First, there are a couple of improvements to the control panel’s email options. Most notable is the Email Accounts page — this has been completely re-written to make use of JavaScript (AJAX), meaning that email accounts can be created, edited and deleted much more quickly, without the need for the page to be reloaded after each action. Also, the MX entry editor, which controls how email for your domains is routed, has been expanded with additional options to allow you to have more control over exactly how the server routes your incoming email.

This upgrade also adds a new “Simple DNS Zone Editor” to the control panel, which allows customers to easily create and modify entries in their DNS records. This means that customers who wish to create custom DNS entries can do so without having to get us to do it for them.

As well as upgrading cPanel, we added the mod_cache module to Apache. This module provides efficient caching of pages to disk, allowing you to significantly reduce the time it takes for pages to be rendered, and reduce the amount of CPU time required to load each page. Caching can be configured using a .htaccess file — check out the Apache manual pages for mod_cache and mod_disk_cache for more information. (mod_mem_cache is not supported at this time.)

We have also taken this opportunity to upgrade the Account Control Panel, and beyond the behind the scenes changes there are a few new noteworthy features I’d like to explain.

Sub-Accounts

Clients can now create sub-users under their main account to allow multiple people to access the same account without having to use the same login details.

We call the primary login the “master account owner”, and any users they create under their account are called “sub-accounts”. Each section of the client area has its own permission setting so the access rights can be fine-tuned by the master account holder (and any sub-accounts which have been given permission to manage contacts), so different people can perform different actions. For example, you might wish to create an account for your web developer to allow them to communicate with our technical support staff without having access to your billing information.

Mass Pay

The new Mass Payments feature allows you to pay for multiple due invoices in a single payment attempt, which will be more convenient for you and more efficient for us since we will have fewer transactions to process. To use this new option, select the invoices you want to pay from the Dashboard and click “Pay Selected”, or just click “Pay All” to pay all your unpaid invoices.

Domain Renewals

The renewal system has received some attention. It is now possible to renew multiple domains in one go, and it is easier to see which domains are eligible for renewal.

I hope you find yourself using these new features. And as always, if you have any comments please feel free to reply to this blog post or drop us an email to feedback@valcatohosting.com.

All our prices are staying the same, however we are overhauling our addons. Previously we charged $2 for 100MB of space or 5GB of transfer, now you can upgrade either disk space or transfer to the amount you’d get with the next plan up for half the price difference. That works out as the following:

V1 - 1GB space or 100GB transfer - $42.50/yr

V2 - 2GB space or 150GB transfer - $6/mo or $60/yr

V3 - 4GB space or 200GB transfer - $8/mo or $80/yr

They are now listed alongside account upgrades rather than the separate addons section, this way you can boost your quotas instantly (previously they required a manual upgrade). And because we always treat our existing customers right, we’ve checked every account to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible.

For those of you on our V4 plan, the addons still require a manual upgrade, but we’ve upped the storage to $2 per 1 GB and transfer to $2 per 10 GB! Again we’ve made sure our customers have received that already.

We’re always looking for useful new features to add to our services, so if there’s something you’d like us to support please let us know!

Also as a result of the recent server migration, we are now able to provide daily remote backups for shared hosting accounts instead of weekly backups. Previously only premium accounts were backed up on a daily basis.

We’re always interested in hearing what our customers have to say about our services, so if you have any comments or suggestions about our new plans, or about our services in general, please feel free to email feedback@valcatohosting.com.

Most customers will not have to do anything, but customer web sites will be unavailable while their data is being moved. Customers who do not use our name servers, or who have their domain names registered with a third party, may also need to manually update their DNS information. See below for more detailed information.

Migration Schedule

The migration will happen according to the following schedule (work will begin at 14:00 BST on each day):

Customers wishing to find out on which server their sites are hosted can do so by logging into the Account Control Panel and clicking “My Sites” followed by “My Plans”, and then “View Details” next to the relevant hosting plan.

Services Which Will Be Unavailable

Some services will be unavailable while data is being transferred:

We can’t provide an accurate estimate of how long these services will be unavailable, as this will vary per customer, but this is likely to take a minimum of three hours.

Customers Who Don’t Use Our Name Servers

Customers who do not use our name servers will need to update their DNS records on the relevant date with the IP addresses of our new servers. (If you don’t know if this applies to you or not, then you almost certainly don’t need to do anything.)

The new IP addresses are as follows:

If you have a dedicated IP address and do not use our name servers, then please contact us to find out which IP address you will be assigned.

We recommend that customers who manage their own DNS servers lower their record’s TTL a day or two before the scheduled data transfer, so that your site will be unavailable for as short a time as possible.

Customers Who Registered Their Domain Elsewhere

If you use our name servers, but chose not to register your domain with us, then you may need to update your name server settings with your domain registrar. This only applies if your registrar requires you to enter the IP address as well as the host name of the name servers. The host names are not changing, but the IP addresses will change to the following:

You will need to update this information on or after July 21.

Along with general improvements there are some great new features, a few of them include:

If you have any questions about the upgrade, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

All existing customers have already been upgraded to the new plans, free of charge.

Remote Backup

In addition to our new shared hosting plans, we are pleased to announce that we are now operating an automated daily remote backup system for all customers at no additional cost. This will aid any future recovery efforts should the worst happen.

Watch this space for more service announcements in the coming weeks!

This upgrade should not cause any disruption, however some older scripts may be incompatible and will need to be upgraded. Any customers requiring assistance with this should contact us via the Support page.

http://helpdesk.valcatosupport.com/cgi-bin/kb.cgi?do=read&id=49