any downtime to their website. The migration process may take several hours to complete, but each account is migrated one-by-one, so some accounts may resolve to the old server while some accounts resolve to the new server, until the process is complete.

To see if your webhosting account is part of this upgrade, we have created a migration tool at:

http://amssupport.info/migration

Where you can go to check and see if your webhosting account is part of this migration and it will also give the current status of the migration process in terms of your account.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact support.

Scott