Heya folks, I’m Denver Hunter, the newest team member here at Idologic. I’ll pop in during the week, so chances are you will probably come across me at some point.  I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff years ago on an industry forum, and so I have been familiar with Idologic for a long time. I even considered using their services at one point for the obvious reasons.

Once the initial conversation was over, I knew this job was going to be a doozy, but I knew I was up to the challenge. My family shared the same reaction that Brock spoke of in his post – they were amazed that I had three interviews to make it through. I think the entire process is a testament to the quality that the Idologic name brings to the table. It is a positive challenge. I say that as a wearied web hosting industry member. Throughout the whole process, I realized that the atmosphere here is a special one. I feel like a coaching assistant coming to the already-solid program that is going to explode; that is the level of excitement this position has brought for me.

There are a few things that you should know about yours truly. I have developed websites for over eight years now. I am a part of that generation that has grown up around computers – it all started with those magical days of playing Oregon Trail on the “green screen.” I’ve been involved in the hosting industry itself for about five years now. I currently run a 2,500 member forum and I am starting my own webmaster (and more) blog at DenverHunter.com. I cannot stay away from it and I have grown to love working with Linux. I guess you could say I am a jack-of-all-trades-type.

The “other” side of me is the English major. Naturally, I started college as a Computer Engineering major and then made the logical switch to English. I love the language and I love the ability to create worlds. My favorite novel would be Last of the Mohicans and my favorite book would be the Bible itself. Beowulf is another favorite of mine as well. (I have a passion for the medieval and more recently for American history and writing.) I believe this allows me to excel in the hosting industry because I believe in communication. There is just not enough of it with automation out there. The human touch is crucial.

My great hobby in life includes arrowhead (also known as point) hunting. I guess you cans say that I am an amateur archaeologist of sorts. I spend just about one day every week scouring land for surface finds. I’ve also spent a lot of time studying Native American cultures. I love nature and I love being out in it. My favorite places on Earth include Myrtle Beach, the Virginia mountains, and a few private locations where old Native American camps from thousands of years ago are located. There are some places where God and nature speak, and you just listen.

I truly look forward to working with you all and with the Idologic team. I cannot overstate my excitement and you’ll probably see me around somewhere! Here’s to a successful future

Greetings everyone! I’m Brock Noland - the new team member here at Idologic. I’ll be around mostly on Friday nights and over the weekends.

I am a UNIX geek at heart. As such, I am really enjoying my work here at Idologic! As it’s a different industry, I am still learning the nuances of cPanel and DirectAdmin, but am learning them all pretty quickly. I have been running websites and working with Linux/UNIX for around 10 years.

Soon after I started interviewing at Idologic, I knew that Idologic was going to be a fun place to work. I had 4 or 5 interviews before a decision was made. My friends and family kept saying, “you have another interview, I thought this was a part time position!” At that point, I knew that Idologic invested heavily in finding the right people - which I feel translates in a very positive working environment.

My interest in websites started early. I was somewhere around 12 or 13 when I built my first website. It was a Mountain Dew fan site, where I sold Mountain Dew T-Shirts via mail order. The site was shutdown when my ISP realized they had a 13 year old running a business from his personal “web space”.

Currently, I maintain a few websites, the most popular being my blog on learning the Linux/UNIX command line, BASH Cures Cancer.

When not working, I love to sail with my father on Lake Superior. We usually sail in the Apostle Islands, though last year there was a trip to the improbable US possession of Isle Royale. Currently there is talk of storming the Canadian shore and/or Chicago this summer. Someday soon, I hope to sail in the trade winds, or at least someplace that’s warm!

I suppose that’s all for now. I am looking forward to meeting everyone!

We’ve had a vast majority of our (customers’) servers in the 56 Marietta Street datacenter in downtown Atlanta for a couple of years now. We’ve been pretty happy with the datacenter and its overall track record of being responsive to us and providing a quality service. However, we’ve pretty much filled our space at the datacenter and need to expand.

