Apologies if you’ve tried to visit this site over the past week or two and have encountered an error of sorts. The servers that slickhouse is hosted on have been down several times, due to human errors, for once!

The first time, I had setup a new virtual server (2003), equipped with Active Directory and DNS. After testing AD locally on my workstation, I decided to roll it out by connecting each server in turn to the domain. Unfortunately, I forgot about Windows Update, which proceeded to install updates on each server in turn - which was the first stage of the downtime. Once the main host server had restarted, it then performed a chkdisk that I had scheduled some months ago (to begin on the next restart). This took the whole night!

As the host server is a single core affair, the start-up of each virtual server takes a good 30 minutes, to ensure everything is back up and running as before. So that added more downtime, to the already growing 12+ hours.

The second set of downtime was last night - I had moved the anti virus (Symantec AV) from the host server itself, to one of the virtuals. Bad mistake. When the scheduled scan kicked in at 3am, it brought the whole platform down, 4 virtuals and the host. So that was another 18+ hours!

I’ve since switched the anti virus back to the host server and have opted for Clamwin, a great Open Source program, that works on Windows workstation and server operating systems. If all goes to plan, it will do its stuff tonight without a blip of performance loss.

So, the moral of the story? There are several in this instance:

1. Regularly install updates on servers, so that when it comes to a shutdown/restart they won’t interfere with things
2. Plan downtime a good few hours before you go to bed, in case anything goes wrong in the process
3. Use chkdisk startup scans with caution - and remember when you’ve scheduled them
4. Don’t break something if it already works, such as moving anti virus duties from a host server to a virtual, when the host was scanning them fine for the past 2 years without a hiccup
5. Don’t port forward RDP to a virtual server, so that when the platform goes down, you cannot connect externally to restart it all

The last point [5] is particularly important - ensure that you can still access the main host server (Server 2003 w/Microsoft Virtual Server in this instance) if all virtual servers are down.

Be patient if you experience downtime in the near future - at least now you know it’s most likely due to a human error on my behalf!

This evening I’ve put version 8 live on slickhouse.com - a theme that has taken several weeks work to put together. You’ll notice a few key differences, the most prominent of which is the extra width - the site now fits to the more common resolution of 1024 x 768.

I’ll be fixing any issues that crop up over the next few days, however I would also appreciate any feedback - what do you really think?

Oh, and if you’re looking for the lounge, it’s in the top-right.

It’s not long until Christmas now! I calculate about 27 days left until the big day…

This year has flown by, but no doubt 2008 will too. It has been over 2 years since we finished University, but it feels like only last month. Slickhouse has been using WordPress since November 2005 and Slickhouse.com was first registered on the 4th October, 2004.

Here’s to the last month of 2007 and the run-up to Christmas. I hope you like the Christmas-y feel going on here too!

P.S. You may need to hit ctrl + f5 to force your browser to reload the page - in case it’s caching the old (not-so-Christmas-y) background.

Thanks to Chris @ CSS-Tricks (for recommending the plugin), Slickhouse now has a ‘Subscribe to comments’ feature.

When replying to posts, simply tick the box below the Submit button that says “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” and it’ll do exactly as it says on the tin, well screen.

For those of you using WordPress you can get the plugin (currently version 2.1) from TxFx.net. To implement it is a doddle.

I finally got around to registering 2 new domains for slickhouse.  At the same time, I decided to upgrade to UKHost4u’s advanced hosting. This gives slickhouse 4GB of storage space; 200GB bandwidth/month and several other additional benefits.

I’m undecided what to do with the new domains, slickhouse.net and slickhouse.co.uk - but once my mind is set, I’ll let you know. For now, they’re pointing to empty directories until I have enough time to code a few holding pages. They could simply point to slickhouse.com, but that may be a waste.

Still, at least I’m expanding my online empire…