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HelioHost is happy to announce that we're disabling ads across all of our websites and hosting plans, including the free Johnny plan, starting now. Back in 2008 through 2016 or so HelioHost was 100% funded by ads, and we made so much ad revenue that we even managed to save up quite a bit of money in our bank account too. It might come as a shock to some of you, but it isn't free for us to provide free hosting, so we still have to pay for stuff like electricity and internet access. As the years went by Adsense kept paying less less and less each year, and our bills kept adding up to be higher than the ad revenue. So our bank accounts kept dwindling lower and lower. There were a few scary years in there where we had to make some hard decisions whether or not to just give up and shut down entirely. We didn't think anyone would be willing to donate to us, but we didn't really have a lot of other options, so starting in 2016 we began asking for donations. We were then, and still are, completely shocked by how generous people can be. After finishing a record setting fundraiser to purchase a new server earlier this year, we discussed it and decided that we don't need ads at all anymore. As long as people keep donating towards our non-profit mission to provide free or low cost hosting, we don't need to bombard you with annoying advertisements. Thank you to all of our donors for making this possible.

Here is the final final solution Here is the detail 1. wget --header="TOKEN:secured_token" "http://mbo.helioho.st/cgi-bin/my_script_for_build.py" : this cgi script contains the commands that run "npm install" + "npm run build" 2. touch tmp/restart.txt : after "npm run build" I need to restart the Node JS application, according to Plesk documentation it can be done by creating a file named "restart.txt" in folder "tmp" 3. wget "http://mbo.helioho.st/api/version" : when creating the file "tmp/restart.txt" the server will restart after the next request, that's why I immediately send a request to my application in order it to restart immediately after my new build

HelioHost is raising funds to purchase a new server! https://donorbox.org/rebirth-of-stevie In 2005, Ashoat, who was 14 years old at the time, came up with the ridiculous idea of giving away web hosting for free. He purchased the domain heliohost.org and a reseller plan, but it wasn't too long before there were so many people wanting to host their website for free on HelioHost that Ashoat had to buy a server to support them all. He named that first server Stevie. HelioHost now has several more servers, but Stevie is special because he was the first. We used that server as long as we could, but it eventually became too old to do anything useful anymore, so we unplugged it. We are going to hand poor old Stevie over to the recyclers soon, but that doesn't have to be the end for him... 2025 is HelioHost's 20-year anniversary, and what better way to celebrate this milestone than by reflecting on where we came from, and taking the next step towards where we are going. We can keep the spirit of Stevie alive to carry on his purpose even after his metal, copper, and silicon have all been melted down, by raising funds for a new server and naming it Stevie. Summary of thank you gifts (see fundraiser for details): $5 = +1000 MB on existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account. $10 = +2000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account. $15 = +3000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account. $20 = +4000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account. $25 = +5000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account. $30 = +6000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account. $35 = Early beta access to new Java and JSP hosting server before it is publicly available. $40 = +1000 MB on existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account, plus early beta access to new Java server. $45 = +2000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account, plus early beta access to new Java server. $50 = +3000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account, plus early beta access to new Java server. $55 = +4000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account, plus early beta access to new Java server. $60 = +5000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account, plus early beta access to new Java server. $65+ = +6000 MB (to a max of 7000 MB) on an existing Morty, Tommy, or Johnny account, plus early beta access to new Java server. Please don't let Stevie be forgotten. It will only take you a minute to give us a gift to help us achieve this goal. The money you donate is tax-deductible, and any amount big or small helps get us a step closer. Thank you so much!

