Upgrade of Servers

During March 2012 we will be phasing out our older servers and migrating all of our clients to a spanking new data centre with state-of- the-art hardware and improved bandwidth. This will mean web sites and emails will load quicker and will also ensure the reliablility of our services for many years to come.

What does this mean for me?

This only affects some of our long-standing customers and in most these cases you won't need to do anything - we will deal with all the changes at our end.

However, in a few scenarios, you might have to update some settings at your end. This will be the case if either:

  • We host you web site on one of our older servers AND you registered you own domain name with another registrar, or
  • We host your email

In either case, we will let you  know in advance if this affects you and you will then need to follow the procedures below. It is important to follow these procedures precisely as, due to the nature of the internet, settings can take time to prolifate across the globe and we want to avoid any down time if possible.

Updating my web site settings

If you need to update your web site settings, we will let you know in advance and you will then need to follow this procedure in this order:

  1. We will provide you with the IP address of your new server.
    (This will be something like 46.252.196.253).
  2. You update your DNS settings with your registar so that the A records for your web site point to the new IP address that we have given you.
    (NOTE: The old IP address will be either 82.108.196.131 or 82.108.196.135. If it is not one of these exact numbers then do not change any settings as you are already on one of our newer servers)
  3. Inform us of exectly when you do (or plan to do) this so we can switch off the old server and turn on the new one.
    (NOTE: It is important to get this timing right to make sure no data is lost, however there may be a short period when your site is unavailable)

Updating my email account

If you need to update your email settings, we will let you know in advance and you will then need to follow this procedure in this order:

  1. Friday: We will update the settings for your email on our systems
  2. Monday: You will collect all residual emails from your existing Inbox and then let us know
  3. We will give you the new settings to update your email program. See also entering my email settings
  4. You can start collecting mail from your new server