Idologic has chosen the datacenter at 55 Marietta street (yes, across the street from our current one) to expand to. This datacenter will provide Idologic with a lot of room to grow and expand over the coming years. We’re excited about placing our new servers in this datacenter (which is on the same network at the 56 Marietta location).

As company, in addition to providing top of the line customer service, we’re dedicated to offering our customers the best and latest technology available. Our technical team has spent a lot of time, money, and effort into designing our space in this state of the art datacenter. Some of the things this new location will feature:

- One hour of UPS power backup per rack (at full load), which can be expanded easily to 8 hours
- Filtered power
- A backup generator
- GigE private and public connections
- KVM access
- Remote reboot port accessThe last two features might particularly interest our dedicated server customers. The location will allow us to continue to grow and improve our offerings. We’ve already ordered all of the necessary parts. When they’re delivered, racked, and setup, we’ll be able to offer servers in this new datacenter. It’s exciting for us a company.For our current customers in 56 Marietta, there will be no migrations or anything. Your servers will stay there and will continue to operate like they usually do. This only affects new customers and customers who will be purchasing a dedicated server in the future.

Idologic is always seeking quality people. However, it isn’t often that we advertise that we’re looking for voice talent.

Basically, none of the Idologic team members would be great voice talents. We have other talents, but voice is probably not one of them. We are aware that there are people out there with terrific voices and if you are (or know someone who is) such a person, we would love to hear from you.

The project is a fairly small one. It is a fun, but it is not going to make anyone rich. If you are interested in helping us out, send an email to jobs {at} idologic.com. If you could include a voice sample in your email (preferably as a link to an mp3), that would be terrific.

Alternatively (or in addition to the email), you can call us at 866-365-6442 and leave a message for our sales department (extension 804).

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

We’ve begun (and have been successful so far) upgrading our cPanel servers to the latest version of cPanel, version 11. The move to upgrade was one that we thought and planned out pretty carefully. We are fairly conservative when it comes to major software (cPanel, PHP, MySQL, etc.) upgrades at Idologic, so we wanted to wait a while and make sure cPanel 11 was going to run without problems. We announced our tentative schedule in late August and began upgrading from there.

What are some of the benefits of using cPanel 11? Here are some that we’ve noticed right away at Idologic:

• Prettier. cPanel 11 is quite a bit prettier than 10. It has a lot more AJAX and a lot of UI improvements such as sorting and more drag and drop features. The interface is also faster.
• Resellers have enhanced branding features as well as faster / easier theme switching.
• There have been a lot of changes in the areas of spam handling and protection for cPanel 11. Spam is one of the biggest causes of server trouble at any hosting company and any improvement to this area is welcomed. In particular, cPanel’s spam handling has been optimized to handle a much higher volume of spam without slowing the server down (which is a good thing given the increasing amount of spam).
• New file manager. If you (or your customers) use the cPanel file manager, you will notice it has undergone significant changes.
• It is now much easier to install modules for Perl and other programming languages.
• The help section of cPanel has been improved significantly. There is also a getting started tour within cPanel now.

If the server you are on hasn’t been upgraded, don’t worry, it’s coming soon. So far, cPanel 11 has been working great (and we expect it to continue to be that way), so you only have positive changes to look forward to in the near future. If you have a dedicated server with us, please contact us and let us know when you’d like to upgrade. You can upgrade at your convenience (and if you’d like, not at all), but it is an upgrade we’re suggesting.

As always, if you have any questions whatsoever, we are standing by and more than happy to assist you.

Note: this is reposted (and updated a bit even) from our previous website however everything below is still valid.

As we are all quite aware, spam is a large and increasing problem on the internet. According to recent studies, up to 80% of all email is actually spam. Unfortunately, this is not just an interesting piece of trivia — there is a real cost to spam whether it be your time (or your clients’) in weeding through it or the extra storage and utilization on the server in processing so much extra email.

Note: for the purposes of this article, spam includes UBE (unsolicited bulk email) and email that contains viruses.

