UPDATE 4/21/06 6:02 PM EASTERN

HELPFUL TIP - If your web site is not displaying properly or giving a 403 Permissions error or not found error, please login to your Control Panel and Reset the Default Documents from the control panel: The default documents settings from the control panel will fix your site if it is prompting for username/password in a browser, giving a Directory Listing Denied Error OR Page Cannot Be Found. To do this, login to the control panel, select Domains>Web Site Settings. In the Default Documents area, make sure the main page for the web site that you are using is at the top of this list. Click Save. For example, if your site uses index.htm as it's default main page then make sure index.htm is at the very top of the default documents list or if default.html is your main page then raise it to the top. For whatever reason, the Helm migration restoration tool did not carry over these settings during the migration and this has cause many sites to go down since the site is not reading from the default document list properly. It is also one of the main reasons why we had so many 403 permissions errors and it is taking much longer than expected to go through each site and fix this manually. Therefore, if your site is experiencing the above issues, please login and set your default documents correctly

HELPFUL TIP 2 - If you are having difficulties with an Access database, login to your control panel, click on domains, then database icon and delete the existing reference to the .mdb files (IF YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR ACCESS DB READY TO UPLOAD DON'T DELETE IT) You should first rename renamed the .mdb file in the db folder and then delete the old .mdb file and the ODBC DSNs. After you have done this create the new database file using the same name as the original and recreate your DSN references in Helm Control panel. Then delete the temporary .mdb files that were made previously by the control panel and return the working database files to their original names and this will solve the problem.

UPDATE 4/21/06 3:06 PM EASTERN - The following email was sent to all 1PlanHost.com customers earlier today;

Dear 1Planhost.com Clients,

We would like to apologize for any inconvenience you are currently experiencing with your web hosting or email service. We have added more dedicated staff in helping to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. Please do know we are working around the clock resolving each of the remaining issues carefully for a permanent fix. We have also moved support HelpDesk tickets that were created more than 24 hours ago into a separate folder and ask if you are still currently having any issues, to please submit a new ticket and we will gladly resolve issues as they come in. Many of the tickets submitted earlier have been resolved and rather then going through 1000+ resolved tickets, we would like clients to open new tickets at https://www.1planhost.com/esupport if a problem persists and we can fix them right away as they come in.

I would also like to say that phone support is fully functional and can be reached by dialing 877-HOST-PLUS. It will not be possible to speak to everyone by phone so please be patient and do submit a trouble ticket as that will still be the fastest method of resolution. Again, we do apologize for any inconvenience this migration has caused and look forward to resolving any issues and doing whatever it takes to make our customers happy. We look forward to a long lasting relationship with all of our clients,

Thank you for your continued business and patience,

Carl Rudel
Shared Hosting Manager

UPDATE 4/20/06 1:54 PM EASTERN - We are working through the HelpDesk tickets individually as fast as possible and assure you that we will indeed get to your request. There remains a large volume of HelpDesk tickets and our team is dedicated to getting those tickets answered. PLEASE DO NOT CREATE MULTIPLE HELPDESK TICKETS or Update your ticket as it only causes your ticket to drop down in the list and will create a slower response rate. EVERY TIME YOU EMAIL SUPPORT a new ticket is created and some customers have emailed 50+ times which obviously puts an excessive amount of tickets in the system. If you have created a HelpDesk ticket or emailed support, we DO have your request and appreciate your continued patience.

We continue to have several issues with MySql database accounts (on all servers) and SQL 2000 accounts (SQL on one server) and are working on getting those fixed. We understand this is a major issue for MySql and SQL 2000 customers and appreciate your patience.

CONTROL PANEL NOTICE: We will be disabling the Helm Control Panel each evening starting at 6 pm Eastern time through approximately 9 am the next morning this week and should be done with that by the end of the week. The Control Panel has to be disabled while we run it's restore tool and other features needed to resolve web site issues that customers are still experiencing.

There continues to be much progress being made on Email service issues and permissions issues yet there are still several hundred sites that have these types of issues as well as FrontPage authoring issues. We understand that these migration issues are extremely important for many business sites and assure you that we are getting them resolved as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your continued patience. Once the migration issues are resolved, we are confident that you will experience the excellent customer support response times that you have always been accustomed to in the past. Both the old support team and the new support team (plus management) are working extremely hard on ensuring every customers needs are met.

