Nov
29
2008
3

Alternative web hosts for LabourStart

Our readers have come up with a list for us — here are some of the suggestions.  If any of you could take a look and pass on your opinions (use the comments here) it would be appreciated.

  • LeftSpace Very appealing, UK-based with a focus on trade unions.  They’ve contacted us and were recommended by another reader as well.
  • Memset Recommended by Nick Holden; our mailing lists are hosted there now.
  • Electric Embers Appealing, San-Francisco based worker coop.
  • Nearlyfreespeech.net Recommended by a progressive US web activist and one of our supporters.
  • Lunarpages.com Recommended by a Canadian union webmaster.
  • Meccahosting Recommended by one of our readers in the U.K.
  • Laughing Squid Recommended by a reader in the US
  • 1&1 Recommended by an IWW webmaster in the US and a trade union one here in the U.K.  Obviously people have had different experiences with this company – but ours sucked.
  • Flexihostings An Australian hosting company recommended by a comrade in New Zealand
  • The Phone Co-op A UK company – I think this evolved from Poptel.

I may add more names to this list as other recommendations come in.  Stay tuned.  Add comments below.

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |
Nov
29
2008
1

Our weekly mailings – archive

Andy (and possibly others) have suggested that we need to make available an archive of our older messages – and this is a good idea.  Actually, unionlists maintains an archive online for us — but obviously doesn’t include the year we used iContact.  The URL for the English language weekly mailings archive is http://www.unionlists.org.uk/lists/arc/labourstart-en and other languages will follow similar syntax.

Any thoughts on how we can use that?  A link from the front page – next to where you sign up?  Or a footer in every message we send out?  Or just a link in our regular menu?

Written by admin in: Mailing list |
Nov
28
2008
0

We try again – fingers crossed

We’ve re-launched the Farzad campaign, as requested by the Education International.  Once again this includes a mailing to our list, a separate one to our correspondents, to our Facebook group, our Twitter followers, etc.   We run the risk of 1&1 once again closing us down. As we have very little time here, here are the two steps I’ve taken:

  • I’ve asked Nick Holden how quickly we could get an alternative site up and running if we crash again
  • I’ve written to the team at 1&1 which did finally sort out our problem to advise them that we were doing this and to make sure that they don’t close us down

Basically, plan B is this: if we crash again, we set up quickly somewhere else and email everyone with the new URL.  I don’t see another way.

Meanwhile, fingers crossed.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Nov
28
2008
2

What happened this week

This was the explanation we received from 1&1 Internet:

The website is in fact hosted on an auxiliary server which is designed to withstand a higher load, although it was still not able to handle the load your site generated.   I assume the increased traffic from the campaign generated a larger load then what our standard web hosting servers could handle.

As a result, for something like 34 hours, our website was essentially offline.

What next?

I’ve been discussing with Nick Holden the idea of moving our site to a virtual server hosted by a company called Memset which has a very good reputation.  The main thing we need now is improved service — it should not have taken six telephone calls, countless emails, and 34 hours to solve this problem.

Nor should 1&1 have taken us offline without first consulting us.

Moving servers should involve basically three steps:

  • Moving all the files over — ideally first zipping them, and then unzipping them on the new site to preserve directory structure and permissions.
  • Moving over the MySQL databases (there are now five).
  • Moving over the domain names (and sub-domains).

I’ve offered to employ Nick to do this for us and to act as tech support.  He uses Memset to host his various sites, so he knows them well.  Our mailing lists are hosted on one of their servers.

As LabourStart has grown — and grown more important — we really can’t afford to use a low-cost service like 1&1 which is simply too bureaucratic and too anonymous for us when we have a crisis.

Please don’t hesitate to post your comments, questions and suggestions.

Written by admin in: Uncategorized |
Nov
28
2008
1

Keyword field fixed

Up until five minutes ago, if you added a keyword to a news story, it inserted two blank spaces before this.  This has just now been fixed.

Written by admin in: News database |
Nov
26
2008
0

Biggest campaign ever crashes our server

As you may know, many people are getting error messages when trying to send off messages to Iran.

In the most recent quarter-hour period, I see that just under 100 messages were successfully sent off — so at the rate of 400 messages per hour, this is probably our biggest campaign ever.

There are many things going on here that can be slowing things down, so here are the steps I’ve taken to speed things up:

  • When sending off a message, it no longer writes to our old flat ASCII database.  This was certainly slowing things down and I believe this is no longer necessary now that we have a much faster MySQL database.
  • When displaying a campaign, we no longer show how many people have signed up (in real time) – but this will be restored later.

I’ve gotten a number of messages from people complaining – here is what I’ve replied to each one:

Thanks for writing – it appears that a very large number of people trying to access the page at the same time is causing this problem.  Please try again later.  Thanks for your patience.

Written by admin in: Newswires,Publicity,Uncategorized |
Nov
26
2008
1

New extremely urgent action launched to save the life of Farzad Kamangar

At the request of Education International, we’ve launched an urgent action appeal to save the life of jailed Iranian Kurdish trade union leader Farzad Kamangar, who may be hanged sometime in the next few hours.  The urgent action is here.

Publicity so far includes:

  • Mailing to all our correspondents – 519 email addresses
  • Mailing to our English list – 53,145 addresses
  • Mailing to all members of the LabourStart Facebook group – 1,788 members
  • Tweet to all our 593 followers on Twitter

In the first hour online, the campaign had 106 messages sent.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Nov
26
2008
0

Iran campaign suspended

After more than 3 months, we’ve suspended the Iran campaign.  The total number of messages sent was a very respectable 6,431.

Written by admin in: Campaigns |
Nov
25
2008
0
Nov
19
2008
1

TUC website features our labour photo of the year

More great publicity – see here.

Written by admin in: Labour Photo of the Year |

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