At Idologic we have been carefully watching various anti-spam solutions for quite a while. Given the enormity of the problem, there are a multitude of solutions available both for purchase (proprietary) or for free (open-source). Interestingly enough, many of the best proprietary solutions are simply well-packaged sets of open-source tools. Given sufficient time and understanding, a knowledgeable server admin can construct an anti-spam solution that fairly accurate while requiring minimal maintenance. A well-built antispam solution can approach 80-90% accuracy rates with no false positives or manual maintenance (i.e. someone to flag spam manually on the server every day).

Simply put, that is what we have now done.

You may have noticed that there is an “Server-Wide Spam & Virus Protection” option in cPanel. This is simply the front-end to a comprehensive sysem consisting of….

• ClamAV — a superior open-source virus scanning solution. Additionally, virus signatures are updated daily from a central repository.
• Exiscan — an extension of the Exim MTA which provides the glue for Exim to call other programs.
• Exim Advanced Configurations — this allows us to block certain well-known virus file extensions. You can always send a file through regardless of its extension by first zipping it.
• DNS RBL’s — that is, DNS-based black-lists. We currently employ 3 very conservative DNS RBL’s. Please see further notes on them below.
• Vipul’s Razor — a distributed, collaborative, spam detection and filtering network that is constantly updated by screened user contributions.
• Server-based blacklist and whitelist overrides. This gives us the ability to override any of the methods above on a server by server basis whether to allow or disallow email. This would be normally be done in response to a request via ticket where a customer needs to receive certain emails but does not want to disable all filtering.

While we have put a large amount of time into crafting a very conservative but accurate spam-blocking configuration, we do realize that some clients may not wish to have any filtering. Because we recognize this need, this system is combined with cPanel Pro to provide user-controlled opt-in or opt-out on a cPanel account basis. Here is a sample screenshot from cPanel showing the configurability provided.

Please note that CPSkins has stopped updating their skins and so is not compatible with enabling/disabling this feature (spam filtering will still be working….you just can’t use CPSkins to enable/disable it). You will need to use RVSkins or x2 as your cPanel skin. We would recommend RVSkin as being very feature-rich and configurable.

Specific instructions.

• For RVSkin, go to RVAdmin Skin Manager / Package-Feature Manager. Choose the Feature List you for the user whose feature set you want to control, find the feature ‘Server-Wide Spam & Virus Protection’ and enable it.
• For the x2 skin, go to WHM > Feature Manager > Edit Feature Set. Check the box for “Server-Wide Spam & Virus Protection” at the bottom of the list and save.

We have enabled the configuration above on all reseller servers and will set up dedicated servers/VPS’s by request (no installation charge).

Explanation of DNS RBLs

Given that there are several irresponsible DNS RBL’s (SPEWS & SORBS for example), DNS RBL’s sometimes get a bad name. Fortunately, there are several highly accurate DNS RBL’s available. After careful research, we have chosen to use…

• list.dsbl.org — tests for open relay SMTP servers and will only list a server if confirmed open.
• zen.spamhaus.org - SpamHaus is a well-recognized anti-spam service provided for free to ISP’s and webhosts. It contains the IP addresses of verified spam sources as well as servers confirmed to be compromised by illegal 3rd party exploits.

These 2 lists have a very low to non-existent false positive rate. For example, in over a year of live implementation in a large environment (80,000 emails/day), the Spamhaus RBL’s have had zero false positives.

Idologic has great server administrators and customer service people, but we can’t list graphic design as one of our many talents. Fortunately, you don’t have to be good at everything.

We recently had some banners commissioned and here they are:

We like to think that the green helps us stand out a bit.

As time goes on, you’ll be seeing some color and size variations as well. We do have the graphics skills in-house to do at least that. Customers and non-customers can use these banners for whatever purposes they’d like. If you’re already displaying an Idologic banner, please do replace it with one of these. They will be available to affiliates sooner than later as well.

Feel free to provide us with your feedback, requested colors, and more. We’re all ears!

