VPS.NET 8/6/2010 Weekly Update

Archive for the ‘Website’ Category

VPS.NET 8/6/2010 Weekly Update

Friday, August 6th, 2010

VPS.NET at Conferences

I think all of us are finally recovered from HostingCon, which was a great time and an ever great success. We had a several hundred people stop by the VPS.NET booth, and we certainly had an entertaining time with our money machine. It was a great time meeting up with a lot of the vendors that make VPS.NET what it is, and we were able to kick off some discussions which should lead to some even greater things. You can check out some pictures of the UK2Group staff at the blog. Following up HostingCon in our conference schedule is DrupalCon in Copenhagen, Denmark starting August 23rd, and cPanelCon in Houston, Texas October 6th. Stop by and visit us!

Windows & SAN 2.0 Testing

We’ve kicked off testing for Windows on VPS.NET. I actually got a chance to personally play around with it the other day and it’s looking remarkably stable already. I know the demand for it is high out there, so we’re working on getting it in your hands as soon as possible. Just as important, we’ve also started testing the new SAN configuration. This new configuration creates an additional layer of redundancy by having two SAN units store your data, instead of a single SAN. The way it works is there will be one SAN actively working, with another having all the data synced to it. If the active SAN experiences a problem, the backup will take over without any downtime to your VPS. If you’d like to help us test either out, send Nick an email at nick@vps.net and we’ll get you access to the new cloud.

DNS & API changes

We’ve redesigned the DNS interface, which should make things much easier for all of you. It’s been simplified and made dummy proof (which is great for me); I think everyone will like the changes. Along with the design change, we’ve also modified the API, so it now supports all the DNS functions including the use of DNS templates.

World Cup Winner

After calculating out all the stats, we’re proud to announce the winner of the World Cup challenge. Alberto Mesas has won, earning himself 3 free nodes. Hope you enjoy the free nodes! For those of you who enjoyed the world cup challenge, I encourage you to join us in the American Fantasy Football Challenge. We’re still looking to see if we have enough interest to start a league, so stop by the forum and let us know you’re in!

That’s all for VPS.NET this week. Hope everyone enjoys the “return of the weekly newsletter.” We should have some more exciting news next week to announce, so stay tuned, and keep in touch with us on the VPS.NET forum!

Tags: Weekly Update
Posted in Website | 4 Comments »

A few teaser shots

Friday, July 30th, 2010

We’ve been promising Windows, and as proof it’s getting closer to being released to the public, take a peak at the screen shots below…

Before you get too excited, we’re still a good month or so away from Windows being released to the public. There’s some serious testing that need to go on before we can release it. Drool away for now though!

Tags: Windows
Posted in Website | 1 Comment »

The Post HostingCon Blues

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

As all of us settle back in to a normal work week, recovering from a week long trip in Austin for HostingCon 2010, we can now only reminiscence, thinking of the good times we had at the convention. Not only was it the first time I was able to meet my boss, and Managing Director of VPS.NET, Nick Nelson in person (and he picked me up from Houston Hobby Airport in what can only be called a Monster truck… thing could be wrapped in blue and called BigFoot), but we also had a great time meeting up with several VPS.NET clients and vendors, who were truly a great bunch to talk with.

This year the VPS.NET booth featured money booth. Any visitors could drop by and get a chance to win money and free VPS.NET nodes. It ended up being a tremendous hit, with us giving away several hundred dollars in prizes and quite a few winners of free nodes. We hope everyone who dropped by enjoyed it, and for the rest of you all, we hope you enjoy the pictures below!

Dan (UK2Group), Terry (VPS.NET) & Andy (UK2Group)

VPS.NET Army

Terry setting up for day 2

Nick Nelson prepping the money booth, with Tom from 100TB in the background.

Ditlev Bredahl, UK2Group CEO inside the Money Booth.

Lucky Money Booth Contestant

Showing off her winnings.

Dennis from WebHostingTalk.Com taking the slow methodical approach.

Tags: HostingCon
Posted in Website | 3 Comments »

Meet the Grizzly bear, Nick Nelson!

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Nick Nelson, the Managing Director at VPS.NET, sat down with Terry Myers today to go through a little intense interviewing. What we got out him was rather shocking!

