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An Early Roundup

The night sky filled with fireworks over a harbor.
Photo by Alvin Balemesa / Unsplash

News from July 2024

Surprise! This month's Roundup is happening early. We have some major infrastructure work happening over the next couple days, so we wanted to get out one last announcement about it (and save ourselves the struggle of trying to search for truly excellent GIFs while also being all hands on deck for the serious infrastructure stuff). Let's roll.

GIF: A panda rolls down a hill.

Announcements

News from Infrastructure: Client Portal Upgrades (July 30)

Here it is, the announcement we pushed the Roundup forward to accommodate. Tomorrow, July 30th, we'll be upgrading our billing software and client management system. The long and short of it is that the Client Area portal will be unavailable tomorrow, and once the work is done, the URL will change (and be redirected) from portal.reclaimhosting.com to billing.reclaimhosting.com.

GIF: A penguin uses a jackhammer to drill into the ice, captioned "UNDER CONSTRUCTION"

This work won't affect your servers or take any of your websites offline, but you won't be able to access or pay any invoices tomorrow, so please plan accordingly. If you access any of your cPanels from the Client Portal, such as Shared Hosting accounts, those will also be unavailable. After the work is done (so, July 31st & later), you'll need to:

  • reset your Client Area passwords
  • update payment details
  • remake any sub-accounts currently on your billing account

We've got all new documentation on this, too! Check it out in the Support Documentation section below.

In order to ensure continuity for the institutional purchasing department, any outstanding Managed Hosting & Domain of One's Own invoices will be processed using the old system, instead of being transferred to the new one. Renewals going out in August will also use the old system since we're prepping for those now, and we'll be using the new system for renewals starting in September. If you have any questions about where you fall on the calendar, please coordinate with us directly.

And as always, you can find any breaking news and updates on our blog.

DS106 Radio Summer Camp (August 12-16)

We are very excited that our first ever radio only conference, the DS106Radio Summer Camp, is coming up in August. New to the concept? Read our quick primer post to find out what's in store and how to get involved: So... what's a radio conference?!.

Thanks to a phenomenal response to our open call for speakers, we are looking at a packed schedule with speakers and guest DJs from across our community. Check out the DS106Radio Summer Camp Schedule and don't forget to register. It’s free to attend, and we encourage you to bring a friend.

GIF: A hand turns the dial on a car radio.
Crank it up!

Fall Workshop: Domain of One's Own & WordPress Multisite 101 (October 01-02)

Reclaim Hosting is gearing up for our fall workshop, focused on Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite! This virtual workshop will be running Tuesday, October 1st and Wednesday, October 2nd, starting at 12 pm ET each day and ending at 5 pm ET. We'll provide both applied training and concrete examples of both administering and teaching with Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite, along with one-on-one time with Reclaim Hosting, as well as other present institutions.

The workshop is broken up into two distinct days. Day 1 will be dedicated to getting you comfortable administering and troubleshooting Domain of One’s Own, and Day 2 will focus on WordPress Multisite. You can sign up for either or both days, whatever piques your interest! Check out the events calendar for registration and ticket info, and a more in-depth breakdown of each day's agenda. We can't wait to see you there.

GIF: Jimmy Fallon says "Sign me up, I'm in!"

News from Support: Changes to *.reclaim.hosting Domains

There's an additional change coming up, which will go into effect on July 31. As we harden our servers and improve our security, we will no longer be offering *.reclaim.hosting subdomains as primary domains for new Shared Hosting signups.

Shared Hosting accounts that already use a *.reclaim.hosting subdomain as their primary domain will be unaffected, and you will still be able to add *.reclaim.hosting subdomains to use as add-on development URLs on Shared Hosting accounts if desired. Domain of One's Own and Managed Hosting setups will also be unaffected.

News from Infrastructure: CentOS → Ubuntu Migrations Continue

It's been a while since we mentioned this one, but we are still working through our ongoing project to migrate all servers still using CentOS 7 onto newer ones using Ubuntu. If you haven't received an email about this, your time has not yet come (or, if your server is pretty recent, you're already on Ubuntu and don't need to move).

But (again, unless your server is new) your time will come. When it does, we'll reach out to you about two weeks in advance of the migration with specific details on what to expect, since each server will have slightly different circumstances. The only universal thing is this: the new server will have a different IP address, so externally pointed domains will need to be repointed.

GIF: Movers in uniforms pack up a chair and take boxes off a moving truck.
Moving day is on its way!

News from Infrastructure: Security Reminder

With the rise of malicious vulnerabilities and threat activities targeting higher ed institutions, we want to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious or unusual activity. Please keep an eye on your user list and users, and if you notice anything concerning, reach out to Support immediately so we can take a look.

Additionally, phishing continues to be a concern. Our blog post regarding a Disk Usage phishing campaign is still relevant, as these emails have made a recent resurgence.

A fraudulent email saying that the cPanel account "georgeshields.com" is near its disk quota and requires urgent action.

You should not click any links you do not know in an email, and always verify that an email came from the correct sender. If you or one of your users receive one of these alerts, please do not click any links in the email and let us know at support@reclaimhosting.com.

Reclaim TV Guide

Tune in to Reclaim.TV, live on Fridays at 10 am ET:

And catch up on recent shows on Reclaim TV on demand:

GIF: A hoofed foot reaches down and presses the power button on a remote, captioned "Click!"

Recent Blog Posts

Is it any surprise that Jim is on a roll with the BavaBlog? He knocked out a few this month:

Noah, our residence Security Administrator, blogged too!

GIF: A typewriter with paper reading "My blog". The word "Visit" rotates around it.

Support Documentation

With our Client Area upgrades incoming, we wanted to make sure you get used to the upgraded look!

Here are some common processes you may see after the upgrade on July 30:

GIF: A smartphone showing a window labelled "Documents" with a head wearing futuristic VR goggles.

Staff Picks

We're kicking off the staff picks this month with one highly recommended by Pilot and Taylor, and that's the Affinity Suite of tools (Photo, Designer, and Publisher). They now offer a six-month trial, it's a great option if you are looking for a lower cost, non-subscription alternative to parts of the Adobe Suite that works on macOS, Windows, and even the iPad!

A rogue band of rebels joined together to form Project 4K77. Their works is dedicated to restoring the original 1977 Star Wars in a 4K version that can settle the "Han shot first" debate once and for all. H/T Michael Branson Smith

Image from the 1977 Star Wars with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Han Solo
What the original 1977 Star Wars should look like

Next up, Pilot recommends Learn Git Branching, which is an in-depth and interactive tutorial to git cli! Pilot also recommends an amazing piece on sci-fi from The Pudding called Who killed the world?

Taylor has a few tool recommendations, including the drag-and-drop (and aptly named) CSS Grid Generator, as well as the free to use diagramming and whiteboarding tool, Excalidraw. Also, if you have 15 minutes to curl up with a good blog post, and you are interested in either Computer History, technology infrastructure, or even economics and antitrust, give What Would It Take to Recreate Bell Labs? a read.

Finally, we have honorary staff picks from Lauren Hanks, who moved on from Reclaim last year, but popped in the Discord to share the Center for Engaged Pedagogy at Barnard College's Framework for AI Literacy, as well their recommendations for navigating generative AI and sample of faculty approaches on gen AI. Thanks Lauren!

GIF: A web of sparkly, moving points that are all connected in a network.

That's all for July!

GIF: Elmo from Sesame Street pops into frame, waves to the camera, and then pops out again.
See ya in August!

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