For the first time in HelioHost history we are going to upgrade one of our servers with zero downtime. Normally when we do an upgrade it's because of some catastrophe, like a hard drive crash, or we just power off the old server causing everyone's website to be offline for a few weeks until we finish building the new server. We're happy to announce that the new Tommy server is already fully built with all the latest software and ready to go. In fact, all new donors are already receiving invites to the new server. The next step is to move everyone from the old Tommy to the new Tommy. The old Tommy has been running continuously for over 3 years. Over that time he has endured quite a few ordeals, and it's actually quite amazing that he is still running as well as he is. Unfortunately the old software and the old hardware has become quite slow, and we've decided it's time for our donors to be on a faster server. We are adding a lot of new features, and dropping a few old options listed below: PHP - We are adding version 8.3. The versions 8.2, 8.1, 8.0, 7.4, 7.0, and 5.6 will remain the same. We are removing versions 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 5.5, 5.4, 5.3, and 5.2. Node.js - We are adding versions 22, 21, 20, and 18. The version 16 will remain the same. We are removing versions 17, 14, 12, 10, 8. Python - We are adding versions 3.12, and 3.9. We are removing versions 3.10, 3.6, and 2.7. Everyone who uses Python will need to request modules to be installed again. Django - We are adding version 5.0.7 running on Python 3.12. We are removing version 4.1.1 running on Python 3.10. Flask - We are adding version 3.0.3 running on Python 3.12. We are removing version 2.2.2 running on Python 3.10. If you're currently using a version on Tommy that is being removed we strongly recommend you start testing and upgrading your software as soon as possible to use a version that is available on the new server. If you need more time to test your software let us know and we can delay your account move to the new server. If it's not possible for you to use a newer version of the software, such as if you have PHP software that was last updated in 2007 and it will only run on PHP 5.2 please let us know so we can help get you moved over to a VPS plan that will support those ancient versions. If we don't hear from you, we will assume you're ready to move immediately. We're also taking volunteers to move first, so if you're eager to try out the new server let us know and we can move you to the top of the list.

HelioHost is doubling our daily memory limit from 100 GB to 200 GB on Johnny and Tommy accounts. Morty accounts will also be able to use up to 200 GB of memory in a day before overage charges begin to get added to the bill. We've had the 100 GB memory limit for a while now, but we think it is time to raise the limit. Most languages are fairly memory efficient, but since we offer Node.js hosting it's nearly impossible to do anything with it, while also staying under the memory limit, because it's so bloated. Ever since we started offering Node.js hosting in 2019 it has basically been a death sentence for any account that tries to use it since it consumes so much memory, and some accounts get suspended after only an hour or two. We are also one of the few free hosting providers that allow long running processes like Discord bots, Telegram bots, and web sockets that can also use a lot of memory too. If you follow our Discord bot guide you end up with an extremely simple Python bot that uses about 50 GB of memory per day, but as soon as you add more features it can easily exceed the old 100 GB per day limit. It's well documented how much we hate Wordpress around here, but we can't deny that it is extremely popular software that a lot of people use. Even with zero plugins you can't get more than about 4k page hits per day before you exceed the old 100 GB limit. Most free hosting providers intentionally set obnoxiously low limits on things like this to force people to upgrade to their paid hosting, but we want our free hosting Johnny plan and donor hosting Tommy plan to be useable, not just schemes to force people to upgrade. Likewise Morty accounts can now use up to 200 GB of memory included in the base $1 per month, before the overage charges of $0.0005 per 1 GB memory begin to accumulate. Let us know if you have any questions.

After about 5 years of using GitBook for our wiki we've decided it is time to move on. We are now using a self-hosted MediaWiki site. The wiki is located at the same URL as it has always been https://wiki.helionet.org but since we just changed the DNS you may continue to see the old GitBook site for up to 4 hours. Let us know if you're interested in editing the wiki and we can create an account for you. Eventually we will offer a self-service way to create wiki accounts and reset wiki passwords, but for now we just want to get the new wiki launched so we don't have to keep two wikis up to date at the same time. We would love to hear any feedback you have on our new wiki.

