HelioHost

During the routine restart of the Johnny servers some complications arose. The issues are now being fixed at the highest priority by the Heliohost staff, and we will have the server back online as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued patience.

After 222 days of uptime on Johnny without a single crash or reboot the time has come to perform routine maintenance on the server which requires a full system restart. During the next 24 hour you can expect some intermittent down time and high load on the Johnny server. If your account is located on the Stevie server you won't be affected at all. We will make another news post once the maintenance is completed and all services are once again available on Johnny. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Since enabling Designer mode in PhpMyAdmin hasn't resulted in any adverse effects on our experimental server it has now been enabled on Stevie as well. Now all Heliohost users can use the graphical interface in PhpMyAdmin to manage their InnoDB database relations. As a reminder of what we're talking about here is the original news post located at http://www.helionet.org/index/topic/22481-phpmyadmin-designer/ Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new features of PhpMyAdmin. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

The heart of the Heliohost community is our support forum located at http://helionet.org just as it has been for over ten years now, but some users are confused by the way we provide support for our hosting accounts. Heliohost is a community, and as such, users help provide support, and all of our administrators are simply the most helpful users. If you want to be a Heliohost admin all you need to do is start helping out on the forums. Therefore, the best and fastest way to get support is by creating a forum account and posting your issue or question. If that's too complicated for you or you don't have time to create and validate a forum account then you can use IRC chat. We have recently implemented a much improved web based chat. If you have an active hosting account you can log in to this chat by visiting on Stevie http://stevie.heliohost.org:2082/frontend/x3/irc/index.live.php or on Johnny http://johnny.heliohost.org:2082/frontend/x3/irc/index.live.php If you can't access your account or if you haven't created a hosting account yet you can still access the chat by going to http://www.heliohost.org/home/support/chat If you wish to connect with your own IRC client you can at: Host: chat.freenode.net Port: 6666 Channel: #heliohost Whichever way you connect be sure to post your question or issue up front. Questions like "Is anyone here?" are not very useful. Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new web based IRC chat. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community!

It's happened even to the best of us: The thing we dread most about hosting a website; It goes down! Sometimes this is because we forgot to log in to our hosting account for a whole month and our account is now flagged as inactive. A lot of users receive our inactivity emails on their mobile device, but renewing their account has never been very easy on mobile. You could click the link to renew, but the mobile homepage would pop up instead of the reactivation script. Our improved homepage now includes a page located at http://www.heliohost.org/home/support/scripts/renew to quickly and easily get your inactive website back online even if you don't have access to a full computer. We have also made it easier than ever to log in http://www.heliohost.org/home/login to your cPanel from mobile devices. Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new mobile pages. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community!

During the recent MySQL upgrade on all servers a new setting known as STRICT_TRANS_TABLES was enabled by default. The MySQL website described strict mode as Source: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/sql-mode.html#sql-mode-strict This was causing a number of issues with multiple user's poorly designed SQL queries. It also seems that a surprisingly large number of well known, legitimate website software also suffer from these types of bugs, and stopped working after the recent updates. In order to improve ease of use for our customers we have returned the strict setting to the previous state prior to the upgrades mentioned on Stevie in news post http://www.helionet.org/index/topic/22293-mysql-5621/ and on Johnny in news post http://www.helionet.org/index/topic/21199-mysql-5621/ Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new MySQL settings. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

Heliohost users on the Johnny server can now use Designer Mode in PhpMyAdmin to create relationships. To get started, log in to your Johnny account by visiting http://johnny.helioh...PhpMyAdmin.html Next select a database in the left navigation column. In the top right corner you'll see a new tab entitled "Designer." The tables in the database will be displayed as boxes that you can drag around the screen. For a more detailed tutorial on how to use designer mode check out http://www.yourwebskills.com/dbphpmyadminrelationships.php You can also read up about foreign keys, and how they're used at https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/ansi-diff-foreign-keys.html Using a graphical user interface such as this is by far the easiest and most intuitive way to create relationships within your databases. Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new features of PhpMyAdmin. For now Designer Mode is only enabled on Johnny, but if it doesn't cause any issues or break anything we will enable this new feature on Stevie as well. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

Heliohost users can now use Horde webmail on all servers and all accounts. Due to our database issues on both server plans it was necessary to disable this webmail. Now that our database instability is fixed we can once again provide access to this full featured and intuitive webmail. You can read more about Horde at http://www.horde.org/apps/webmail Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new version of Horde. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

Heliohost users can now use Roundcube webmail on all servers and all accounts. Due to our database issues on both server plans it was necessary to disable this webmail. Now that our database instability is fixed we can once again provide access to this full featured and intuitive webmail. You can read more about Roundcube at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundcube Please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new version of Roundcube. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

