Slow or Offline Websites/Email ** UPDATED **

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.

Servers Down

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.

Increase In Spam

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.

Server Down

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)

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

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.

Trouble With AOL Email

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

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

Lost Email: Follow-up #2

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

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.

Lost Email

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

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

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

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