The Morty server has finally been released for new account signups! If you don't already have an account and want to try out our fastest server, head on over to https://heliohost.org/morty/ to signup. If you already have an account on Johnny or Tommy you can move your existing account to Morty at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/move instead. Only the Morty prepay option is available currently, but we will be releasing the Morty subscription option as well soon. With the prepay option you can make a one-time deposit to increase your Morty balance, and then each day that goes by reduces that balance by $0.0329 as long as you stay under 100 GB memory and 10k CPU usage. If you go over those limits you will be charged for the overage instead of suspended. The overage fee is $0.0005 per 1 GB memory usage and $0.005 per 1k CPU usage. The main advantage of the Morty prepay plan is you can save 16% to 21% over the cost of the subscription plan. With the subscription option, your first month is $1, and then you are charged for any overages at the start of the next month. If you stay under 100 GB memory and 10k CPU every single day you will be charged $1 every month until you cancel. If you exceed those limits you will be charged the same $0.0005 per 1 GB memory usage and $0.005 per 1k CPU on the next month's bill. The main advantage of the Morty subscription plan is you don't have to worry about forgetting to make one-time payments to increase your balance. You can just set it and forget it and your website will stay online as long as the payment continues to go through. Let us know if you have any feedback or questions about our new flagship server.

Morty is finally ready, and we will begin moving the first beta testers over starting in a few minutes. If you're on the list of beta testers from our previous fundraiser you will receive an email when your account move starts. We will make a second announcement when Morty is available for existing users to move their Johnny or Tommy account to Morty which should be in a week or two. Then we'll make a third announcement when new users can signup for Morty accounts which will be a week or two after the second announcement. We hope that Morty will be worth the wait, and we look forward to hearing feedback on how the fastest server we've ever built is running.

Last night Tommy threw a little tantrum because Morty is getting all the attention lately. It's ok, Tommy. We still love you. First the main Tommy IP address stopped routing correctly, then when that was fixed Apache and Nginx broke, and then while we were repairing that MariaDB started having issues as well. Everything should be more or less working now, but there may be a few things you need to do to get your website back online. Known Issue #1) When we run the repair tool on Apache and Nginx it always messes up most of the SSL certificates. This should fix itself after a day or two, but you can speed the process by reissuing the certificate manually. We even have a guide to help you located at https://wiki.helionet.org/common-errors/ssl-certificate Known Issue #2) A lot of the MariaDB passwords and permissions got messed up as well. This is not something that is going to resolve itself. So if you're having trouble connecting to PHPMyAdmin or your website is giving database connection errors you'll need to follow the guide we have located at https://wiki.helionet.org/common-errors/phpmyadmin-mariadb-access-denied Let us know if you notice anything else broken, or you have trouble with either of the guides above.

We are happy to announce that we have now finished moving all of the accounts on our old Tommy server to the newly upgraded server, and will be shutting down the old server soon. If you use our nameservers, your DNS records have been updated to the new server for you and your account was moved with zero downtime, but if you use external DNS, such as Cloudflare, we can't update your records for you. You need to check your email and use the IP addresses that we emailed you on your external DNS provider. If you have been living under a rock, not reading any news posts, ignoring our emails, and haven't updated your DNS records yet, you may have noticed that your website just went offline. This is your final warning: The old Tommy is being retired. We will be deleting the old server in a couple days so make sure you check your account and let us know if anything is missing, didn't get transferred correctly, or if you have any other issues. Let us know if you need help with anything.

Over the last few weeks we've seen a lot of cases of previously low load accounts suddenly getting suspended for high memory usage. Of course, quite a few people have accused us of having inaccurate load monitoring, and we have wasted a great deal of time testing the load monitoring over and over and over and over again. As far as we could see the load monitoring was working perfectly. Since we're going to be launching Morty soon it is very important to us to have accurate load monitoring. Well, we finally figured out the problem. The load monitoring is working perfectly, and since it works so well, it helped us find the actual issue: People's PHP processes aren't always exiting like they should. Normally PHP processes fire up, spit out some website after a few milliseconds, and then hang around for a maximum of 30 seconds or so before their memory is reclaimed by the OS. We've been seeing some PHP processes lock up and continue using memory for over 22 hours. We have already devised and implemented a fix that should make sure this high memory usage doesn't continue, but as always we recommend keeping an eye on your load chart at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/load/ and let us know if anything abnormal is happening. We also recommend taking a look at your web statistics, and blocking any abusive IPs you find. We're also seeing a lot of accounts with 10k to 100k page hits per day from hacker bots, etc. Obviously no human has visited your site ten thousand times in a single day so just block them with .htaccess. We can't block IPs for you because there are legitimate reasons for you to have tons of page hits from a single IP, such as running an API. Let us know if you need help.

