Basic Web Design & Graphics - Alternate Alert Site

Slow or Offline Websites/Email UPDATED

2011-06-15T10:32:00.005-04:00

Hi folks

You may have noticed that your website or email have been fairly frequently going down the past few weeks. We have been investigating and attempting to correct as soon as we become aware of it (which has been sometimes nearly instantly). The hosting company has also been very quick to respond, and has assured me every time that the culprit is not a BWD-hosted account. (All BWD-hosted accounts are on a shared hosting server, meaning there are other "accounts" on the same machine. That's where the problem was originating.)

The culprit appears to be some malicious (and over-active) scripts on another account on the server. They've been deleting/removing them as soon as they discover them, but they have not successfully removed all of them until (they are fairly certain) today. Here's the message from the hosting company.

There have been so many script problems on your server recently. I see that we disabled one script on the 13th and two scripts yesterday. I was seeing a higher than normal load on your server right now and I contacted one of our team of experts that monitor your server. They found yet another script to disable. The load average is coming down and things appear to be getting back to normal. He is not seeing any other problems at this time.

I'm very sorry that you are having to deal with other users' script problems. Our team of monitors are viewing our shared servers around the clock, making sure that all services are running and users are "playing nice". Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I know that some of you have had trouble sending email (hitting the mail server at one of the times it was overloaded/down). Hopefully the problem has been (finally) completely corrected.

Thanks,
Greg Campbell
BWD-Graphics.com

UPDATE: Issue Re-Opened

The issues are apparently not completely resolved. I am working directly with level II tech support with the hosting company to resolve this as quickly as possible. Again, the issue is not with any BWD-hosted account, but with a handful of other accounts hosted on the server. When the source is discovered it is immediately disabled, but the original source has not yet been discovered as new scripts are constantly surfacing and bogging down the server, at least hourly or more! Will update again when a final resolution has been reached.

UPDATE Jun 23 10:55am ET: The server was down AGAIN today... this issue has obviously not been corrected. Working on it again with the hosting company. Very sorry for the inconvenience.

Security Issues = Password Changes

2011-04-08T16:58:00.003-04:00

Three times in the past month or two I have spent DAYS cleaning up from compromised websites (even using fairly secure passwords) so over the next couple days I am going to be changing everyone's master account passwords to 20-character, very secure passwords. I will email each of you with the updated password. Please email me if you don't get an email, or if you just need it before I can email everyone.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the alternative is DEFINITELY not fun. (I know first-hand!)

Thanks for your patience,
Greg Campbell
BWD

High Server Load - Resolved

2011-01-22T23:39:00.002-05:00

The server that hosts all BWD-hosted accounts was experiencing unusually high loads over the past few days. This was causing at least slowness, and sometimes websites and email were intermittently down. After investigation, the cause seems to be an account owned by another reseller on the same server. The account has been brought under control now, and you should not have any further downtime for your websites or email.

Please contact us if you are still having trouble connecting to the server for either.

Thanks,
Greg Campbell
BWD-Graphics

Servers Down

2010-11-02T13:02:00.004-04:00

It would appear that as of about 1pm ET the BWD server is down. I am checking into it, but am unable to reach tech support at the moment. Past experience says that this will be remedied in 5-10 minutes, but I'll keep on top of it and update this post if I learn of any more delay than that.

Thanks,
Greg Campbell
BWD

UPDATE:
A couple bad signs are that the tech support line is "busy" (or, when I did get through a message said they are not accepting calls at the moment) and most of their own access points are down as well. So it's the hosting company, or a large chunk of it, not just the BWD server.

UPDATE:
And, right on cue, at 1:06pm ... the server seems to be operational once again. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Old Hosting Accounts Closed

2010-08-03T11:03:00.002-04:00

As was stated previously, all (nearly all) BWD hosted accounts have been closed/deleted from the old server. I am in the process of moving the old (main) domain name [bwd-graphics.com] to the new hosting service. That should be completed by the end of this week. All of your domains should be pointing to the new servers. If you are unsure, please contact me via the email address in the left sidebar.

