FAQ

Creating a Hosts File Entry

By: dmitri On: September 30, 2015 , , , Comments Disabled

If you wish to access your domain before your DNS has been updated, you can update your local ‘hosts file’, which will allow your computer to view your new site. Follow the appropriate instructions below.

Please note that this will work only with HTTPS and not with HTTP.

If you need any help with this procedure (for example because nslookup is not installed in your system and you can’t figure out what the IP of your SFTP server is), we are ready to help: please contact us through the Dashboard or send us an email.

OS X:

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Launch the following command (replacing SFTP_host with the address of your SFTP host you received in your activation email):

    $ nslookup SFTP_host

  3. The result will be something like the following output. The last line contains the IP address of your SFTP host, which you will need to add to your hosts file (numbers arranged in this form: XX.XX.XX.XX).

    Server:        YY.ZZ.XX.ZZ
    Address:    YY.ZZ.XX.ZZ#53

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name:    grwtrcweg.deflect.ca
    Address: XX.XX.XX.XX

  4. Type ‘sudo nano /private/etc/hosts’
  5. Press Ctrl+Shift+V to take you to the end of the file
  6. Enter the text ‘XX.XX.XX.XX <yourdomain>’ (replacing `XX.XX.XX.XX` with the actual IP of your SFTP host and <yourdomain> with the URL of your website).
  7. Press Ctrl+x to exit
  8. Press y to save

Alternatively you can download the Hosts preference pane helper from here: https://github.com/specialunderwear/Hosts.prefpane/downloads

Windows:

  1. Launch the Command Prompt and enter:

    C:\>nslookup example.com

    whereby you need to replace example.com with your SFTP host address.

  2. The result will contain the IP address of your SFTP host, which you will need to add to your hosts file (numbers arranged in this form: XX.XX.XX.XX).

    Address: XX.XX.XX.XX

  3. Click “Start” button
  4. Click “All Programs”
  5. Click “Accessories”
  6. Right-click on Notepad and then click Run as administrator.
  7. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type your password, or click Allow/Yes.
  8. Open the Hosts file. Discover the location for your version of windows here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)#Location_in_the_file_system)
  9. Enter the text ‘XX.XX.XX.XX <yourdomain>’ (replacing `XX.XX.XX.XX` with the actual IP of your SFTP host and <yourdomain> with the URL of your website).
  10. Click Save on the Edit menu. (If using Windows 7, you will need to click Save on the File menu.)

Linux:

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Launch the following command (replacing SFTP_host with the address of your SFTP host you received in your activation email):

    $ nslookup SFTP_host

  3. The result will be something like the following output. The last line contains the IP address of your SFTP host, which you will need to add to your hosts file (numbers arranged in this form: XX.XX.XX.XX).

    Server:        YY.ZZ.XX.ZZ
    Address:    YY.ZZ.XX.ZZ#53

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name:    grwtrcweg.deflect.ca
    Address: XX.XX.XX.XX

  4. Open the file /etc/hosts with vim or your favourite editor as root:

    $ sudo vim /etc/hosts

  5. Add the following line, replacing `XX.XX.XX.XX` with the IP address of your SFTP host, `example.com` with the URL of your website and `example` with the name of your website:

    XX.XX.XX.XX example.com example

  6. Ensure that the nsswitch.conf file is correct. The nsswitch.conf file controls in which order services will be consulted for name service lookups, in our case we are looking for the “hosts” service:

    $ grep host /etc/nsswitch.conf hosts: files dns

    Check that “files” comes before “dns”. If it doesn’t, edit the file to obtain the above result.

  7. Check that your changes produced the wanted effect with this command:

    $ ping -c 1 example.com

    The result should be something like this (with XX.XX.XX.XX being replaced by the IP of your SFTP host):

    PING example.com (XX.XX.XX.XX) 56(84) bytes of data.

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Creating Your New WordPress Site

By: dmitri On: December 05, 2013 , , , Comments Disabled

Whether you are a first time WordPress user or not you may need to build your new site while your existing site continues to run. If you immediately update your DNS settings to point to eQPress without having migrated your website yet, what you’ll see is a default installation of WordPress. That’s probably not what you want. So, you have a few options when it comes to building your new site.

  1. You can update you local computer’s hosts file during the migration so your browser loads the site at eQPress. Here’s an article that will help.
  2. If you can withstand a bit of downtime then putting up a “coming soon” page is by far the simplest. Just point your DNS to the IP address supplied in the Welcome email and read this guide.
  3. If neither of these options suit you, send us an email or contact us through the Dashboard, and we’ll change the settings of your eQPress site so it will respond to dev.example.com. This will let you work on it and keep your current site active. When you are ready to switch, we can make the necessary changes to the database so the site responds to example.com.

We have written a follow-up to this article which explains the whys and hows of migrating your WordPress data. There’s also a more in-depth section on the WordPress Codex about moving a WordPress site.

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How often is my site backed up?

By: dmitri On: April 10, 2013 , , Comments Disabled

Backup are important so we take a multi-layered approach. The first is an enterprise level solution which encrypts all data and transfers the archives to Amazons S3. We retain 30 daily backups, and 15 weekly backups which will allow you to restore from archives that are up to 3 months old.

The next layer of backups is done at the virtual machine level. We take full image snapshots every night which includes all website data. The 3rd layer is live replication. That’s happening in real time at the database level and on a regularly scheduled basis for files.

In the event of a catastrophic failure it’s possible that you could lose some recently uploaded files. Your content will be replicated immediately so any blog posts or pages you create would not be affected by a server failure unless you were in the middle of creating it when the failure happened.

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When will my WordPress core get updated?

By: dmitri On: April 10, 2013 , , Comments Disabled

WordPress periodically releases maintenance updates. These are typically for significant bug fixes or security issues. Since these upgrades might have security implications, and because WordPress’s popularity makes it susceptible to an exploit being quickly released, we attempt to apply these upgrades as quickly as possible.

Here’s what the different versions look like:

  • Major release: 4.1
  • Maintenance and/or security release: 4.1.1

Our goal is to upgrade all websites within 6 hours of when a version addressing security issues is made publicly available. All sites will be upgraded no later than 24 hours from the time when the official announcement is made on the WordPress Project’s News blog.

Major releases provided by WordPress can significantly affect its compatibility with plugins and themes. Typically there are no security patches applied therefore the urgency to upgrade is lower. We will provide guidance via our announce mailing list of how the upgrades will eventually be applied to all websites hosted on the platform.

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