thank you heliohost team for your support to us. i am using heliohost since 6-7 years for my small websites. you always give us best hosting services without a single penny. what a dedication. i am very grateful to heliohost team for these fantastic services.you people always support us, even when we did wrong with hosting account. thank you very much

it reflected now. thanks @MoneyBroz!

found it, @Krydos! Github Webhooks - Heliohost Wiki I can't contain my excitement right now, haha. thanks for adding it on wiki.

We have made some changes to the Tommy server to help reduce the number of 503 errors, and speed up the execution of PHP scripts. The feedback we've gotten so far seems to indicate that it is working. We have also noticed that the changes have sped up the time it takes for Apache to restart which should reduce downtime as well. Since the DDoS was targeting the webmail subdomain of random domains hosted on Tommy we just went through and disabled Roundcube on every account. We figure most people probably don't even use the webmail anyways so it is a waste of system resources to have it on by default. If you regularly use Roundcube webmail you can re-enable it yourself on your domain if you need to. Login > Continue to Plesk > Mail > Mail Settings > [Your Domain] > Webmail > Select Roundcube > Ok After enabling webmail again you will need to wait for up to 2 hours for an Apache restart before it will work. In the meantime if you go to webmail.yourdomain.helioho.st it will show the queued page with an estimate of when webmail should start working again. We will also be disabling webmail on Johnny to help with the 503 errors on that server too. We will likely need to disable free signups for a day or so because the server gets really slow while all the webmails are being disabled so account creations tend to time out. Let us know if you have noticed an improvement on the PHP performance of Tommy, or if you have any questions.

Over the past week or so both Johnny and Tommy have been experiencing occasional slow loading and 503 errors on PHP pages from time to time. This is definitely not normal because we've been using Plesk since 2021 and none of us can even remember the last time we saw a 503 error, and then suddenly they are happening quite frequently on these two servers. We are investigating the issue, and are hoping to resolve it soon. In the meantime, here are some ideas you can do to improve the uptime of your PHP based website. 1. Morty hasn't been affected at all by the 503 errors on PHP pages at all so far, so this is a great time to upgrade to our fastest flagship server starting at only $1 per month. You can check out the discounted Morty packages at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/move/ and move yourself over without talking to an admin by using our fully automated upgrade process with zero downtime for your website if you're interested in trying it out. 2. VPS also have not been affected by the 503 errors either. They start at $4 per month, and aren't affected by other users on the same server as you, because on a VPS you're the only user. Being able to have root SSH access is also a great perk of being a VPS customer. You can check out the plans at https://heliohost.org/vps/ 3. If you don't want to upgrade it is possible for some PHP websites to be converted to static websites. Since it is only PHP being affected by these 503 errors converting your site to use only static html, Javascript, and CSS will allow your website to load faster, have less errors, cause less server load, and greatly reduce the chance of your site getting hacked. It's not possible for all websites to be converted though so this isn't an option for everyone. 4. You could also switch to a language other than PHP. For instance, Python websites using CGI, Django, or Flask haven't been affected by the 503 errors at all. Node.js hasn't been affected by the 503 errors either, but if you decide to try Node.js we recommend keeping a close eye on your load graph at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/load/ because it's easy to go over your 200 GB memory limit. In order to diagnose these 503 errors, the first step we're going to take is implementing additional logging and performance monitoring so we can see exactly when and why the errors are occurring. Let us know if you have any questions, or have any additional information to assist in our investigation.

It looks like you were suspended for using 201.15 GB of memory. I'm not sure what content you're hosting that caused such a massive spike in memory over a ~17 hour period, but it's also possible that a bot or malicious actor is paging your website repeatedly. I've unsuspended your account, it'll resume working shortly.