UPDATE 4/18/06 6:41 PM EASTERN - We are making significant progress hour by hour yet please understand there is yet much work to be done before everyone has their sites working perfectly. We are responding to tickets in the order in which they were received as fast as is humanly possible. We are bringing in even more additional staff this evening who will work around the clock in 3 shifts to assist our staff in answering HelpDesk tickets. Updating your ticket inquiring about the status unfortunately puts your ticket with a new time and therefore knocks it back down from the top of the list. For this reason, we recommend that you not update your ticket unless asked to do so by our staff.

UPDATE 4/18/06 2:20 PM EASTERN - The control panel may be taken offline temporarily today and tomorrow as we update the server migration tool.

We are continuing to work on FrontPage authoring, 403 site not authorized permissions and MySql database service restoration among other issues. We are indeed aware of ALL major issues and are working as fast as is humanly possible around the clock to resolve these known issues. Please do not create more support tickets on the same topic. You may update current support tickets if needed but please do not create new tickets repeating the same issue or asking for updates as it only slows down the progress.

The large majority of PHP and Perl issues have been fixed. We are still working on MySql as stated above. If you have a Microsoft SQL 2000 database, please ensure you have uploaded your SQL database to the new server and changed your SQL connection string to point to the new SQL server IP address as seen at http://www.1planhost.com/migration/SQL2000migration.asp

There is much left to do and we are working around the clock but we are indeed making significant progress and appreciate your continued patience.

UPDATE 4/18/06 1:48  PM EASTERN - We have enabled a live chat support system to assist with migration issues and communication. Please minimize your chat time by supplying your domain name, server IP address, HelpDesk ticket number and a brief description of the problem upon first entering the chat. We will attempt to keep the chat enabled as long as possible.

UPDATE 4/17/06 10:58  PM EASTERN - From the new 1PlanHost Management Staff. We will also be sending this message via email to all customers. It is recommended that customers therefore hold off on submitting new HelpDesk tickets until you receive confirmation that all known issues have been resolved. We expect that to be soon and understand the impact of the migration issues having on customer sites.

Dear 1PlanHost Clients

We do greatly apologize for any inconvenience you might be facing these last few days. We are currently aware of all outstanding issues and are working on resolving each one with our dedicated staff. We apologize that our 24x7 phone support has not been implemented yet, but will commence as soon as all outstanding issues involving migration are resolved. Once all known issues are resolved, we will be closing all tickets and ask that you re-open a ticket for any outstanding issues. We do appreciate your patience and understanding during this migration and look to build a strong relationship with all our clients.

Thank you,

1PlanHost
 

UPDATE 4/17/06 12:32 PM EASTERN - Our staff continued to work throughout the night and continue today responding to HelpDesk tickets. Please do not submit multiple tickets to the HelpDesk or support email as requested above. We will respond to your request in the order in which it was received.

1. The MySql database issue should be resolved in the next hour.
2. ALL email servers are sending and receiving email properly. There was a large amount of email on the mail001 server that needed to be sent out from the spool and as of 15 minutes ago it was all clear. Your old email prior to April 15 can be viewed using the old email server IP address (see ip chart ) and email migration.
3. FrontPage authoring permissions is still in progress and we appreciate your patience
4. Some sites are displaying 403 directory listing denied errors still and we are working thru those.

UPDATE 4/16/06 11:05 PM EASTERN - Our staff has spent the afternoon and evening today working on FrontPage authoring issues, email issues and responding to HelpDesk tickets. There is still yet a lot of work to do and w appreciate your patience as we work through these as fast as possible. We fully understand there are remaining issues and appreciate your patience. It will indeed be worked out so please hang in there. You will be very pleased with the performance, speed and reliability of the new servers once everything is worked out from this major migration.

Some customers are reporting issues with email not flowing to the new server after they are sure their domain is resolving properly to the new servers. Please note that some emails may indeed be still routed to the old email servers since some ISP's apparently still have not updated their DNS yet. This should not take much longer before all ISP's around the world have updated. Your email is flowing to either the old or new servers and you can access them both using the IP address of the mail server old and new.

UPDATE 4/16/06 3:12 PM EASTERN - We have fixed hundreds of sites that had issues with 403 permissions, default directory setting issues and other issues related to permissions in IIS that were not letting them be displayed properly. We are continuing to tackle the HelpDesk tickets and resolve FrontPage publishing issues. If you publish with FrontPage, please wait till later this evening to attempt to publish to the new servers if at all possible so that we can have time to fix FrontPage issues on the few servers that are having trouble with it.

