The New Year is getting off to a great start here, and because of that we needed to find a new home for Slamdot HQ, with a little more space, and a spot all to our own. Naturally, we found the perfect office, 119 S. Gay Street, not more then 50 yards from our last office in downtown Knoxville, so it was a short walk to move everything. Then again, with some of our heavy furniture that short walk seemed to be a mile long!
We spent most of the weekend hauling everything down, getting wired up (literally), and getting all the furniture in place. You’d think we were all interior decorators with all the back-and-forth discussion going on. Getting 4 people on the same page to come up with the perfect setup took until about 2 or 3 am…and even then we made changes the next day!
Here are a couple of pictures from the weekend and our big move. We’ll add more soon as we continue sprucing it up.
We’re not really lifting
Daniel and Emily
Lots of work ahead
Quick support check
Daniel hanging curtains
Elizabeth and Tux
Due to a security issue in PHP 5.2.7, we’ve promptly upgraded to PHP 5.2.8.
The server-wide upgrade to PHP 5.2.7 has just been completed. As you know, we dropped support for PHP4 back in 2007, so there’s nothing special that you need to do to to take advantage of PHP5 at Slamdot. Enjoy!
Ruby on Rails 2.2 came out last month and includes a lot of great enhancements that we’ve already started taking advantage of in our own internal projects. So, to share the love a little, we’ve rolled out Rails 2.2 across our entire server fleet for all to enjoy.
Note: RubyGems was also updated to version 1.3.1.
We have been on Twitter for a while now. We’re going to start using it to announce server migrations/upgrades and more. So, follow us on Twitter if you’re an avid “tweeter” (or is it twitterer? or twit? I saw tweeple somewhere, too – take your pick!).
Tags: twitter, web 2.0
We’ve been getting some flak lately for neglecting our blog, and especially for failing to provide updates about the new Slamdot rollout. In fact, I just got off of a live chat session with a potential customer who said (in a nutshell) that our recent blog stagnation has deterred him from signing up with us. Totally understandable.
Where we’re at with Slamdot 2.0
Okay, so this is what everyone wants to know. The truth is that we thought we were closer to being finished with the new version than we actually were. We had been utilizing a third-party billing and support application behind the scenes to handle those respective aspects of Slamdot 1.0. We did this through an API integration that allowed us to implement our own customer interfaces, while offloading the heavy billing and support lifting elsewhere. While that worked well for a while, we realized that this just wasn’t going to fly any more if we were going to accomplish everything slated for Slamdot 2.0.
We built our own billing system
So, we ended up building our own central billing system. The best part about this endeavor was that we got the opportunity to build it our way; the way we wanted it. So many inefficiencies existed in our old way of doing things that creating this software was a breath of fresh air. The remaining work to do before we can launch the new Slamdot involves hooking it into our new billing system and weeding out the old stuff.
Other distractions
Some other things delaying our relaunch have been tons of recent client work and a content management system that we developed to manage that workload. The good news is that we’ll be publicly releasing that CMS, which will include a free plan. Our new billing system streamlines the invoicing and account management processes of any future apps (like this one) that we decide to build.
When do we go live?
We don’t know yet, but we’re hoping to get everything launched by the end of this year or early next year. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but it’s the best we can do for now. We will start sharing screenshots and some of the things that we’ve learned throughout the development process. We apologize for the lack of updates and we’ll try to do better from now on. Thanks for hanging in there!
We’ll be including Phusion’s Passenger (mod_rails) in our feature lineup for Slamdot 2.0 due out in June. This will replace our current FastCGI setup and should improve overall performance for everyone using Rails on our servers. The most important part of this switch is that it’ll enable us to move over to Apache 2 (finally!) which will be great for everyone.
Overall, we’ve got some great things coming (hint: multiuser and reseller functionality) that we’re excited to start showing off here. We’ve been quiet lately as we’ve been working like crazy on the new Slamdot and now we’re ready to start blowing the whistle on some of the new features coming!
Tags: hosting, rails
We’d like to extend our wholehearted thanks to all of our customers for a great 2007! We look forward to providing you with more great new features and excellent service in 2008. We truly appreciate your support and we wish you success for the new year! Be on the lookout for a major update in the near future. It’ll be well worth the wait.
We just want to congratulate the Rails core team and the many, many contributors for shipping Rails 2.0 yesterday. We’ve been tracking its development for quite some time and we’ve made all of the necessary steps to ensure Slamdot is Rails 2.0-compatible.
We’re going to finish sprucing up the code and implementing the new goodies in Rails 2.0. Once we release the Rails 2.0-compatible version of Slamdot, it will include many of the major feature requests that we’ve received. One of those features in particular is the ability to share access to your account with friends, family, co-workers, etc.
We’ve already rolled out Rails 2.0 across our servers, so you’re free to go give it a whirl and see what all the excitement is about!
Today we launched the first of many application installers to come to Slamdot. Application installers help you easily setup popular web-based software for your website.
WordPress installer
The WordPress installer sets up a new WordPress blog for you with just a few clicks. The installer ensures that your file permissions and configuration parameters are all set properly. You’ll be blogging in no time!
Ruby on Rails installer
The Ruby on Rails installer automates the creation of new Rails applications. All you have to do is provide a name for the application and your database connection details. The installer handles the rest of the setup process.
Enjoy!
We hope that you enjoy these two new features. We will be adding additional installers by request. So, if you’ve got a favorite script or web application that you’d like to see included, shoot us an email and we’ll take a look!