The system is down… and then up… and then down again

commodore64.jpgRecent changes in our lives have dictated changes in our technology infrastructure. Last year I decided I had outgrown the part of my life where I should have a webserver in the bedroom to tinker with, so I moved it to a new location with a proper network infrastructure that I led the development of. I built the best system I knew how, by building up and around the technology I’d put into place for our family, and expanding those principles and leveraging those systems for a larger organization. I’m proud of what I built, but now I’m leaving that part of my life and need to leave that work behind as well. So unfortunately, the webserver that started it all — and that a half-dozen of us, or so, are using, will be orphaned.
I have been very busy over the past couple evenings, moving jonandnic.com and the associated technology and tools, such as e-mail, to a new managed host. I’m trying out a company called WestHost for a few months, because their rates are good, their tech support is very accommodating of my weird requests, and the service will allow us to (eventually) move over our other users.
If you’ve sent us an e-mail in the past couple days, I’ve recently become aware that it probably wasn’t working. It is now, but it might still be flaky for the next week or so. If you’ve come to the website and found it down… well, I can’t promise that won’t happen again either. Those of you who are depending on us for hosting — especially for e-mail — once I figure out how to move ourselves safely, I’ll be ready to move you over as well.
If you live in Asia, I’ll take care of everything for you, and send you updated instructions for accessing your mail. If you live in the States… I’ll help, but you’re going to need to move yourselves somewhere else.
Its been fun providing free hosting and learning through that experience, but all good things must come to an end. I’m quite familiar with HostRocket, and would generally recommend them as a provider for e-mail and WordPress blogs.
I’m not sure what will happen to the archives of jonandnic.com. It looks as if they’ll have to be pulled offline for now. Its been a tremendously frustrating week, moving our online lives (which, for me, is a pretty significant part of my whole life) into a new infrastructure, but in the end, it will be worth it to have our resources managed by someone who is not dependent on our location or the state of our lives.