UPDATE 4/16/06 6:15 AM EASTERN - The backups for the four servers listed below have been restored and the sites should be operational now. If you have made changes since March 16th to your site, you will need to upload your changes to the new server.

Web001 - 216.74.123.10
Web003 - 216.74.123.12
Web010 - 216.74.123.35
Web012 - 216.74.123.43

UPDATE 4/16/06 3:30 AM EASTERN - We are continuing with answering HelpDesk tickets and working on remaining known issues. Our staff are working around the clock on migration and are committed to assisting all customers. We do appreciate your patience. Remember that while your site is now being served from the new servers, we have kept the old servers running and accessible to customers so you can retrieve those files if needed and upload them to the new servers.

If you use FTP to edit your web site, you will need to use the new IP address to connect via FTP to the new server. Refer to the new server IP chart at http://www.1planhost.com/migration/iplist.asp for a list of the old and new server IP addresses.
Your FTP Account username and password has not changed on the new server so you can connect using the same ftp username/password To connect to the old server and retrieve your files via FTP simply use the old server IP address in your FTP connection rather than the new, then download your files to your local hard drive, change the connection back to your new server IP address and upload your files back to the new server. Remember, all web site files go inside wwwroot folder.

UPDATE 4/15/06 11:26 PM EASTERN - Unfortunately on the following four (4) new servers we have discovered these do not have any of the backup files restored as they were supposed to be. ALL remaining servers have their web site files from the March 16th backup but these four do not.

Web001 - 216.74.123.10
Web003 - 216.74.123.12
Web010 - 216.74.123.35
Web012 - 216.74.123.43

The backup files for these servers are in New Jersey and are being restored. It may take another 12 - 24 hours to get the sites on these servers fully operational. Rest assured that we are continuing to work on it as fast as is humanly possible. If you ping your domain and it resolves to one of the above four IP addresses then please wait until we get the backups restored and post a message here that it is complete before you upload any changes. Otherwise, our backup restoration will override your upload. We sincerely apologize for the delay.

We will continue to provide updates on this page throughout the process but they may be less frequent than today's reports.

UPDATE 4/15/06 8:52 PM EASTERN - If your site is ping to the new server, please login and ensure your site files are up to date, If they are not, please re-upload your site to the new server. We are getting numerous request from customers to upload their site files and this is very difficult considering the workload we currently have on the HelpDesk.

UPDATE 4/15/06 8:27 PM EASTERN - There are 84 web sites that have recently signed up that we are working on restoring. We know which sites they are and are working as fast as possible to restore them. We have over 300 tickets to answer in the system and are working on these as well. We are aware of the issue with some MySql databases not working and will resolve this.

UPDATE 4/15/06 7:05 PM EASTERN - The HelpDesk is now sending out response emails again. We will be reopening all of the answered tickets from early this morning on and closing them again so you can receive the response and ticket number. We are continuing to work on all known issues and again appreciate your patience as we resolve them. Overall, the migration has been very successful thus far and the majority of issues we faced were anticipated in advance. If you have a special dll file or some other type of service that is not working properly, please let us know so we can retrieve it from the old servers and reinstall it for your site.

UPDATE 4/15/06 5:54 PM EASTERN - We should have the known DNS issues resolved now and will need to wait until 24 hours before we know for certain. We are also working on getting the HelpDesk to send out response emails with the ticket numbers and should have that fixed shortly.

UPDATE 4/15/06 4:37 PM EASTERN - We are working on known MySql and SQL database issues and should have those resolved today. This is a very large migration and we have been receiving much positive feedback and many messages of support from customers. Your patience and messages of support are much appreciated! Our entire staff are voluntarily working very long hours this holiday weekend to assist customers and this migration effort.

UPDATE 4/15/06 3:00 PM EASTERN - There have been some reports of intermittent fluctuation between the old and new name server IP addresses and this is a part of the normal propagation process. We are also working on our DNS (both old and new) to speed up this propagation process. Normal propagation takes 24-48 hours but for some it is nearly instant.
 
ALL web sites, web, email, database, cart32 servers and the entire 1PlanHost.com network have been migrated to the new servers and data center in New Jersey as of 3:09 am Eastern time April 15, 2006.
 
