New Web Hosting Preview - Details

[#1]

In terms of timing, I can't say for sure when we will pull the plug - it depends on a lot of factors.
The best I can offer is that I would be very surprised if anything changed in terms of the CCGI service before April 09, however I wouldn't completely rule out this being sooner if something happened to force our hand.
Ian

[#2]

Quote from: mal0z

Microsoft stopped support for Frontpage some time ago - so users are now left exposed. I stopped using it years ago in favour of  Dreamweaver - but that may not be suitable for everyone - unless you are good with coding in  html  & css. I've heard that MS Expression is OK - and a quick look at the MS website suggests it may be possible you quality for an upgrade from Frontpage for about £94 .  Others here may know for certain if that is correct ?.

Quick tip for anyone currently in education (like me, yay for college) https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/ you can get hold of Microsoft Expression for free (as well as Visual Studio and other really neat stuff, best to look off peak, so much nice stuff to download).  So if you have kids who are elligible you can get hold of it for free, or if you go to college yourself you get the entire set for free.

Quote

What are the student eligibility requirements to download and use the software available through DreamSpark? Pretty basic: to be eligible, all we ask is that you are a currently enrolled student attending an accredited university, college, junior college, community college, or a tertiary/higher education institution with digital student ID credentials (e.g. username and password) provided by your school, organization or another identity provider listed as a verification source on the DreamSpark Student Status Verification page. We’re giving you the software for non-commercial use to support and advance your learning and skills through technical design, technology, math, science and engineering activities. For more information, please see the DreamSpark software license agreement.

[#3]

Quote
Microsoft stopped support for Frontpage some time ago - so users are now left exposed. I stopped using it years ago in favour of  Dreamweaver - but that may not be suitable for everyone - unless you are good with coding in  html  & css.
I've heard that MS Expression is OK - and a quick look at the MS website suggests it may be possible you quality for an upgrade from Frontpage for about £94 .  Others here may know for certain if that is correct ?.
unquote
If i upgrade ............ is it definite that  Microsoft Expression Web2  will be supported /hosted by the plusnet servers  ( is it being supported at present ? ) in a similar way that FRontpage is hosted at present. ?
I am talking for home use and at nil cost .
THANKS
Ken

[#4]

When the FP service is ended will it also mean that my web address http://fp.username.plus.com will no longer be available?
If so, would I be able to set up a redirect page so that any visitors using the old http://fp.username.plus.com address would be redirected to my webspace http://www.username.plus.com ?

[#5]

Steed,
To do this:

Quote from: steed

.... If so, would I be able to set up a redirect page so that any visitors using the old http://fp.username.plus.com address would be redirected to my webspace http://www.username.plus.com ?

Just put a file called ".htaccess" (without the quotes, but starting with a full-stop) in the root of  http://fp.username.plus.com which contains this line

Redirect permanent / http://www.username.plus.com/

That will cause all access to your fp. area to be redirected to your www. area - note you could also do this with some rewite rules which would make the old pages accessible from either location - the redirect is better (less work for server, simpler to implement) if that does what you need.

[#6]

Am a mite too busy to experiment with the new Plex-controlled environment just at the moment, but the following nagging thoughts are keeping me awake at night:
“We are unable to offer hosting for Plusner sub-domains like www.username.plus.com and ccgi.username.plus.com at this stage. We do plan to offer hosting for these names in the final product.”
Q: Does this mean specifically that my existing ccgi.myusername.plus.com space (which in turn has lots of subdirectories) will be transferable to the new space 'as is' and retain the ccgi.myusername.plus.com name (which is hard coded in those of my ‘Home pages’ pages which need to invoke call PHP)?
“SSH / Telnet access to a shell on the new service will not be available”
Q: What will be the preferred way for me to create and delete subdirectories in the new system? Plex commands? (I assume permissions setting via FTP  - e.g. via Dreamweaver’s Remote View Set permissions -  will still be available?)
“A new web based … file upload tool is available”
Q: Will existing FTP uploads also be supported?
“[Proposed tariff: e.g.] £0 per month - … 3Gb Data transfer per month”
Q: The current allowance is a sum of Home pages data transfer and CGI pages data transfer. Do the new allowances cover both, or are they just for the CGI replacement (i.e. what happens to the allowance in my current contract?)
Q: My current applications use (passive) FTP transfer extensively to move data between Home pages webspace pages and CGI pages. Will this be affected in any way by the move?
(I have a load of other worries concerning transfer of my Humbug MySQL stuff but they can wait for now.  I'll see what tools will be provided on the final version of the platform)

[#7]

Quote from: decomplexity

Q: What will be the preferred way for me to create and delete subdirectories in the new system? Plex commands? (I assume permissions setting via FTP  - e.g. via Dreamweaver’s Remote View Set permissions -  will still be available?)