Thanks everyone for your patience through this. I am very happy with the new hosting service and hope that the months and years ahead will be very, very stable!

Greg Campbell
Basic Web Design & Graphics

Hosting Server Move Information

2010-07-24T16:00:00.012-04:00

For those of you whose accounts I have moved to the new hosting service, here are some important links for you during the transition time.

EMAIL INFORMATION:
All your settings will remain the same (I even tried to get most of your passwords copied correctly, after you sent them to me). You can login and correct any errors using the information below (login to the new server). But your mail server settings will remain:

incoming/outgoing mailservers: mail.[yourdomain]
username: your full email address
pw: your password

[NOTE: Some ISPs require that you use their mail server to send mail. If you have trouble sending, check with your ISP to see if this is the case. Also, you may need to set the outgoing port to 26, rather than the default 25. I found this to be the case with one account, but no others so far.]

NEW SERVER LINKS:
cPanel (settings like email accounts and passwords, redirects, databases, etc):
http://basicwebdesignandgraphics.com/cpanel

OLD SERVER LINKS:
cPanel (to check/retrieve any old settings not correctly transferred, email, auto-responders, databases, etc):
http://bwd-graphics.com/cpanel

Webmail (to retrieve any mail incorrectly directed to the old servers, which can sometimes happen during the name server change):
http://bwd-graphics.com/webmail

Your cPanel login should be the same as it was before. And to check mail on the old server, just use your email address(es) and the associated passwords. If you need me to send your login information to you, just send me an email to the address in the left sidebar here.

IMPORTANT: Accounts will be on the old server only until July 31st. They will be deleted shortly after that.

Very sorry for all the issues over this past month. I am hopeful that there won't be anything like this ... ever again! :-)

Thanks for your business.
Greg Campbell
Basic Web Design & Graphics

Continued Server Issues

2010-07-20T17:04:00.002-04:00

As you may have noticed, there was another good chunk of time that the [old] BWD servers were down/inaccessible today. That will be the last straw. About 40-50% of the BWD accounts were moved to a new hosting service over the past several weeks. Tonight and the rest of this week I will move ALL accounts to a new hosting service.

Ideally you will not notice the change. If you have changed your email password since I created it for you then I will not be able to set that up for you. That will be a simple password "change" once the domain is pointing to the new server. You will not miss any mail. I will send you a link to check mail on the old server in case any does get directed there.

(In fact, I'll post it here: http://bwd-graphics.com/webmail ... login there with your email address and password to get any mail sent to the old server once the domain points to the new server.)

I'll send an email to everyone once all have been officially moved.

So sorry for the past month of at best inconvenience, at worst giant headaches. (I know I have one...)

Thanks for your patience.
Greg Campbell
BWD

Server Downtime [Conclusion?]

2010-07-10T08:34:00.006-04:00

The hosting service has decided that the problem is a hardware issue that is not repairable, and are currently moving ALL of their accounts (including all BWD accounts) to brand new servers. This will result in a bit more downtime this weekend, but by Monday, all should be smooth sailing.

Here is their message in response to a support ticket yesterday:

I am transferring your sites now... Your nameservers for ns1.bwd-graphics.com / ns2.bwd-graphics.com will be updated towards the end of the transfer. Please note that it could take some time for propagation, and it will probably be a rough transition as a result of the old server occasionally going down, but when it's all done it should be very nice.

Because of this, I have suspended any migrations that were in process to the other hosting service. Probably about 20% of BWD accounts have been moved from the company who has had the hardware trouble for three weeks now to the new hosting company. You have been notified if yours was one of these accounts.

I will be watching very closely over the next week to see what will happen with the current hosting company (on the new hardware). If there are still issues, I will have to continue moving accounts.

If you would prefer me to move your account anyway, just let me know. Use the email address in the left column of this page.