Idologic does not oversell servers. Simply put, Idologic does not sell more disk or bandwidth than we physically have on each server. This allows us the flexibility to allow our reseller clients to oversell and keep CPU & RAM usage within acceptable performance metrics.

Why is this a big deal?
Well, let’s use the example of a reseller account with 1 GB space and 10 GB bandwidth. In this example, an account without overselling costs $10/month while an account with overselling costs $20/month. If you saw those numbers listed on 2 different hosting websites, at first glance you’d assume the 2nd plan costs twice as much for the same resources. But…..does it really?

Scenario #1 - Overselling Not Allowed For The Reseller
If overselling isn’t allowed, you can create (10) accounts with 100 MB space and 1 GB bandwidth. At that point you’re done. It doesn’t matter how much space or bandwidth the accounts actually use….you can’t create any more accounts unless you increase your account size. In most cases, you’ll find that with (10) 100 MB/1 GB accounts, you will only use several hundred MB disk and a couple GB bandwidth. However, all that unused space is wasted….you’re paying for it but it will likely never be used. In almost all cases like this, if a hosting company does not allow their clients to oversell, it is because they are overselling the server themselves (the server couldn’t handle both the server owner and the reseller overselling).

Scenario #2 - Overselling Allowed For The Reseller
Now let’s look at the other picture. If overselling is allowed to you the reseller, you create the same (10) 100 MB/1 GB accounts. However, after several months you realize that only a couple hundred MB disk and a couple GB bandwidth are actually getting used. So you create another (10) 100 MB/1 GB accounts as new clients come in the door. Over time, you might actually squeeze 20-30 accounts into that reseller account. If you didn’t have overselling capability, you’d be paying 2-3 times more for this capability. We have found that Idologic customers regularly stretch their accounts much further than other seemingly lower priced hosting companies while maintaining higher speed and reliability.

Conclusion
So….in the cases above if you want to create (30) 100 MB/1 GB accounts and overselling isn’t allowed, it will cost you $30/month. However, if you got the account with overselling, you could likely do that for $20/month.

Simply put, Idologic charges you for the resources you actually use rather than the resources you allocate.

But what if…. (growth concerns)
Now here’s where some people say “Ah ha, I’ve got you now! What happens when you actually run out of space?” Well, if you’ve been watching your account and notice that you’re starting to use up all your space or bandwidth, simply put in a support ticket and we’ll upgrade you on the same server (we always keep a large reserve of disk/bandwidth to allow our clients to grow). If you need more space and bandwidth than is available on your current server, we’ll either move your whole account to a new server (with virtually no downtime) or open a second account on another server and move individual accounts between servers for you.

Blogs, blogging, and the like are no longer buzzwords. They are mainstream and a big part of the Internet. There are now more than 55 million blogs and some of the bigger ones have a profound influence on how companies are communicating with their customers, how they are gathering feedback, and so much more. The amazing thing about blogging and the Internet in general is that everyday people can now start a blog (for free) and share their thoughts about everything from apples to zebras and and pretty much everything in between (for free), and even have people actually read what they are saying. It gives people the power of the press to everyday people and it is an amazing thing.

The team at Idologic is now joining the blogosphere. We’ve helped hundreds of people start blogging over the last few years by providing them with the technical support and technology they need and it is about time we decided to do it ourself. There aren’t too many web hosts with blogs, but there are a few and we hope that ours can be one of the better ones.

We’ll talk about what makes us tick on all levels, why we do what we do, and how we do it. Idologic is all about customer service, so expect some posts about customer service and our philosophies when it comes to customer service. For the tech folk, expect plenty of posts about the technology that powers Idologic and what the technical team is up to. We’ll provide you with behind the scenes looks and show you what is involved with running a web hosting company. We may share an occasional rant with you or let you know what is up in the web hosting industry.

Expect a post, from different team members (and maybe even a few guest bloggers) at least once a week. In true blogging spirit, we encourage you to provide us with your feedback. Tell us what you think about us as a company, our services, and our blog. The comments are open - we are all ears and look forward to hearing from you.

We’ll see you around the blogosphere!

- Team Idologic