HelioHost has released a new YouTube video on how to set up a Discord bot on any of our shared hosting plans, including the free Johnny plan. Check it out and subscribe at https://youtu.be/-9Q9SAONgtM Back in June 2021 we started a YouTube channel for HelioHost and began releasing videos on how to do various projects on our hosting. Our plan was to release a new video every 2 weeks, but then less than a month later we were forced to switch control panels. Since all of our systems, code, signup pages, and everything else were designed for our old control panel it was a massive undertaking to rewrite all of our websites and code to work with Plesk so we didn't have a lot of time to release new videos. Now that we're fully recovered, and our transition to Plesk is mostly done we decided it would be a good time to start releasing videos again. Please let us know if there is a specific topic that you think would be good for our next video. Also if you don't mind subscribing to our YouTube channel that would be a great way to get some free advertising. We are a small non-profit funded by donations so we don't have a huge budget to afford paid advertising, so the more word of mouth recommendations, the more social media likes, and the more subscribes we can get goes a long ways towards finding more users and continuing to grow. Even if you can't donate, this is a great way to help us for free. Thanks!

thanks!

Thanks for the help guys and sorry for being so dumb ×_×

Hi KazVee, Thank you for your response. Yes, I see it now in Plesk. I'm proud to be a part of this journey. Thanks for the fabulous support as usual and have a great day ahead. Cheerz ?

I don't mind giving the extra $1. This is a great service and I'm happy to support it that extra bit!

Glad to hear you got it working and thanks for posting the solution! The information posted will be helpful to others if they ever want to do the same thing. Please let us know if you need anything else.

If you're on the Morty plan you can now see your billing information at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/billing/ This page contains detailed billing information for your account that goes back one year. We keep track of billing charges to one-hundredth of a cent and charge a flat rate of 3.29 cents per day if you don't exceed 100 GB memory and 10k CPU in a day. If you exceed those limits, instead of suspending you, we just charge you $0.0005 per 1 GB and $0.005 per 1k CPU. With the billing page, you can see the exact memory and CPU you used each day, as well as detailed graphs showing what times of the day your website had a lot of load. The billing dashboard is very new so if you see any bugs please let us know so we can get it fixed. If you're not currently on the Morty server and want to check it out, you can move yourself over with this page https://heliohost.org/dashboard/move/ Morty will be available for new signups beginning in a few weeks.

The API needed for the HelioHost Dashboard still isn't working, and it looks like all SSL certificates were disabled internally again (the repair tool does this as part of a repair, users have to remove and reinstall them to fix it). I reinstalled your cert for you, but until the server is fixed completely and bihourly is running again so Apache restarts, it's not going to take effect.

Yeah, the www record was indeed missing. It's been fixed and the cert has issued successfully.

When I first glanced at this I read joyless trout. Haha. Remote access enabled. host=65.19.154.90 port=5432 username=joyless_user dbname=joyless_tryout password=<set in Plesk>

Now I used the manual password reset link and it works. I can now successfully log in. Thanks for help.

We have added support for Node 23.1.0 to Johnny, Tommy, and Morty. Keep in mind that Node.js uses massive amounts of memory so if you decide to test it out make sure you keep an eye on your load graph at https://heliohost.org/dashboard/load/ All users on Johnny and Tommy are limited to 100 GB memory per day, and if you go over the limit your account will be suspended. On Morty if you go over 100 GB you will have to pay more for your excess load. As always with Node.js websites we strongly recommend following our guides located on our wiki https://wiki.helionet.org/tutorials/node.js because they use Passenger. If you follow Node.js guides from other sites they will likely use more memory over all.

Awesome! Thanks a lot @Unknown025! ?