Thanks.
Greg Campbell
BWD

UPDATE:

FYI, as of this afternoon (Jul 10), All BWD accounts have been moved to the new hardware (but with the same hosting company, except for those mentioned above who have been individually contacted about being moved to a new hosting company). There may be some domain name server propagation issues (being directed to the wrong server) but overall it seems the switch has been made and this should resolve all of the downtime and slowness issues. Please contact me if you're still experiencing problems after Monday. (A couple of days to make sure any name server issues are resolved.) Thanks.

Increase In Spam

2010-07-05T11:46:00.003-04:00

If you have experienced an increase in spam in the past few days to a week, it's likely due to your account being moved to a new hosting service. I discovered that they do no have SpamAssassin enabled by default. (I was unaware of this initially.) I have not turned it on and given it a setting of 5, the default setting. This should catch/eliminate most spam.

If you'd like to adjust your spam filtering settings, simply login to your control panel:
[yourdomain]/cpanel

Navigate to the SpamAssassin page and set the auto-delete number. Lower means it will delete more messages, higher means it will allow more to pass through. You can also enable a "Spam Box" if you'd prefer not to have SpamAssassin auto-delete. (Though I have found it does do a very good job of determining which messages are spam and which are not.)

This will not eliminate spam entirely, only greatly reduce it. One way to eliminate it (almost) entirely that is built into your hosting service is Box Trapper. Box Trapper requires authentication of every email address that sends you email. Once authorized, mail will be sent through normally, but the user must authorize their email address on the first attempt to send you a message. It works really great for me. I highly recommend.

If you're having any issues with spam, please try these solutions, and then contact me if the troubles persist.

MAJOR Issues Continue - Moving Accounts

2010-07-02T16:35:00.002-04:00

The main BWD hosting company has not resolved the issues that have plagued the servers hosting most BWD hosted websites and email accounts, and though we have a long-standing and excellent relationship with this company, it has been nearly a week of intermittent connectivity (plus a day where the sites were inaccessible for a couple hours just before this past week) and many times the sites and email have been completely down for even hours.

This problem does not affect everyone, but the highest-traffic sites are being moved over and configured so that you will experience very little (or no) server move related downtime. Hoping to have all such sites moved to a new hosting service by the end of this weekend.

If you are having issues, please contact me using the alternate address in the left sidebar.

So sorry for the past week of very sub-par service. Looking forward to using the new faster, more reliable service.

Thanks for your patience, and your business.

Greg Campbell
BWD

Continued Downtime for BWD Servers

2010-06-30T22:40:00.002-04:00

The BWD servers have been slow again this evening (10:44pm ET)and are currently completely down. This means your website and email hosted with BWD are completely inaccessible. The hosting company continues to work on the issue, still promising to have it back to normal "soon".

Please contact me here, or at the email given in the sidebar (or by phone) if you have some urgent need that has been interrupted by this prolonged outage. Steps are being taken to eliminate these problems completely.

More soon. Please visit this blog page if your email is not connecting (incoming or, if you use BWD servers, outgoing) or if you find your website is running slowly or just completely down. I'll keep this updated as often as I can.

Very sorry for the inconveniences. Thanks for your patience.
Greg - BWD

BWD Servers Down for up to Four Hours

2010-06-30T14:38:00.005-04:00

If your site relies on databases to deliver some or all of your content, you may have noticed today that that delivery is quite intermittent. We have been looking into any and all reasons this might be occurring, and the data center finally decided it could be a hardware problem. This will require shutting the servers down for up to four hours today.

VERY sorry for the inconvenience. Things break, to be sure, but added to the ongoing issues described below, this has been a very frustrating week for everyone involved.

Will update this post as updates are available.

Thanks,
Greg Campbell
BWD

UPDATE - 5:04pm:
The servers have been restored, and there do not appear to be any more database-related errors. Again, sorry for the inconvenience and downtime. Let me know if you are noticing any more issues.

More Downtime for BWD Servers

2010-06-27T16:52:00.003-04:00

The BWD servers are again offline, and this time a cause has been discovered. This is the second time this week, and third time in the last couple weeks. Very sorry for the inconvenience. It is likely no BWD accounts that are the cause of the problem, but unfortunately, we have been the victims of it.