This database engine is now enabled and functional on all servers. For quite a while we had to set all InnoDB MySQL tables as read-only due to the broken MySQL installs. Johnny was fixed a few months ago, and now Stevie is fixed. You can read about the pros and cons of using this database engine here http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-storage-engine.html We still have MyISAM set as the default engine though, and highly recommend that Heliohost users continue to use it. We've found that it is much more reliable, a lot less likely to get corrupted, and just causes less problems for our users in general. If you have an old InnoDB database that has been read-only for quite some time you can now delete it, recreate it, and restore it from your backup. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

Heliohost users on the Stevie server can now enjoy an upgraded MySQL database version 5.6.21. We were previously using version 5.1 so this is a major upgrade. You can read about the differences and what's new at http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/whats-new-in-mysql-5.6.html If you would like to comment about this upgrade you can do so at our official support forums located at http://helionet.org/ Also please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new version of MySQL. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

Mysql on Stevie will no longer crash as we mentioned in our last news post http://www.helionet.org/index/topic/21518-stevie-mysql/ The fix has now been implemented on the Stevie server. Let us know if you need help restoring access to your databases.

The time has come to fix Mysql on Stevie. For far too long both Johnny and Stevie had broken installations of Mysql that would occasionally crash and restart. Sometimes the crashes would only occur once every twelve hours, or sometimes several crashes would occur back to back. Either way any amount of Mysql downtime is too much. The inconsistency and the randomness of the crashes made this problem very hard to diagnose, but now we have the solution in hand. After careful consideration and extensive testing we developed a fix. That fix was implemented on the Johnny server first, and we are pleased to announce that Johnny hasn't had a single Mysql crash in over two months. Not only has there been no downtime, but we have also re-enabled innodb support on Johnny. Since the fix has worked so well we've decided to go ahead with implementing the fix on Stevie too. The upside is we should now have nearly 100% Mysql uptime to match Stevie's nearly 100% html/php uptime. The downside is that some Mysql databases might become temporarily invisible to their accounts/users. We would like to emphasize that no data whatsoever was lost in the fix on Johnny, and we see no reason why Stevie would be any different. That said, we do recommend (as always) to take backups of your Mysql databases. If you happen to be one of the users that end up with an invisible database you have two options. First, you can delete the invisible database, recreate it, and restore your backup. Otherwise, if you fail to take a backup as we suggest you need only post on the Customer Service subforum http://www.helionet.org/index/forum/45-customer-service/ clearly stating your username, and the names of the affected database(s). An admin will then be able to restore to you visibility of the affected data with no loss of information. Also keep in mind that the data will become invisible to any database users that you may have created, but you can fix this yourself once your database is visible to your root account by deleting, recreating, and reassigning permissions to your database user. If you have any questions about this upcoming upgrade please let us know by asking in our questions subforum located at http://www.helionet.org/index/forum/48-questions/ As always thanks for being a part of the Heliohost community. It's users like you that will keep us going for many years to come.

Due to a DNS failure our main site, heliohost.org, has recently experienced some downtime. While the site was technically up and running fine the broken DNS prevented most users from being able to view it in a browser. This outage affected only this one domain. Our support forums, helionet.org, were not affected at all. Neither were any of the domains hosted by our users, including subdomains of the form account.heliohost.org. Most users probably didn't even notice that heliohost.org was even down unless they had a specific reason to visit it, such as renewing an inactive account. A big thanks goes out to the members of the Heliohost community who helped solve the issue by making suggestions of things to try on the forums. It's this kind of group effort that makes Heliohost different from all other hosting companies, and ensures that Heliohost will be around for many years to come. Sorry for any inconvenience that this downtime may have caused you. Thanks for being a part of the Heliohost community!

New Heliohost users sometimes have trouble deciding on which server they should create their account. The server information page http://www.heliohost.org/home/signup contains a considerable amount of information that could overwhelm even the most knowledgeable of website administrators. We have simplified the process to just a few yes or no type questions if you're interested in getting your account created on the correct server as quickly and easily as possible. You can check out the server server selection survey at http://www.heliohost.org/home/help-me-choose If you have a suggestion that you would like to tell us about please let us know on our support forums located at http://helionet.org/ We would also love to hear your comments about this new feature or our service in general. Thanks for being a part of the Heliohost community!

Faster PHP performance is what Heliohost users can now expect and enjoy on the Johnny server. XCache is an open-source opcode cacher which accelerates the performance of our newly upgraded PHP 5.4. Users on the Stevie server already enjoy the APC PHP cacher, but we believe that XCache will give better performance and stability for us in the long run. If we don't experience any problems with this upgrade on Johnny, our experimental server, we will soon implement the same on Stevie, our stable server. If you have an upgrade or install that you would like to suggest please let us know on our support forums located at http://helionet.org/ We would also love to hear your comments about this upgrade or our service in general. Thanks for being a part of the Heliohost community!