Plesk has a file manager that lets you do all that.

[#8]

Quote from: decomplexity

“We are unable to offer hosting for Plusner sub-domains like www.username.plus.com and ccgi.username.plus.com at this stage. We do plan to offer hosting for these names in the final product.” Q: Does this mean specifically that my existing ccgi.myusername.plus.com space (which in turn has lots of subdirectories) will be transferable to the new space 'as is' and retain the ccgi.myusername.plus.com name (which is hard coded in those of my ‘Home pages’ pages which need to invoke call PHP)?

I know you can setup any subdomain you like on the trial platform.
So in theory, you can create a ccgi.username.plushost.co.uk area in the trial platform today using Plesk. The missing part is that your new webspace isn't YET able to be accessed by the username.plus.com bit... (instead using the username.plushost.co.uk).
As long as Plusnet are planning to make the username.plus.com domain structure be able to be applied to the new platform, then the ccgi bit could be done as well, I'm sure.
Clearly, you can't have that domain pointing to two places at once, so moving it over, would mean that the old ccgi & homepages would then cease to be addressable. So I can see that if this was offered, then it would have to be a choice to switch the DNS addresses from them over (maybe using the domains too in the portal), so that you chose when to migrate from one to the other. It would also have to be a reversible change, so that you could potentially switch it back again to the ccgi platform if your test website failed - (during the time the ccgi servers were still in service). This would give people a chance to check their website in good time, and switch the DNS when it was confirmed working.
Also the www homepages servers are not going to be decommissioned, so the www bit of username.plus.com if allowed to be moved, would have to be optional, since many would still want their hompages site to stay online. But since the servers for ccgi & www are currently split (on the same domain name), I can see no reason why they couldn't remain split (or both combined onto the new platform) as users saw fit. I think the www bit can already be optionally switched over to CCGI servers for those that request it. Basically it is a DNS change (as I understand it), so tools for self management shouldn't be too hard to code (hopefully!).
So that would be the needed features of creating ability to switch over the domain name. I can see a clear case for recommending that there is a method to move the username domains over (since many sites will be referenced & interlinked from outside websites that the user has no direct control over).
Hopefully, if it is not already in Plusnet's plan for the final platform, then it can be still added to that plan, before it is too late.
Mike

[#9]

In addition to Jelv's response, you can use also Dreamweaver's file manager facility to setup / delete folders, and move files around

[#10]

As  I suspected, the lack of shell access is proving to be something of a burden.
I can't even find any easy way to simply edit a file - I have to remove it and add a new one.  Is it just me or does this seem amazingly inefficient?
I freely admit I'm not much of 'get it right first time' coder - I tend to get it pretty close, then have to do a fair bit of fiddling to get it perfect.  This takes really quite a long time fiddling about with Plesk, ftp etc.
How much serious consideration is being given to shell access?

[#11]

Editing files is one thing that is easy - click the edit icon beside the file name in the File Manager.

[#12]

tsk....always the last place you look 
cheers.

[#13]

The consideration is quite serious and I'm doing my best to identify something that will work better for everyone. It's a debate with many elements though. What would help is if we can make a list of the essential things that don't have an easy work-around, or which cause other compromises to be made by people.
Ian

[#14]

If enabling a shell access is too risky, a specific utility to unpack a tar file would be great: browse to to tar file, browse to the directory where you want unpacked, a couple of check boxes for options maybe, click a button and it gets done with the output directed back to the used or a log file with a view logfile option at the end.

[#15]

Is there a plug-in app for Plesk that does unpacking? That would be excellent. Click on the file in Plesk, and select unpack.
The thing with shell access is that is difficult to list all the things you would do with it, as I tend to use it for so many diverse things, and normally I use it when the GUI has already let me down!