Here is the message re: the downtime from the hosting company:

Causes / Solutions of Recent Downtime (BWD Server)
The BWD server has been down or unreachable 1 to 2 hours per day. There are two primary causes for this.

Continuous brute-force attacks
Frequent customer-inititated backups outside the normal automated backups.

The brute force attacks are very sophisticated and are coming from multiple locations around the world, most likely computers which have been compromised. Each attempt creates a number of log entries, which literally filled up one of the partitions on the drive (the cause of yesterday's downtime). The data center has been tweaking the firewall above the server to thwart these attacks as much as possible. Meanwhile, Platinum Server Management is working on tweaking server security.

The customer-initiated backups are most likely a result of the downtime itself. When there is downtime, there is a tendency for everyone to start generating and downloading backups on a more frequent basis. This uses up a lot of cpu and overloads the server. In short, fears about a crash become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I have no doubt that the issue will soon be resolved. In the mean time, thank you for your understanding and your patience as we work through these issues.

The servers are currently still down as of 4:55pm ET. Will continue to monitor and update here when all is back online.

UPDATE: The servers are back online as of 5:45pm ET.

BWD Hosting Down: 4:14pm ET 23 Jun

2010-06-23T16:16:00.003-04:00

It has come to my attention that the BWD hosting servers are completely unavailable at the moment. Websites and Email are down until the service can be restored. I'll update this post as there are any developments, or when the service is restored completely.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

RESOLUTION:
At about 5:15pm, service was completely restored. Let me know if you're having any trouble with website access and/or email sending and receiving.

Overloaded Server Causing Intermittent Connection Issues

2010-05-12T10:15:00.002-04:00

The BWD shared server (where most all BWD clients are hosted) is experiencing trouble current due to heavy traffic from a non-BWD account on that same server. This is causing dropped connections when checking for or sending email, inability to connect to databases, as well as very brief downtime for your sites. The problem is being troubleshooted currently, and will be corrected some time today.

This post will be updated when the problem has been resolved.

BWD Hosting Down: 9:30am ET 03 May 2010

2010-05-03T10:03:00.002-04:00

The BWD servers are currently completely down. Web and email is inaccessible until service is restored. Will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates here.

UPDATE: 10:05am ... just after I posted the initial notice, the service has been restored. Please contact me if you are having any continued connection issues.

Server Down - Feb 13 [RESOLVED]

2010-02-13T18:47:00.005-05:00

The BWD server was rebooted earlier today (about 1.5 hours ago) to correct some issue, but unfortunately, that seems to have caused greater issues. The server is down and they are working on getting it back up. As of 6:50pm, still not back up, but will update this post when the issue has been corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: (7:31pm ET)
This is a very serious issue. We will continue to monitor it and update you here.
The following update was posted by the hosting company:

February 13, 7:20 PM (NY time)
ACCELEX SERVER UPDATE:
The server had to be rebooted due to an overload. Unfortunately, the reboot left the file system of the entire server in a state of disrepair, which has led to a loss of data for all web sites on the server. At this time, the DC techs are attempting to repair the damage and recover the data. More information will be posted here when it becomes available.
If the data can not be recovered as-is, we will begin restoring the most recent backups available. Please note that the MySQL partition was not damaged, so database information will still be up-to-date. It is only files that will have to be restored.

February 13, 8:42pm (NY time)
The file system check is currently at 43%. Updates will be posted as they become available.

February 13, 10:42pm (NY time) (BACK ONLINE)
The server had to be rebooted due to an overload. Unfortunately, the reboot left the file system of the entire server in a state of disrepair, which led to a loss of data for all web sites on the server. The DC techs were successful in repairing the damage and recovering the data in a relatively short period of time. Thank you for your patience while the problem was resolved.

Server Down

2009-12-23T13:56:00.002-05:00

It appears that the main BWD server is down at the moment. Perhaps began around 1:50pm ET. Will continue to investigate and update this page when the issue has been resolved. It is affecting both email and websites.

Updates to come.

RESOLVED 2:20pm ET. Servers are back in operation. Sorry for the down time.

