Shooting SHED Server Upgrade

[Ovenpaa]

Our site server is being upgraded today, this means a more powerful server with far more storage space however the most important part of the upgrade is we will be sitting on a dedicated server with a dedicated IP address. We have shared server and IP with some other sites for the last three years and this has recently lead to a huge increase of email bounces due to the main IP being blacklisted which means having to get 'our' IP removed from the black list sometimes as often as twice a week. This is both time consuming and frustrating especially because the black listing is not our fault.

So what does this mean? Well in simple terms it means our reply and confirmation emails should no longer get lost in the void that is the internet because another company is using the IP to spam people so our customers should receive a reply so in theory no more worrying about if the email was received or not.

[safetyfirst]

One thing that helps here is using an external service such as mailgun or send grid to do all your mailing, keeping the web servers IP Clean and your emails out of people's spam.

You can de blacklist all you like but BT and Hotmail keep these lists for random amounts of time and you can't request a removal!

Nice move to a dedicated server. Cloud or bare metal?

[Ovenpaa]

This is a cloud server.

Oddly enough one of the first things we need to do is send an update email out to all of our customers telling them about our new location and land line number, hopefully without getting blacklisted for spam!

[safetyfirst]

Most cloud server providers worth their salt will provide an SMTP relay for web servers to use, if not I'd suggest either using your existing email servers or better still using something like mailgun to send out your emails.

Better STILL is to use mailgun for essential email the site needs to send like receipts etc and do your mass mailing and marketing emails through something like mail chimp.

Have fun with that new server and keep your operating system and related packages well patched, check for updates at least twice a week and perhaps subscribe your email to the security mailing list for your chosen operating system.

You're a server admin now!

:)

[Ovenpaa]

Have fun with that new server and keep your operating system and related packages well patched, check for updates at least twice a week and perhaps subscribe your email to the security mailing list for your chosen operating system.

You're a server admin now!

HA! No chance, I walked away from such things many years ago, these days the Viking is responsible for all things server and security related, I just make swarf and shiny stuff

[Blackstuff]

I'm hoping the server change might restore the site to how it used to run for me as its horrific at the moment

[Ovenpaa]

Mark, what sort of issues have you been getting?

[Ovenpaa]

Well the migration has completed at long last. As usual you can find us at http://www.shootingshed.co.uk and hopefully everything should be crisp and correct and we now have a dedicated IP address with a whole load of other upgrades, however if you do experience any problems with the site or emails please let one of us know.

[Blackstuff]

Mark, what sort of issues have you been getting?

Its mainly massive lags after clicking anything (10secs-5minutes) which happen sporadically, some times it works straight away, mostly it doesn't though. Sometimes i'll click on the back button and it would literally just sit doing nothing forever. I can usually get around this by clicking the View New Posts (VNP) button, but some times that fails, in which case i have to click the Board Index button first, then the VNP. It can get quite annoying when there's 3 pages of new threads to go through and the one i'm looking at is on the 2nd or later page! Often the pages simply fail to load at all and/or freezes (no buttons are clickable) and i have to reclick the Fullbore UK in my favourites list and start all over again. aaarggh

It only happens on my works computer though, not my home computer or mobile so i presume its clashing with some kind of firewall or something

EDIT: DERP - the problems are with FBUK not The Shooting Shed!

[Christel]

Blackstuff,

What you are describing sounds identical to targetman who could only access the forum at work, home pc and laptop was slow big time.

It happened after a server change and I can't find the issue.