Spiral Hosting Blog

21:41 We are aware of hardware issues affecting customers on the ultramagnus server. We are urgently working to fix this.

21:49 We have a technician on the ground working to resolve this problem. The server is currently on the workbench.

22:07 This server is now back online. We are continuing to monitor the hardware. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

07:15 We are aware of connectivity issues affecting customers on the ultramagnus server. We are urgently working to fix this.

07:27 This issue has now been resolved. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Spiral Hosting has today warned customers of a domain registration scam.

Domain Renewal Group has been sending letters to many of our customers, and even sending letters directly to Spiral Hosting. The company is American, although have a PO Box address in the UK. The letters request payment of £18 for a domain renewal and transfer of ownership to the Domain Renewal Group. To regain ownership, there is a $200 fee. Customers are advised to disregard the letter.

This is a notice to customers with websites on our supertuxy server that on Friday 26th September 2008 at 19:00 IST (8pm GMT) our technicians will take the server offline to install additional storage. Customers on other servers will not be affected.

The upgrade should take 10 to 20 minutes maximum and will result in improved server performance.

UPDATE: The upgrade was completed successfully. The server is back online.

This is a notice to customers with websites on our megalinux server that on Tuesday 23rd Friday 26th September 2008 at 18:00 IST (7pm GMT) our technicians will take the server offline for a memory upgrade. Customers on other servers will not be affected.

The upgrade should take 10 to 20 minutes maximum and will result in improved server performance especially during peak times.

UPDATE: Date changed to Friday 26th September 2008.

UPDATE: The upgrade was completed successfully. The server is back online and considerably faster!

The Irish Web Awards blog has a full list of all those websites nominated for the awards, which take place in Dublin on 11 October 2008. Congratulations to everyone nominated! What a fantastic list!

I haven’t heard of many of the IWA nominations, but the quality is impressive. There are some real gems like Pix.ie, Spicendipity, OurMemoryOf, The Big Word Project created by two Belfast students, and NextAction.ie which pops up in 3 categories, so do take a look at the nomination lists!

Our client area is currently being upgraded. We didn’t realise it was having problems receiving some emails - so apologies to any customers who have not received a reply in the past few days. After the upgrade, all the emails should come through and we’ll reply as quickly as possible.

Update: Our Client Area has been successfully upgraded.

Spiral Hosting has today warned customers of a domain registration scam.

Internet Register Ireland has been sending letters to many of our customers, and even sending letters directly to Spiral Hosting. The company is registered in Germany, although have PO Boxes in Ireland, the UK and France. The letters request payment of €2874 over 3 years (€958 a year) for website registration services. Customers are advised to disregard the letter.

We first reported on this in September 2007 but unfortunately ‘Internet Register Ireland’ is still operating.

IE Domain Registry (the official .ie registry) have issued this press release:

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It has once again come to the attention of the IEDR that a company operating under the name “Internet Register Ireland” is contacting businesses with registered .ie domain names by post and by fax, soliciting domain holders to register their domain name with the “Internet Register Ireland“. The “Internet Register Ireland” will request you to fill out their form and return it to them signed. It should be noted that they charge an excessive fee of approx €958 for the registration of your domain name in their database. The “Internet Register Ireland” previously operated the same practice in Ireland in September 2007 and November 2006 and have been operating similar schemes throughout Europe and Canada throughout the past year.

We would like to reassure all of our customers that no such organisation has been authorised to act on behalf of the IEDR. If you are contacted in this manner we would recommend that you disregard this letter and advise anyone you know who owns a domain name of this activity.

If you require Internet services for your domain name we would advise you to contact an official IE Reseller.

Spiral Hosting continue to offer significant discount to SPEED students.

SPEED stands for Student Placements for Entrepreneurs in EDucation. It provides funding for 750 students across 13 universities, allowing students and graduates the opportunity to take a year out to develop their own business ideas.

The SPEED fellows generally start their business in July, August or September and get paid to work for themselves for 6 months. They receive advice and mentoring from business experts, and significant discount off web hosting from Spiral Hosting!

SPEED students can get 50% off our webhosting packages (Size S, Size M, Size L, Size XL) including free domain registration. We can also offer discount on other services such as SSL certificates - please contact us for details.

SPEED universities include University of Ulster, Birmingham City University, Coventry University, Keele University, Nottingham Trent University, Southampton Solent University, Staffordshire University, Thames Valley University, University of Birmingham, University of Derby, University of Lincoln, University of Wolverhampton and University of Worcester.

If you are a SPEED participant, please see the SPEED website for details.