Email Problems (Premium Hosting Accounts)

2009-11-23T15:41:00.003-05:00

If you are a BWD Premium Hosting account holder, you may be experiencing some issues with your email today. (My account is repeatedly having trouble connecting to the server.) Here's the official update from the hosting company:

Update: Incoming Email

Update: Network engineers have identified the cause of the issue and have taken steps to resolve the issue. Mail should be back to normal within 30 minutes at the latest.

We are aware of an issue that may cause email sent to mailboxes hosted on our platform to be returned to the sender with a bounceback error indicating the retry limit has been exceeded. Our network engineers are currently looking into the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the bounceback errors. More detail will be posted on this issue as it becomes available.

- 11/23/09 at 14:12 ET

Email Issue: Prompting for Password

2009-11-19T16:19:00.002-05:00

You may have been experiencing some difficulty with your email today. There has been a little trouble with the software on the server that continually prompts for your password. Also, once it does accept the password, the performance has been very slow.

We have attempted some solutions to this, none are having great effect, yet. We'll keep at it. Please contact me if you are still having trouble by submitting a new support ticket at support.bwd-graphics.com.

Google Warning: Phishing Scam [Resolved]

2009-11-05T20:05:00.001-05:00

Some BWD clients may have recently received an email notifying you that Google has tagged your site as a potential host for a phishing scam. This is not true. (Well, it's not completely true.) There was an issue with another account on the same server as BWD hosted accounts, and somehow Google identified any domain associated with that server/IP address as harmful.

However, as you'll notice, all of your pages are still up and not blocked by Google's phishing scam filter (As the link in the email was.) This is because BWD-Graphics.com accounts were NOT affected by this scam.

The issue has been traced and resolved. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at support.bwd-graphics.com.

Here's an example of the email you may have received.

From: noreply@google.com
Date: November 5, 2009 1:06:03 PM EST
To: abuse@yourdomain.com, admin@yourdomain.com, administrator@yourdomain.com, contact@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, postmaster@yourdomain.com, support@yourdomain.com, webmaster@yourdomain.com
Subject: Phishing notification regarding yourdomain.com

Dear site owner or webmaster of yourdomain.com,

We recently discovered that some pages on your site look like a probable phishing attack, in which users are encouraged to give up sensitive information such as login credentials or banking information. We have begun showing a warning page to users who visit this site in certain browsers that receive anti-phishing data from Google, as well as users redirected to this site from various Google properties.

Below are one or more example URLs on your site which appear to be part of a phishing attack:
http://www.yourdomain.com/~dbean/components/com_letterman/images/hsbc.co.uk12personal/httpwww.hsbc.co.uk12personalcredit-cards;jsessionid=0000pDFvvK08lyoIpQOFOAhC_Ct11j74l29q/

Here is a link to a sample warning page:
http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http%3A//www.yourdomain.com/~dbean/components/com_letterman/images/hsbc.co.uk12personal/httpwww.hsbc.co.uk12personalcredit-cards%3Bjsessionid%3D0000pDFvvK08lyoIpQOFOAhC_Ct11j74l29q/

We strongly encourage you to investigate this immediately to protect users who are being directed to a suspected phishing attack being hosted on your web site. Although some sites intentionally host such attacks, in many cases the webmaster is unaware because:

1) the site was compromised
2) the site doesn't monitor for malicious user-contributed content

If your site was compromised, it's important to not only remove the content involved in the phishing attack, but to also identify and fix the vulnerability that enabled such content to be placed on your site. We suggest contacting your hosting provider if you are unsure of how to proceed.

Once you've secured your site, and removed the content involved in the suspected phishing attack, or if you believe we have made an error and this is not actually a phishing attack, you can request that the warning be removed by visiting
http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/ and reporting an "incorrect forgery alert." We will review this request and take the appropriate actions.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

UPDATE: Google continues to send the warning emails, so I checked with the hosting company to verify that your accounts are clear, and they are. Here was the response:

Nov 11, 09:24AM
Hi Greg,

Yes, I can verify. Those messages should be ignored. If [you] click the link in the email [you] will see that it doesn't go anywhere. It is a total mistake on google's part.

