Event: Major Power System Upgrade at our Datacenter
When: Midnight Thursday Night until 5am Friday Morning
Duration: Approximately 5 hours.

Details:

Back on the 9th of October of this year, our datacenter experienced a power fault which shut down the entire network of servers for approximately 5 hours.  See http://www.rapidhosting.com.au/entry/unscheduled-outage/

As a result, the datacenter is going to be undergoing a change over in the entire site’s power grid to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

It is expected that our servers will not be offline for any longer than 5 hours and will resume normal operation once power is restored.  Please be advised that it is our intention to manually shutdown our servers approximately 15 minutes before midnight when the power will be cut off, rather than have an abrupt power interruption to our servers.

If you have questions or queries in relation to this outage, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@rapidhosting.com.au or via your client interface.

Kind Regards,

Darren Nolan

Rapid Hosting
www.RapidHosting.com.au

Due to the current value of our Australian Dollar in the US markets, we have been forced to review our all our domain prices.

Please take the time to view the new pricing scheme that is effective immediately at our Domains page.

And remember with all our domains sales, you still get the same great support and service for all your domain needs.

Kind Regards,
Darren Nolan

Origins:  I wrote this simple little script in JavaScript to help me calculate Australian GST (10%) today.  Being such a useful little script, I thought I would post it.

Please feel free to use this script as your require, if you wish to have this script on your own website please post an acknowledgement and link back to this page.

Cheers!
Darren Nolan

At approximately 7:30pm we suffered a UPS failure that cut power to the rack powering our Rapid Servers.  Rest assured that our new data centre is working quickly to resolve the issue which caused this outage.

During the power outage, our services were not down for more than 5 minutes.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused with tonight’s outage.

Kind Regards,
Darren Nolan

Update: 10:44pm - Power Outage

We’ve been advised that at 10:44pm there was an interruption to our power supply at the datacenter, which caused our server to power down again.  We’ve been advised by our datacenter that the problem has now been resolved.  I will continue to provide updates were possible in relation to this matter if we expect another outage.

Again I apologise for any inconvenience caused with tonight’s outages.

Kind Regards,
Darren Nolan

Update: 10th of October RE: Power Outage on 8th of October.

I’ve been in communication with out data center about recent power outages that happened on the 8th of October.  There was two short outages of system power for roughtly 5 minutes at 7:30pm and 9:30pm.  At 10:30pm the staff were alerted to a fire in the UPS room.  The fire brigade were called and attended in under 10 minutes.  Standard policy thereafter dectated that power must be shut off to the entire center.

The damaged UPS components were removed.  Full functionality was fully restored at roughly 4am.

I’ve been advised that there will be an upcoming maintenance window to commission a replacement external UPS bypass switch to replace the faulty unit.  At this stage I will email all clients to notify of the expected time frame.

Again, I wish to sincerely appologise for any inconvenience caused by this outage.

Kind Regards,
Darren Nolan

Each time you write a new entry into your Blog, it’s always shown as the latest item on your home page.  Using software like WordPress (like this website for example), you don’t have to know any special coding or HTML.

How do I get started?
Getting started with a new blog on Rapid Hosting is very quick and easy!  In short, you can install WordPress with very few clicks using the famous Fantastico script installer.  I’ll write up a quick tutorial and place the link here shortly.

Do I have to write a new entry everyday?
Of course not!  Remember this is your website, only put on there what you think you should, when you think you should!

Don’t I have to write really long articles?
Again, only write what you think it appropriate!  I like my blogs short and sweet, and when reading blogs from family, nearly everyone keeps their entries down to one or two paragraphs.  Of course, if you have something really exciting to write about, you may write until your hearts content!

How do I choice a URL for my blog?
Registering a domain name is nearly a must for your blog.  Domain names help keep your blog personal and make it easy to remember and easy to find for your audience.  If you will be writing about yourself and your life, try registering your name as a .com or .id.au domain.  Domain registrations start as little as $14.95 per year for anything that is available!  If you will be writing about a particular topic, try to find a domain name that includes the topic you will be talking about.  To see if your domain is available, checkout our Domain Availability tool.

What sort of hosting package should I get for my Blog?
This is often the most asked question I get asked about with Blogs.  My answer will always be the same. Start small, cause with Rapid Hosting you can always upgrade if and when you need to!  Getting started with the RH-250 plan is the cheapest way to start blogging today at only $6.95. Check it out.

How will I know blogging is for me?
Blogging is great fun, and is a perfect way to express your creative nature in whatever you are feeling at the time of your post!  And as a special for bloggers today, get your first month free.  Simply remember to use the Promotion Code 123 - and have your first month of hosting absolutely free, with no obligation to continue afterwards!

Stay tuned, no doubt I’ll make another screen saver within the new upcoming weeks.

No spyware, adware or viruses in this screen saver.

Download Here

The new version of WHMCS was realsed on the 10/09/2008 and has new conditional email template control, ability to customise and resend email messages, new client control options, 3 new configurable option field types, more flexible promotional offerings, furthur affiliate control and a consolidation of the two order systems. It also introduces some new features including support for 2 levels of taxation, ticket management usability improvements, a new income forecast report, two new registrar modules (WebNIC & Nominets new EPP protocol) and much more.

It’s now available to download via the Accounts Download Page for all registered clients. Please note, in order to use this software you do require a valid license key which can still be purchased from Rapid Hosting at only $15.50 per month AUD (including GST).

The transfer will take place at approximately 1am and we expect the transfers to be complete close to 4am.  During this time your site will not go down.

Blue has been up and running the past week serving our three largest Resellers as a trial run, and the Blue server has operated flawlessly.  We’re happy to announce that users have reported a speed increase in page loads by up to 10%, which is absolutely fantastic news!

If you are using a dedicated IP address or custom nameservers, you will receive an additional follow-up email letting you know what your new IP and instructions on how to change your nameserver IPs.

If you have any concerns or queries, please do not hesitate to contact support@rapidhosting.com.au

Cheers
Darren

All of our prices listed on the website are for monthly payments, however you may wish to pay quarterly (3 months), semi-annually (6 months) or Annually (12 months), so we offer you the following discounts.

Quarterly - 3 month payment: 5% discount on hosting

Semi-Annually - 6 month payment: 10% discount on hosting

Annually - 12 month payment: 15% discount on hosting

No special forms or procedures are required to be completed to get these discounts, simply ask us to change your billing period, or on your next order for hosting - make sure you tick your desired billing period!