Django setup improvements
Posted May 6 at 10:47 CDT by Remi in Django - 8 comment(s)
We just rolled out a number of improvements to our Django setup:
- Support for mod_wsgi: Setting up a default Django app with mod_wsgi is now an option in our one-click installer. So if you prefer mod_wsgi over mod_python you will no longer have to install it manually. I just ran a simple benchmark using "ab -n 5000 -c 2" against a default Django site using mod_wsgi and the same using mod_python. Both were using 2 Apache worker processes. mod_wsgi was slightly faster (1400 req/sec vs 1250 req/sec) and was using slightly less memory (10MB per Apache worker process vs 12MB). Note that you can also setup a standalone mod_wsgi application in our control panel (without Django).
- Support for the latest trunk: When you create a Django app you now have the option to use the latest trunk.
- More django docs: We've added some more knowledge base entries at https://help.webfaction.com/django and we'll keep on adding more.
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Newsletter #2
Posted Apr 24 at 11:29 CDT by Richard in General - 3 comment(s)
Hello and welcome to this, the second installment of the WebFaction newsletter!
It's been 4 months since we published our first newsletter and a lot has happened since then, so lets
take a look at what's been happening on planet WebFaction.
| Back in February WebFaction turned five, which practically makes us a dinosaur in web business terms. Obviously we wanted to celebrate this milestone. If my own fifth birthday was anything to go by this would have involved jelly, ice-cream and a terrifying clown but much to my relief we decided the best way to celebrate was to give away free hosting. A huge thank you to everyone who showed how much they believe in us by taking advantage of our (now ended) 5YEARS promo! |  |
Plan upgrade:
I'm not sure if two data points can be called a tradition but in our first newsletter we announced plan
upgrades and we're doing it again today! Starting today we are adding an extra 20MB of memory to all of
our plans and we are more than doubling our plans diskspace. If you are an existing customer this has
been added to your account automatically.
New email platform:
Over the last couple of months we've been quietly rolling out a new mail platform. The idea is to make
the whole system more scalable and fault tolerant and to provide better spam filtering. If you're on Mail1
to Mail5 and would like to start using this new mail platform then simply follow these instructions.
We're hiring:
We're growing faster than ever and to keep up with our growth we're actively hiring. If you love the web and want to work with great people in a challenging environment make sure you check out our job page
Show off your site:
In an effort to get to know our customers a little bit better, we're planning to start using our blog to
showcase interesting sites hosted on our servers. Obviously we can't make this idea work without your
help so if you would like your site to be featured just open a ticket and tell us about your site (what it is about, which technology it uses etc).
Read the full article and comments
Five years
Posted Feb 5 at 03:27 CDT by Remi in General - 30 comment(s)
Five years ago I registered the python-hosting.com domain (which later became WebFaction), I put together a simple website for a hosting service and I rented a VPS for $30/month to put my first customer on it.
Five years later we have thousands of customers, almost 100 servers and a great team of people working together. And most importantly, we've been able to keep the quality of service that we had from the start. I think that's not too bad :)
To celebrate our 5 year birthday we're having a special promo: buy 3 years of hosting and get an extra 2 years for free. We've been able to maintain our quality of service for 5 years and you can be sure that we'll still be doing it in 5 years.
If you're not a customer yet you just have to signup for an account, pre-pay for 3 years and use the promo code "5YEARS".
If you're an existing customer you just need to open a ticket and mention that you'd like to take advantage of the "5YEARS" promo and we'll get you sorted.
The "5YEARS" promo is only valid for one month.
Here is to our next 5 years of hosting...
Remi.
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We're Hiring!
Updated Jan 27 at 13:14 CDT (first posted Jan 25 at 17:35 CDT) by Richard in General - 3 comment(s)
WebFaction is growing faster than ever...
To keep up with our growth we're actively hiring so if you love the web and want to work with great people in a challenging environment make sure you check out our job page!