Data Center Outage Affected Some BWD Hosting Accounts

2009-10-02T17:57:00.004-04:00

There was a fairly lengthy downtime yesterday for some BWD hosting accounts, which I was made aware of. I checked with the company that hosts the affected accounts, and sure enough there was a major problem yesterday. Very sorry for the loss of service yesterday. All seems to be mostly back in order. Let me know if you are having any more problems (website/email down).

Here's the notification they released.

Data Center Outage October 1, 2009.
Yesterday, October 1, 2009, we experienced an outage at one of our datacenters. Customers that were housed in that datacenter experienced total connectivity loss for a significant portion of the day.

The outage was caused by a failure of one of our core routers, which caused an overload in our network connections. Due to this overload, we experienced a series of secondary issues that caused connections to our servers to drop.

At this time, we have brought the network traffic back to a nominal state and expect to have 99 percent of our customers up and running with all services running normally. However, we do expect to have a small degradation of services while we continue to make adjustments to our Network. These services may include, CGI, FTP, Mail, or MySQL.

In addition, we are in the process of making improvements to our Network Topology to ensure that we don't experience this type of failure in the future. This will require us to schedule a Maintenance window of down time, so that we can implement the changes. We will schedule this downtime at some point next week, and we will schedule it at a point in time with the least amount of network traffic, to minimize the effects to you.

We thank you for your patience and understanding during this time.

- 10/02/09 at 14:27 ET

Trouble With AOL Email

2009-09-09T12:37:00.002-04:00

Several BWD clients have expressed concern regarding emails sent to or received from AOL users in the past week or two. AOL has changed their mail processing structure so that email generated by BWD clients is being rejected and also not delivered to any domains with BWD hosted IP addresses. This is a poorly planned attempt by AOL to manage and filter SPAM, which has resulted in a frustrating incapacitation of legitimate email traffic.

The hosting company that we use has and is taking measures to remedy this by purchasing new IP addresses that will be assigned to the accounts of anyone who is affected by this issue. If you are unable to send to or receive from people using @aol.com email addresses, please let me know and we'll get your domain on these new IP addresses which should resolve the issue.

Sorry for the trouble. AOL is often on the wrong side of these frustrating issues. Thanks for your patience.

Greg Campbell
BWD

Slow Server, E-Mail

2009-08-25T13:19:00.002-04:00

The BWD-Graphics servers have been slow today due to a migration of another account on the shared server. This has caused slow web page loading as well as slow or dropped email connections (requests to re-enter your password as well).

The process has almost completed as of 1:20pm ET and all web and email functionality should be restored within the next hour or so.

Thanks for your patience,
Greg Campbell
BWD-Graphics

Service Restored

2009-06-23T16:58:00.003-04:00

Web hosting and email are once again operational. Will post any details I can regarding downtime here at this post.

Thanks,
Greg Campbell
BWD

UPDATE:
(from the hosting provider)

One server experienced 45 minutes of downtime today, while the other server was down approximately 30 minutes. The second server is functioning perfectly and was involved by mistake. The first server may have a problem with one of its drives, as it was exhibiting an audible alarm. After reboot, however, all seems to be fine. If additional downtime is required for this server, every effort will be made to conduct hardware upgrades during a period of low traffic (3:30am to 4:00am, New York Time).

BWD Hosting Down: 4:14pm ET 23 Jun

2009-06-23T16:14:00.002-04:00

BWD-Graphics.com website and e-mail are currently down, as is the website of the hosting company that provides our hosting space. Will continue to monitor and update here as information becomes available and/or service is restored. Leave questions here or use the alternate email address provided in the sidebar.

Thanks,
Greg Campbell, BWD

May 12th, 2009: Reason for Service Outage

2009-05-12T18:36:00.001-04:00

FYI, I received this response from the hosting company regarding the outage today from 5:45 ET to 6:21 ET:

An entire data center went down, ([located] in Dallas, TX). It was a router issue.