Lets get started: what kind of bear is best? Keep in mind I said bear, not beer!
The grizzly bear … and the question should be beer!

Wrong! Black bear beats all. How’d you get started at VPS.NET?
I was working with the UK2Group in other areas, mostly business development.

Since we know web hosts rarely sleep, what is the longest you’ve stayed up straight?
I don’t think it’s anything too impressive… maybe 24 hours? I like to take little power naps.

Psh! And to think that you call yourself a web host!
I KNOW! BTW, ever heard of The Gas Light Anthem?

Hey! I ask the questions here. But no, I have not. How’s the traditional day go? Start with Twitter or the forum first?
The traditional day … wake up at 5AM, check email first. Then I get ready to head to the boat around 7:30-8AM. I like to check Twitter and the forum while on the boat. I’ll then finish the walk to the office, typically stopping for tea and breakfast with Ditlev at Spianata. I think they know us there.

What the heck is Spianata?
www.spianata.com. Just a place we stop by in the morning.

You’ve recently made the move to London … apparently you already have a favorite breakfast spot … how’s the rest of the relocation going?
It’s going great. The summers could be a little nicer … but London is nice – and great for traveling. And I of course, already have my favorite happy hour spots as well.

Besides London, how many other places have you lived and how does London rank?
Where else have I lived … wow … let’s see. Houston, West Texas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Southern Georgia … Los Angeles ranks lowest of those … London … it’s just slightly below Texas and Chicago … though the Chicago Winters are as bad as the London Summers … miserable.

Almost done… favorite TV show?
Two and a half men.

The advantage to knowing you for 8 years is I knew that answer and prepared for it. Do you view yourself as Charlie, Alan or even Jake? Admittedly I do see a little of Berta in you.
I’m pretty sure I have most of the charismatics of Charlie … don’t think we need to go into to many more details there.

I didn’t know you were much of a musician.
The musical talent is where I’m lacking! Although we’ll be sure to hit up the Karaoke bars while you’re in Texas for HostingCon … where I’ll be interviewing you!

What kind of cool stuff are you cooking up for the VPS.NET clients?
Cool stuff we have cooked up for VPS.NET … wow, let’s see..man, of few secrets..so Windows, Failover DNS, Load Balancing in all clouds, a new design and UI (designed by a very highly regarded designer who many of you will know..but we can’t let that secret out yet). Fully redundant SANs…And a lot happening in the service area too, which we can’t quite let out of the bag yet. But let’s just say..we’ll be looking back in September … and thinking, wow, what a Summer

Boo to you and your secrets! And that concludes the interrogation process. You’re free to leave. If you’d like to leave any closing statements, please do so at this time.
Ah … I was expecting something much more Juicy. We gotta work on these interrogations. I think that’s it – we should do some fun video stuff at hostingcon though

I try to maintain some sense of professionalism. And if I step into your truck and see video cameras (Editors note: Terry is riding with Nick from Houston, Texas to Austin, Texas for HostingCon) I’m going to run… fast.

Tags: Meet the Staff
Posted in Website | 3 Comments »

A few of our favorite post cards

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Tags: Competitions, Postcard Competition
Posted in General, Website | 7 Comments »

It’s Birthday Week at VPS.NET

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Inside every older person is a younger person – wondering what the hell happened.
- Cora Harvey Armstrong

There are certain days bartenders look forward to. New Years Eve probably tops the list, followed closely by the Friday after Thanksgiving (At least in the USA) but there’s one day that you may not know about. June 3rd; The day of my (Terry!) birthday and the Eve of Nick’s birthday. What typically starts out as a fun get away from the office, always turns into an expensive mess. While I at least get to enjoy the benefit of a lower insurance bill thanks to turning 25, Nick doesn’t have it so good. He just got older. Granted, he’s only 364 days older than me, he’s still older and that much slower than me on the basketball court. Both of us however have survived, and thrived, and I’m pretty certain thanks to some enhanced creativity levels, come up with new ideas for VPS.NET! How many of these ideas we actually remember and then decide to be a good idea can certainly be questioned.