The DNS change was made at 3:09 am on April 15th as planned and was almost instantaneous for the large majority of ISP's around the world since it was made at the registrar level controlling the name servers at the top. There may be a few ISP's who have not updated their DNS yet or have not seen the change fully propagated. Since the change was made at the top level registrar it should be fully propagated already.
 
If you are using Windows locally, go to the DOS prompt and type in the following to clear your local DNS cache. That may help.
 
ipconfig /flushdns
 
then hit your enter key and it will flush your local DNS.
 
NOTE: A very small number of customers may be directing their own DNS at their own registrar level. 95.8% of customers have ns1.winsdns.com and ns2.winsdns.com or they may have ns1.1planhost.com thru ns4.1planhost.com We made the IP change at the registrar level to update ALL of these name servers so there would be no involvement needed from customers to change their name servers. However, .2% either redirect their name servers or completely control their own DNS. If you are one of these customers you would know since it is an advanced technique and not normally done in shared web hosting. The new name server IP addresses are
 
NS1.WINSDNS.COM
216.74.123.111

NS2.WINSDNS.COM
216.74.123.112
 
NS1.1PLANHOST.COM
216.74.123.111
 
NS2.1PLANHOST.COM
216.74.123.112
 
NS3.1PLANHOST.COM
216.74.123.111
 
NS4.1PLANHOST.COM
216.74.123.112
 
Please refer to the migration information site at http://www.1planhost.com/migration for more information. Our HelpDesk is also fully staffed at https://www.1planhost.com/esupport and we highly recommend that all customers use it to report any issues.

UPDATE 4/15/06 2:20 PM EASTERN - Some customers are reporting that their web sites are not operational and this is because they have custom default index pages that were set on the old server but not on the new server. Please let us know if you have a specific default document requirement so we can reset that for your web site. While most of the server permissions for domains were set by our restore tool there may be some that need to be reset so if your site is not working properly please let us know.

UPDATE 4/15/06 1:00 PM EASTERN - We are aware of FrontPage authoring issues and as soon as DNS fully propagates to the New Jersey Data Center we will be able to fix those issues. It may take a while for us to resolve those so we appreciate your patience.

UPDATE 4/15/06 12:14 PM EASTERN - The Cart32 shopping cart database was backed up and restored to the new servers just prior to the DNS change to the new servers last night around 3 am so you should not see any lost orders. Our staff also fixed an error on the reported shipping issue earlier this am. We appreciate your reporting any further issues related to Cart32.

UPDATE 4/15/06 10:45 AM EASTERN - The support HelpDesk is now back online at https://www.1planhost.com/esupport We needed to bring it offline in order to migrate the existing database and get it configured properly on our new 1PlanHost server. There may be some issues of customers not receiving our ticket responses via email but we should get that fixed soon as well.

UPDATE 4/15/06 7:30 AM EASTERN - We are continuing to work on expected issues such as restoring the HelpDesk, ASP.NET 2.0, PHP, MySQL services and SSL certificates. We appreciate your patience as we resolve these known issues and expect them to be fixed today.

UPDATE 4/15/06 4:15 AM EASTERN - From our initial assessment this morning, the move went extremely well and the remaining issues we have were expected. Obviously our staff will be very busy today checking each server, answering HelpDesk tickets and furthering the assessment of the major server and network change. Please post any problems that you may be seeing to our support HelpDesk at https://www.1planhost.com/esupport once it comes back online again around 10:30 am this morning or email support@1planhost.com Phone support will resume on Monday morning at 9:00 am Eastern.

UPDATE 4/15/06 3:15 AM EASTERN - The DNS change was made at 3:09 am on April 15th as planned and was almost instantaneous for the large majority of ISP's around the world since it was made at the registrar level controlling the name servers at the top. There may be a few ISP's who have not updated their DNS yet or have not seen the change fully propagated.

Server Migration/Restore Update 4/28/06 - 9:13PM EST - All customer sites are up and running, with some minor DNS issues experienced on a few domains. Unfortunately, due to a failed restore of Helm and web server resource configurations, not all customer data was properly reconfigured from restored backups. This has resulted in corrupted Front Page Extension installations, missing MySQL/MSSQL databases, web mail and email issues, and miscellaneous web site configuration problems for a number of our customers. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and are currently working to restore services. Please be advised, if you have a current support ticket with us that has not yet been answered, we are currently working on restoring full hosting service to all customers and will be addressing your issues individually as soon as possible. We value your business and wish to serve you better in the near future. Thank you for your continued patience with us during this time.

Sincerely, 1PlanHost