Possible Outage: Tue May 12, 2009 5:45pm ET

2009-05-12T17:44:00.003-04:00

Hi Folks
Just thought I'd post this here as I have lost access to the cpanel and email for my account (which would affect most of yours as well). It could just be a hiccup, but it's still down after a few tries. I will stay on it and update this post when the server is accessible again.

If you have any further questions, you can leave them as a comment here, or use my alternate email listed in the sidebar.

More to come...
Greg Campbell
BWD-Graphics

*** UPDATE ***

All of my hosting accounts that use a cPanel interface were down from about 5:45pm ET until 6:21pm ET when all are now back up. Sorry for the downtime. Will seek further explanation and post here.

Sites Back Up - And An Explanation

2008-10-27T00:57:00.002-04:00

Hey folks
I believe the issue has been resolved. They are still looking into the exact cause, but there was a problem with another account on the shared hosting server that BWD hosted accounts are on. Here is the reply from tech support:

I think someone's site was hacked, and they keep doing something to overload the server. I'm trying to narrow which site is causing the problem...

Not completely reassuring, but other responses were more assuring, that our sites should not go down again at this time.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Let me know if you are still experiencing difficulties.
Greg Campbell

Sites Back Down?

2008-10-27T00:00:00.001-04:00

Apparently, the websites are back down. Email seems to be functioning properly, but the websites are not coming up. Will continue to follow this issue until it is satisfactorily resolved. Stay tuned...

Account Access Restored

2008-10-26T23:32:00.003-04:00

The master hosting account was rebooted and is now active. I am still trying to find out what exactly happened, but as of 11:30pm ET, site and email access has been restored. Please contact me if there are any issues. You can use my main email or use the alternate email address listed in the sidebar of this page.

Thanks for your business.
Have a great week!
Greg Campbell

HOSTING ACCOUNT DOWN

2008-10-26T22:59:00.003-04:00

It has come to my attention that my hosting account (and all those belonging to BWD clients) are "missing". I'm really not sure what has happened. The domains are just resolving to nowhere. I don't know how that could happen. I have an emergency tech support ticket into the hosting company with the time stamp 10:17pm ET.

Will keep this site updated with any developments.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

FTP Access Restored

2008-07-28T20:26:00.004-04:00

And the ordeal has finally come to a close. At 8:20pm EST Jul 28 I checked back in with the FTP servers, and voila! I was in! For obvious reasons, that made me smile.

So sorry for the lost time today, especially those of you who waited all day (myself included!) to have FTP access to your sites. (This affects things like regular site updates, updates with Contribute, Blogger publishing, file sharing, etc.) It has been restored, and all normal functionality is now available.

If you have any concerns about lost email, or are still having trouble logging in, let me know and I'll help you out as soon as possible.

Thanks for your business, and I hope to not be updating this site anytime soon. But, as the header says, if there is an outage and you can not access email, please do check this page. If I am aware of it, I will post known issues here. My contact info is in the column to the left, including alternate email.

FTP Status

2008-07-28T16:26:00.002-04:00

The FTP issues remain unresolved. The host has attempted to reboot the server, which could resolve the FTP login issues, but thus far the server continues to reject account usernames and passwords. I will continue to monitor the situation and post the resolution here, as well as be sending out an email to all once all has been restored.

Lost Email: Follow-up #2

2008-07-28T15:04:00.003-04:00

Just heard from the hosting company, here's what they said:

Usually if it isn't delivered for some reason, the sending mail server will keep trying every few hours, so it should eventually come in, but I can't say for sure.

I have been getting old email coming through sporadically, so I think that all the mail probably will be eventually delivered, but wouldn't be a bad idea if you really think you missed something to ask people to send again anything sent between 12:00am EST and 10:30am EST.

Lost Email: Follow-up

2008-07-28T13:34:00.002-04:00

I am slowly getting the test emails I sent to my greg@bwd-graphics.com email while access was down. That is a good sign for potentially lost email, but I have not gotten any emails from other people between 12am EST Jul 28 and 10:26am EST Jul 28.