Recognize this little guy? We’ve ordered (I believe) 5,000 of the VPS.NET mascot stress balls. If you want one, the most fun way would be to meet up with us at HostingCon. For those of you who unfortunately won’t be able to attend, we’re cooking up a way to win one. Probably will involve some sort of fun contest, but it’s totally worth it right?

An update on the “Meet the Staff” blog post: we’re still looking for some more votes. So far Kody is winning. Based off what I know about Kody, it’d definitely be a fun and interesting interview, but lets see if we can get a few more votes. Give him a little competition!

We’ve released a new Cloud Linux template, with the release of 5.5 x64. All the versions you’re used to (Basic, Apache only, MySQL only, LAMP, LAMP w/ cPanel & ISP Manager) are all there. Go check it out; a lot of users are making the migration from CentOS to Cloud Linux, so it’s definitely become a fan favorite here at VPS.NET.

That’s all I have for you this week. Definitely keep in touch with us on the forums and through the VPS.NET Twitter. We enjoy hearing from you, so don’t be shy!

Tags: Weekly Update
Posted in General, Software, The Cloud, Website | 1 Comment »

VPS.NET in the clouds!

Friday, May 28th, 2010

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve done a "weekly" update here at VPS.NET. I promise you, the lack of updates certainly had nothing to do with the recent release of Red Dead Redemption. Purely coincidence.

The curious ones out there are probably wondering why the title of this weekly update is "VPS.NET in the clouds." I have the answer for you. Oleh, our Support Manager, had this picture of him taken recently. Military fatigues and VPS.NET gear – that’s right, we do it hardcore! Please also remind me to never crack a joke at Oleh’s expense. Pretty sure he’ll snap me like a twig. Nick, sorry buddy, looks like you’re still the target of choice!

We’re also proud to announce that Slackware 13.0 is available for use on VPS.NET. You can find them in the Beta templates section; you have the options of the basic OS installation, MySQL only, Apache Only, or Apache, PHP and MySQL. This means you now have 9 different choices for operating systems at VPS.NET. Rumor has it a *TENTH* is real close to being released in beta… feel free to guess at which OS that is

For those of you who end up getting hit by Digg, SlashDot, Buzz, or any of those other sites that love to kill servers, you’ll be happy to hear of our new auto scaling feature. If you’re a ServerDensity user, you can sign up for auto scaling, which will automatically monitor your server for increased traffic levels (and thereby CPU & RAM usage). If it detects that additional nodes are needed, they’ll be automagically added to your account avoiding any unnecessary downtime for your site. Social media doesn’t have anything on VPS.NET users!

We announced this one on the blog earlier already, but in case you missed it, nodes are now billed by the minute. This means that if you purchase a node, and use it for a 20 days, you will be credited for the remaining time left in the month. The credit can then be used for future VPS.NET services, whether it be for your nodes, addon services or CDN purchases. This one is a feature that our resellers were virtually screaming for, so I’m sure you all out there who resell the VPS.NET services greatly appreciate this. If you’re interested in reselling our services, definitely contact us; our resellers benefit from the additional profit stream of offering Cloud VPS Services and CDN services, without any upfront expenses.

Finally, we’ve moved the VPS.NET website over to SoftLayer’s (A UK2.NET strategic partner) Washington DC location. This makes it much easier for us to use their anycast DNS features, along with giving us the ability to give updates in case we ever have any problems with our cloud servers.

Posted in General, Software, The Cloud, Website | No Comments »

Social Media: How we use it, what we’ve learned, and how WE can do better!

Friday, May 14th, 2010

One of my favorite sites, GigaOm, posted an article yesterday “4 Social Media Marketing Tips That Work.” It prompted me to start thinking about how we use social media here at VPS.NET, and what benefits we see from it. There’s certainly no question that our use of social media, especially Twitter, has helped our company grow. We’ve landed clients, we’ve learned a lot about our downfalls, and we’ve built some very strong relationships with clients and vendors.

Transparency
The first thing I’ve noticed about social media is it forces you to be transparent with your actions. Both your good side and your bad side are shown to the public; if you handle the bad right, it’s overlooked. If you handle it wrong, it can ruin you. What can you do to avoid handling it wrong? Being human. Acknowledge the problem, explain how you’re going to fix it, and then put that plan into place.