Today Helionet, the support forum for Heliohost, passed the 100,000 posts milestone which seems fitting as this is also our 10th year of providing free webhosting to thousands of users from all around the world. A big thank you goes out to the Heliohost community for making our great site such a wonderful font of useful information. Many Heliohost users don't even have create a support ticket, or ask their questions because they can simply search and find the solutions or answers they seek effortlessly. You, the Heliohost community, is what truly makes Heliohost special so thank you. If you're interested in helping Heliohost continue operation you can volunteer your time by helping out on the forums. If you don't think you know enough about web hosting to help you would be surprised by how much you can learn by trying to help others. All of the Heliohost admins started just like you, as a humble user enjoying the excellent free hosting provided by this organization. You can also help Heliohost by letting everyone know about us via social media. As a free service we don't have an advertising budget so word of mouth is a great thing you can do to help us out. As long as there are members of the Heliohost community that care this service will continue. If all the above ideas still aren't enough for you to show your appreciation you can also make a donation to Heliohost by clicking the donate button on our home page. Thanks for being a part of the Heliohost community!

Heliohost has upgraded the Apache web server on Johnny. Users on this server can now enjoy the upgraded stability and security of Apache version 2.2.29. This is a minor update as we were already running Apache 2.2 on this server. If you would like to read about the changes and bug fixes in this version you can do so at http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement2.2.html If you would like to comment about this upgrade you can do so at our official support forums located at http://helionet.org/ Also please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new version of Apache. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community!

Heliohost has upgraded PHP on Johnny to version 5.4.41. Users who have created their account on the Johnny server can now make use of all the new features and functionality of PHP 5.4. This is a major upgrade from PHP 5.3.17 that we used to run on this server. If you would like to read about the changes and new features available in this version check out http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.new-features.php If you would like to comment about this upgrade you can do so at our official support forums located at http://helionet.org/ Also please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new version of PHP. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

Heliohost users on the Johnny server can now enjoy an upgraded MySQL database version 5.6.21. We were previously using version 5.5.27 so this is a major upgrade. You can read about the differences and what's new at http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/whats-new-in-mysql-5.6.html If you would like to comment about this upgrade you can do so at our official support forums located at http://helionet.org/ Also please don't hesitate to let us know if you're having any trouble with the new version of MySQL. If you have any suggestions on what we should upgrade next we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being part of the Heliohost community.

The time has come to finally lay support for this dinosaur to rest. Way back in December 2006 the author of Frontpage, Microsoft, gave up on their own HTML editor, and now eight and a half years later Heliohost needs to follow suit. Removing support for Frontpage will not only allow us to bring you new and exciting features in the future, but will also reduce our server's memory and filesystem usage. We will be discontinuing Frontpage on Johnny first so if you're account is located on this server you could move your account http://wiki.helionet.org/Moving_your_account to Stevie as a temporary fix to buy yourself a little more time. Unfortunately we cannot provide support for Frontpage indefinitely so it will be discontinued eventually on Stevie as well. If you have any questions or comments about this server upgrade you can, as always, let us know about it on our official support forums located at http://helionet.org/

Heliohost users can now see the raw log data of all visitors to your website(s) by using the latest Heliohost feature: Raw Access Logs. Many users have requested to be able to see these very useful log files in the past and the Heliohost staff have now provided access. This feature is currently only available on our experimental server, Johnny, but we will be implementing it on our stable server, Stevie, soon as well. If you have an active Johnny account you can check out this new feature by visiting http://johnny.heliohost.org:2082/frontend/x3/raw/index.html Thanks to the Heliohost community for suggesting what we should upgrade and implement next. If you have a suggestion, comment, or if you just want to give back to the community let us know at our official support forums located at http://helionet.org/

All Heliohost services are now back online and fully functional. Intermittent high load spikes on Johnny will continue to be likely for a while longer.

In order to fix the issues that Johnny has been experiencing the last few days we will be rebooting him shortly. This will result in a few hours of downtime, and high load for a while afterwards. During this routine maintenance we will also be taking Cody offline for a short time. If your account is located on the Johnny server your website will be affected by this downtime and high load. If your account is located on the Stevie server you will be unaffected. Core Heliohost services such as the main website, support forums, wiki, account creation, and account tools will also be affected for a short time. Thank you for your patience.

Johnny seems to have succumbed to another high load crash. We'll have him rebooted, back online, and fully functional as fast as possible.