"Smart static files processing" has been disabled on your domain. The setting should go into effect in about 26 minutes. For anyone else who searches and finds this, you can actually turn this off yourself by going to Login https://heliohost.org/login/ > Continue to Plesk > Websites & Domains > [Your domain] > Hosting & DNS > Apache & Nginx > Uncheck the smart static files processing box. Keep in mind changing most settings like this can take up to 2 hours to go into effect. @KazVee Maybe we should add these instructions to the Wordpress wiki?

Thank you very much!

The domain is working for me now. I see what looks to be a soccer (football) website.

You're welcome. We're glad our free hosting has helped you. Your message has been added to our main website.

I've removed the domain and its subdomain from your account. Since there is a risk of data loss when domains are removed, I made a full account backup for you before doing so, in case you need any files from the old domains. You can download the backup here: https://heliohost.org/backup If you're not sure how to extract the backup files, please follow our how-to guide here: https://wiki.helionet.org/Account_Backups

The TXT record method works great if you're using external DNS, such as Cloudflare, where you can edit your DNS records yourself. You can't edit your own DNS records if you're using ns1.heliohost.org and ns2.heliohost.org currently. We are planning on adding the ability for you to manage your own DNS records on our nameservers eventually. Like most features there is no ETA for when it will be implemented though.

Remote access enabled. host=65.19.154.90 port=5432 user=kelueders_admin dbname=kelueders_djangodelights password=<set in Plesk>

I think we should talk about K. Mpape, the moment he left PSG they won something big the have never won before and the place he is right now keep losing what they had been winning before his arrival. That guy is a bad luck

Oh, I have that kind of luck sometimes! 😅 I've unblocked your IP again. Even if I did know the failed attempt limit I probably shouldn't share it for security reasons. Please try to connect again, and let us know if you have any more trouble.

You're on the Tommy server, and that has a limit of 10 database connections at a time. When you say you're not able to connect from the DB manager, could you give a little more info please about what is happening when you try? Do you get an error message or does it just hang? As well, please let us know what type of database (MariaDB/MySQL or PostgreSQL) you're using. You might also get more details on the issue from your error logs inside Plesk. Here's a page explaining how to check the logs: https://wiki.helionet.org/View_Error_Logs If you see any db-related errors, please post them here. It'll help us try to help you resolve the issue. 🙂

Users have a concurrent connection limit of 10 for mariadb, so this would be a reduction.

Sounds good! 🙂 I'll mark this as [Solved] then, but please feel free to create a new support request thread if you need help with anything else.

59 MB of content and 950 MB of backups... If you set up automated backups, and never delete any of them, they eventually fill your entire account. We recommend downloading them and deleting them from the server. Can you login now?

Remote access enabled. host=65.19.154.90 port=5432 user=mbo_agency dbname=mbo_agency_services password=<set in Plesk>

Scheduled tasks are jailed to your home folder, so they cannot see the node binaries. The easiest solution is to make a web endpoint that can be called to trigger it (e.g. https://domain.heliohost.us/api/cron), and have the task call it using the fetch URL option to trigger it. Not sure how this would be done in Node specifically, but this is the typical solution used for other languages like PHP. You may need a separate subdomain for it if its a separate application.

You probably need to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Gmail won't accept email without them. Since you are using Cloudflare, you'll need to set these up yourself. For SPF, you can create a TXT record with a blank name (i.e. the same name as the domain) and this value: "v=spf1 a mx include:johnny.heliohost.org ~all" For DKIM, you need to enable it in Plesk under Mail Settings, apply it, then create the DNS records shown under the "How to configure DNS" link next to the option (usually two records). For DMARC, you can create a TXT record called _dmarc and use this value: "v=DMARC1; p=quarantine;"

No problem. Let us know if you need anything else

I'm on python 3.12 based on my setup from the link you shared. Also I went throuht the rules earlier. Thanks!

Understand. I read about Microsoft Point donation. For them to send over every 1000points =USD1 worth, probably will take about one to three month, if I am not mistaken. Anyway, I can wait, no problem, as an appreciation from me to further support HelioHost web server hosting, I donated another 5000points and 3000points respectively?

These have been configured...I think. First time doing it with these really long DKIM keys. Let me know if it doesn't work.