Being Human
When we use Twitter, our goal isn’t to just send PR notifications; we want to be human. We want to engage the community, replying to fun tweets, retweeting stuff we find interesting, and interacting with our customers. It gives us the ability to truly know our client as a person, and it gives our clients the ability to know us as a person. It makes our relationship much more enjoyable and it removes the traditional vendor/client relationship, which is oh so boring.

Being Authentic
I mentioned earlier about having a plan and actually putting it into place. There’s nothing that I, as a client, hate more than false promises. When we put something out on our Twitter it becomes our mission to accomplish it. We know that if we promise something and it doesn’t come through, we lose our legitimacy as not only a vendor, but also a person, and that makes the importance of delivering on our promise so much more important.

What can we do better?
As we grow, I feel we need to continue to improve on our ability to know you. We not only need to make our Twitter name more well known. If you don’t know of our Twitter, it makes it hard for us to know you. Not only that, but there are many other social media applications, Facebook is one that comes to mind, that we don’t use to the full extent. Not everyone is on Twitter, and we shouldn’t force you to signup for Twitter. We need to come to you.

We also need to have more fun with social media applications. It gives us, and the VPS.NET brand personality. Now I don’t mean a joke of the day, but we need to engage the community better. Whether it be discussion questions, input on VPS.NET, or even social media specific promotions, we need to give you additional value for bringing you into our social media network.

Feel free to discuss your thoughts on social media. From what I’ve found, it’s really changed the way a lot of businesses operate, and I hope that we can continue to innovate the vendor/client relationship, and add value to our hosting services.

Tags: Social media, Twitter
Posted in Website | No Comments »

So you really want to meet us?

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Thankfully Nick has finally finished up the VPS.NET 2010 Summer Tour Schedule, and I’m pleased to announce it to all of you!

HostingCon – Austin, Texas, United States
July 19th – 21st – http://www.hostingcon.com

Ditlev, Nick and I will all be attending HostingCon, which is the premier conference for the hosting services industry. This year will be the 6th HostingCon held, and is projected to have over 1,500 attendees, and more than 120 exhibitors (don’t worry, we’ll be the coolest!). We’re not only going to be exhibiting at HostingCon, but we also have a few special events planned, and I expect there will be a few impromptu outings as well. Texas is Nick’s home state, so I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of fun we’ll be having. It’s not too late to register; hear there’s a few rooms still open at the hotels, and my schedule is still completely free and clear!

cPanel Conference – Houston, Texas, United States
October 4th – 6th – http://www.cpanel.net

cPanel is undoubtedly the leading control panel for web hosting, and their conference last year was a huge success. We’ll be there representing VPS.NET, learning about future developments from cPanel, and how to maximize all of it’s value. I don’t want to steal anymore of cPanel’s thunder, especially since they haven’t even announced the dates the conference (… and I just did!), but I hear VPS.NET will be doing it BIG there!

Of course, Nick and I are always out and about looking for something to do in our respective areas. Nick’s in London, UK at the UK2Group office. I’m located offsite in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. If you’re in the area of either us, get in touch. We’ll find a way to meet up with you.

Contact Info:
Nick Nelson, Managing Director
Email: Nick (at) vps.net
Twitter: @Snickn

Terry Myers, Chief Evangelist
Email: Terry (at) vps.net
Twitter: @IGoByTerry

Tags: Conference, cpanel, HostingCon
Posted in Website | 3 Comments »

Send us a post card, win an iPad!

Friday, May 7th, 2010

It’s time we do something fun around here! I’m glad to announce the first ever VPS.NET contest. All you need to do is send us a post card, and you stand a chance to win an iPad.

Not only do you stand a chance to win an iPad, but you’ll get $10 off your next hosting bill. In the case that you’re a new client, we’ll give you a $10 credit on your first month.

The Rules

The post card MUST be post marked by June 4th.
It has to feature a location or land mark.
Your email address must be on the post card.
Only one email address can be on each post card.
One $10 discount per client.

Send your post cards to:

VPS.NET
164 North Springcreek Parkway
Providence, Utah 84332 USA

The contest is open to EVERYONE so spread the word – make it a trending topic on Twitter – and give Nick and I a taste of your home town with your post card.

Tags: Contest
Posted in General, Website | 18 Comments »

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