Read the full article and comments
New one-click installers
Posted Jan 23 at 10:50 CDT by Remi in Joomla, Plone, Rails, WordPress, Zope - 5 comment(s)
If you frequently create applications in the control panel you might notice that the drop-down where you select the application and the version keeps getting longer :)
This is because we're constantly adding more tools and more versions. Today we just added the freshly released TurboGears-1.0.4.2 and Joomla-1.5.
Other installers we added recently include the latest versions for Rails, WordPress, Zope, Plone and Trac.
Read the full article and comments
Faster control panel and forum
Posted Dec 19 at 12:38 CDT by Remi in General - 0 comment(s)
One of the improvements we announced in our Newsletter was no more slow-downs at peak time for the control panel.
Well, we just rolled out some optimizations to the code and we moved our central database to a beefier server.
The result is a much happier database server serving speedy control panel and forum pages, even when you all decide to hammer them at the same time :)
Remi. Read the full article and comments
Rails-2.0 is here!
Updated Dec 10 at 05:13 CDT (first posted Dec 7 at 12:18 CDT) by Remi in Rails - 10 comment(s)
The highly anticipated Rails-2.0 has just been released
It's only minutes since the first Rails-2.0 bugfix version was released (2.0.1) and I'm happy to say that we've already added it to our one-click installer :)
Rails-2.0 is the result of many months of hard work and it contains tons of improvements, which you can view at the official Rails blog
But that's not all... To celebrate the release of Rails-two-o we're offering a 50% discount for one year to any new customer signing up in the next two weeks with the promo code RAILS20. If you combine that with our new unlimited plans I think you've got a pretty good deal ...
Update: Just to be clear, here are the conditions for this promo code:
- Two weeks only: The final day to signup with the promo code is December 21st
- Limited to Rails signups
- One-year payment required
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Newsletter #1
Posted Dec 4 at 05:55 CDT by Remi in General - 20 comment(s)
Welcome to the very first WebFaction newsletter !
As you may have noticed WebFaction took a great leap forward today:
We rolled out our brand new website but most importantly we upgraded all of our plans so that you can host more websites and bigger ones in a given plan:
|  |
But these improvements are just the beginning ... Over the next few months we're going to gradually improve our platform while keeping the things that you like: one-click installers, applications/websites flexibility, helpful support. Things that we have on our plate include:
- Control panel improvements: no more slowdown at peak time, easier application/website configuration, easier mailboxes/email configuration
- Documentation: more documentation, especially for people just getting started with our system
- Payment system: we're working on our own payment system which means you won't have to enter your card details every time you buy new services
- Domains and certificates: we know it's a pain to have to go elsewhere to buy these so soon you'll be able to buy them directly from our site :)
- Server setup: we're constantly tweaking our server setup: adding new software, new versions, tweaking apache, improving our watchdogs to keep our servers fast and stable
These are just a few of the improvements that we have in store. The next year is going to be a busy one for WebFaction !
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It's coming ...
Posted Nov 30 at 09:36 CDT by Remi in General - 8 comment(s)
After months of hard work WebFaction is about to take a great leap forward ... We've kept all the things you love and we've improved the things that you found the most limiting ..
Stay tuned for some big improvements coming up. Rumor has it they could come on Tuesday :)
Remi. Read the full article and comments
Server side mail filters
Posted Oct 24 at 09:49 CDT by Remi in Email - 2 comment(s)
We just added a much requested feature to our control panel: the ability to specify your own server-side mail filters.
To configure your own filter rules you just need to edit your mailbox, tick the "use manual procmailrc" box and then enter your rules in the "manual procmailrc" text area.
Here is a sample .procmailrc file:
# Send mail to spamassassin :0fw: spamassassin.lock | /usr/bin/spamassassin # If spam level > 8, discard e-mail :0: * ^X-Spam-Level: ........ /dev/null # If spam level > 5, put mail in "spam" folder :0: * ^X-Spam-Level: ..... mail/spam # If subject contains "WebFaction", move e-mail to "webfaction" folder :0: * ^Subject:.*WebFaction* mail/webfactionEnjoy :)
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