Improved Services Coming Your Way

This is an important update to Smooth Stone Services.

The following email was sent to all of our web hosting clients:

In this email:

1. New & Improved Website
2. New Support System
3. Important! Please Read: Changes Coming Soon to YOUR Website (coming this week).

Dear Friends & Valued Customers,

You are receiving this email because you are a web hosting client or a close partner with Smooth Stone Services.

Thank you for your continued trust in Smooth Stone Services for your IT Services and Web Hosting needs. As you know, Smooth Stone Services has always striven to provide excellent customer care and services to you, our clients, and I appreciate your business.

After spending months in planning and upgrade work, we are pleased to inform you of some exciting changes that we have recently made to our website which will help us better assist you as well as to provide free resources to you and to the general public. Our mission is to provide affordable information technology services to NGOs seeking to transform communities around the world, and to build relationships within the communities in which we work. We feel that the new services on our website have the potential to greatly advance this mission.

New & Improved Website
We recently redesigned our website to be more user friendly and to make it easier for our visitors (like you) to find the information they need. We have also launched a community forum (http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/forum) where people can come and discuss their information technology needs and gain valuable advice from our community. And finally, we have launched a Wiki (http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/wiki) where people can come to learn about technical topics they may not be familiar with that could help in their work. This Wiki is especially designed for the benefit of nonprofit organizations, and already includes topics such as Building a Website and Anti-virus Programs. This is a wiki that is open to the community, so if you want to share something, please add it!

To get started, please create an account securely on our website at http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/user.

New Support System
In addition to the improvements outlined above, we have created a new support ticketing system on our website. Complete with email notifications and a usable interface to view old tickets, you will be able to contact us securely online. While we will still certainly provide support to you through email (if that is your preferred method of receiving support), we will no longer email passwords, as there are significant security vulnerabilities in sending passwords through regular email. Instead, we will provide this information only through our online support system.

You may also obtain all of your support through our website, if you wish, by submitting a ticket any time you need assistance. To get started or to submit a ticket, please first ensure that you have created an account at http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/user. Once you are logged in, you can submit and view your support tickets at http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/support.

Important Changes Coming to YOUR Website Soon
Within the next week, we plan to transfer all of our clients’ websites onto a new hosting platform, resulting in an increase in performance as well as an increase in your website’s security. The maximum memory available to your PHP scripts will also increase, quadrupling from 32Mb to 128Mb. All services pertaining to the operation of your website that we currently provide will continue to be provided on our new hosting platform including multiple domains, email support, and MySQL databases.

Important!
Please be aware that your email passwords could change. Please create a user account as soon as possible at http://www.smoothstoneservices.com/user (as described above), so that we can communicate with you in our Secure Ticket Support System the new passwords. If you would like to request a specific password, you may do so by submitting a support ticket. Some of our clients have specifically requested passwords for their email accounts in the past. If that includes you, we will strive to use the same passwords.

How do I check my email?
After we have moved your website to the new server, you will still be able to use your mail client (such as Microsoft Outlook our Outlook Express) to check your email. You can also check and write emails by visiting www.smoothstoneservices.com/webmail or by visiting /webmail on your own website. Your username is your full email address, and your password can of course be obtained by following the instructions earlier.

Will there be any downtime?
We are taking care to migrate all of your files, databases, email addresses, and important settings onto the new hosting infrastructure resulting in a seamless transition that should not cause any downtime for your website. It is possible however, that email could be lost within the first 24-48 hours of activating your website on our new server infrastructure. Usually the time that it takes to fully activate a website on a new server is much less. We will make the initial change late at night within the next few days.

What are changes I should be aware of?
As some of you know, we currently provide access to a control panel where you can manage your email addresses, MySQL databases, and FTP accounts. This control panel, commonly known as cPanel, will no longer be available on our new server. For a short period of time, no option will be available to edit your email addresses, upload files, or edit your databases.

We will provide you with these abilities again soon and will update you in the coming weeks.

The most important change you should be aware of deals with the initial creation of new websites. While we do currently provide “unlimited” domains with each account, you will now need to contact us in order to have a new website created on our server. We will strive to respond within 24-48 hours of each request.

Finally, you will receive an email when the change to our new server has been completed. We will also post this information in our Online Forum at www.smoothstoneservices.com/forum. Please check the Forum regularly over the next few days for this important update.

As always, if a problem ever does arise on your website, please don’t hesitate to contact us by emailing us or by submitting a support ticket through our website. Thank you for your continued business.

Sincerely,
David White