The ticket I submitted requesting information on any lost email has not yet been updated. Will update here as soon as I have an answer to that.

cPanel: File Manager, AWStats, etc

2008-07-28T12:42:00.003-04:00

It seems that cPanel has been fully restored as of 12:42pm. I still do not have FTP access to accounts, but did successfully upload an image file using File Manager in cPanel. I am also able to login to all accounts using cPanel, and it is functioning normally, which it was not previously doing.

There was a question about not being able to access the site stats, and this botched software update was definitely the reason. The stats run in cPanel, and should now be fully restored. Email me if you're still having trouble with that.

Lost Email

2008-07-28T11:42:00.003-04:00

There has been some question re: lost email. My email stopped coming in around midnight, and then resumed when they restored access at 10:30am (ish). There is an obvious gap, but when I sent a test message to myself, I did not get an automated bounce reply, so I am assuming the message went somewhere. I will be tracking down that answer as well (if the email from midnight till 10:30 on Jul 28 is lost, or just misplaced) and will post that here.

Thanks again for your patience, and please resume normal email use.

Greg

Email: Outgoing Servers Now Working

2008-07-28T11:37:00.001-04:00

It appears the outgoing mail servers are now functioning properly. You should be able to send and receive email on your BWD-hosted accounts. (11:38am)

Email: Further Details

2008-07-28T11:33:00.001-04:00

One thing to add, I am able to receive mail, but not send on the bwd-graphics.com mail servers. My Mail app lets me pick a different outgoing server, so I am able to send mail via my ISP's mail server. If you're able to make that modification, you should be able to use your BWD-hosted email account.

I still do not have FTP access to any accounts.

More to come...

E-Mail and CPanel down

2008-07-28T11:10:00.001-04:00

Hi all

This morning I noticed my email was not working, and then it has been brought to my attention that all of my clients hosted through BWD (aside from Premium package hosted clients) are experiencing the same trouble. No email access (not accepting passwords) and no FTP access to accounts. (cPanel access has been restored, but modifying files on the site has not.)

The hosting company is working feverishly to correct these issues. I was told they stem from a common software update to cPanel, that obviously went awry. I have seen progress - as I'm sure have you - but full functionality has not been restored as of 11:14am today.

I can receive some email, and can send using a different mail server, but again, full access has not been restored.

Will keep you updated here, and will use this for future account-wide outages. Please bookmark this site.

Thanks for your patience, we are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Greg

Basic Web Design & Graphics - Alternate Alert Site

Slow or Offline Websites/Email ** UPDATED **

UPDATE: Issue Re-Opened

Security Issues = Password Changes

High Server Load - Resolved

Servers Down

Old Hosting Accounts Closed

Hosting Server Move Information

Continued Server Issues

Server Downtime [Conclusion?]

Increase In Spam

MAJOR Issues Continue - Moving Accounts

Continued Downtime for BWD Servers

BWD Servers Down for up to Four Hours

More Downtime for BWD Servers

BWD Hosting Down: 4:14pm ET 23 Jun

Overloaded Server Causing Intermittent Connection Issues

BWD Hosting Down: 9:30am ET 03 May 2010

Server Down - Feb 13 [RESOLVED]

Server Down

Email Problems (Premium Hosting Accounts)

Email Issue: Prompting for Password

Google Warning: Phishing Scam [Resolved]

Data Center Outage Affected Some BWD Hosting Accounts

Trouble With AOL Email

Slow Server, E-Mail

Service Restored

BWD Hosting Down: 4:14pm ET 23 Jun

May 12th, 2009: Reason for Service Outage

Possible Outage: Tue May 12, 2009 5:45pm ET

Sites Back Up - And An Explanation

Sites Back Down?

Account Access Restored

HOSTING ACCOUNT DOWN

FTP Access Restored

FTP Status

Lost Email: Follow-up #2

Lost Email: Follow-up

cPanel: File Manager, AWStats, etc

Lost Email

Email: Outgoing Servers Now Working

Email: Further Details

E-Mail and CPanel down

Slow or Offline Websites/Email UPDATED