Spiral Hosting Blog

Art Attack - A Use For Your Old Lotto Tickets

The Irish National Lottery have today relaunched Lotto.ie which they describe as “a major revitalisation of our brand”. There has been a lot of attention surrounding the website re-design after it was tendered for 1 million euros. The company that won the tender has offices all over the world (8+ countries) and will be working with The National Lottery for the next 3 years.

The new site is definitely an improvement on the previous site, but many people will be wondering why it still lacks any e-commerce facilities! Unlike the UK Lottery site where you can buy tickets and play about 100 online games with instant winnings, the Irish Lotto site lacks any facility to play online. The revenue generated by online gambling is huge, and Irish gamblers will be going to other websites. Why would Lotto miss such an opportunity?

08:47 We are aware of problems with some websites on the ‘ultramagnus’ server, where the websites may be giving errors. We are working to fix this urgently.

09:36 Most websites should now be working again. There are still 10-20 websites with problems that we are working to fix.

10:21 This issue is now resolved. All websites should now be fixed. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

© spacepleb

Spiral Hosting are delighted to announce we have slashed the price of all .com .net and .org domain names to €5.75

The promotion runs until 31st August 2008. Simply enter promo code “250offcomnetorg” when purchasing a .com .net or .org domain name!

To check availability or purchase today, please click here.

Small Print: Subject to T&Cs. New .com .net and .org domain registrations only. One-off price for 1st year.

The Irish Web Awards 2008 have just launched. The event will take place in the Radison SAS Hotel, Dublin on October 11th 2008.

The Web Awards are ran by Damien Mulley, the genius behind the Irish Blog Awards. The awards are a lot more transparent than other award ceremonies in Ireland, where it sometimes appears that the amount of sponsorship money a company pays is linked to the award they win. With the IWA Damien assures everyone that “Nominations are free. Your website will be judged without you putting your hand in your pocket.”

Creators, builders and owners of Irish websites are invited to nominate themselves to the different Awards categories. Good luck to all nominees, particularly Spiral Hosting customers!

PHP Upgrade Date: 3 August 2008

Some of our shared hosting web servers are still running PHP4 as the default PHP engine, and PHP5 as an second PHP engine. On 3rd August, we will change all remaining web servers to use PHP5 as the default.

If any customers experience problems with their website on the change-over date, please submit a support ticket and our team will look into the issue as quickly as possible.

Also, incase customers need more time to make all their website scripts compatible, PHP4 will remain on these servers as the secondary PHP engine.

You can use PHP4 by creating a file called .htaccess located in your public_html folder with the following code:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php4 .php

This will make all .php files in public_html and subdirectories use PHP4.

The latest version of Firefox 3 has been released.

Developed by Mozilla, Firefox is an open source web browser that comes highly recommended. Mozilla claim it is 2-3 times faster, and includes major updates including faster page rendering, enhanced security features, and a smart location bar which helps you to find webpages when you can’t remember the address. The browser takes a little getting used to, but it is packed with new features.

Firefox are trying to break a Guinness world record with the most downloads in a 24 hour period, so their main site has crashed a few times today under the load.

If you currently use Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer, we recommend you upgrade!

I’m delighted to announce that we have upgraded our Client Area!

The Client Area allows customers to manage their hosting accounts, domain names and SSL certificates, and now includes a new multi-language website with secure credit/debit card processing, PDF invoices, instant account activation, and live chat.

All customers should have received an email with new login details for the Client Area. Over the past few days we have imported all the account details, hosting packages, domain names and other products to the new system.

We would ask customers to please take a moment to check all the details on your account are correct, and your address and contact telephone numbers are up to date.

It’s still early (7.33am!), but apart from a few hosting packages having the wrong expiry date, the migration has been perfect! We’d also like to hear your comments and feedback about this upgrade so please do get in touch.

Spiral Hosting have installed a new webmail software called RoundCube. It will accompany HordeMail and SquirrelMail, and will be made available on all our cPanel 11 servers over the next few weeks.

More details at RoundCube.net

Earlier today some customers may have received an email from the IEDR informing you that your .ie domain name was due to be suspended. Please note that this email was sent in error and you can disregard this email. All customers who have paid for their domain(s) will have their domain renewed as usual.

If customers are unsure about any domains, please check the expiry date in our Client Area, and contact us if you have any questions at all.

We have updated the live chat application on our website to make it easier to speak with us. There is a link to our Live Chat at the top of every page. It’s perfect if you have questions about our products or need our technical support team to answer questions.

We are also expanding the hours Live Chat is available, and we continue to offer support by email and phone, including our ‘Let Us Call You’ service.