Elements Hosting Updates - 1st edition

Elements Hosting
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Hey Everybody,

Just some updates on our soon to launch hosting service to keep everyone in the loop with what’s going on and where we are at.

Docs

We’ve been building out our Hosting docs and have completed the portions covering the Elements Hosting Reactor Panel (the control panel). I say completed, but docs are never really completed, there are always updates to make and things to add, so we’ll be iterating as we go. I’d like to start making some YouTube videos to go along with each doc page so people will have both a visual and written reference on how to do something in the Reactor Panel. The Docs are here Elements Hosting | Hosting | RapidWeaver Elements Docs if y’all want to take a look at them so far. Feedback always welcome, just keep it kind or constructive. :slightly_smiling_face:

Where we are in the technical process

All the server bits are set up. We’re working on setting up the Billing portal now which will handle purchasing, auto-provisioning accounts, and recurring billing for the hosting service. Then we’ll do some testing to make sure that’s all linked up and working before launching that bit publicly. We are running some of our own sites on our UK server and they are super fast and performant. Publishing from the Elements app is also quite fast and hassle free (no publishing errors or timeouts). Our Contact Forms just work so no fighting trying to get a working Contact Form which is great. And the CMS/Blog is working nicely with Pretty URLs. Everything just works from our testing which is great, which leads me to the next part.

Early Testing

Obviously we are testing in a very controlled environment with perfect conditions, so that’s where our Early Testers will really help us out. We’d like to onboard users to our UK server location first so we can test out multiple sites and scenarios to see how things work and what might need to be tuned or tweaked. We are looking for a mix of sites, those that are using Contact Forms, those that are using the CMS/Blog, those that just have a simple 1-3 pager site with nothing fancy, etc.

If you’d like to volunteer to do some early testing let us know. We’ve got a handful of volunteers already however at the moment we are specifically looking for those that would like to host their website(s) on our UK server. Also, as this is early testing, we’d recommend just moving some hobby or personal sites over to start things off with. Nothing that is business critical or can’t tolerate any downtime as again early testing is where we will be doing tuning and some tweaks to squeeze the maximum performance out of our servers. :slightly_smiling_face:

Conclusion

Things are coming along nicely and we are excited to launch our new Elements Hosting service for our customers. The goal is an integrated experience that just works so you can focus on building your best websites with Elements, without having to fight with complicated control panels, slow servers, and “why doesn’t this work on my host?” moments.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about anything, or if you want to be an early tester on our UK server, feel free to comment here or send over a DM or email. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Chillidog Hosting, PHP and upload issues
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Any idea of costs ?

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Sadly I will not be using this service as Chillidog and I have invested a lot of time and money in each other @barchard and his team are phenomenal! I appreciate your help personally and also see this as another revenue stream I feel that JW and yourselves are digressing from your core business models when there are well established set ups with great history in the market.

So it’s a pass from me but good luck!

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Not yet, but I will say we are not going to participate in a race to the bottom on pricing.

If you are looking for £1.99/£2.99/£3.99 web hosting, this ain’t it. :-1:

I can say that our pricing will reflect the value you’ll be getting from the hosting service, which will be a fully managed web hosting service from us that know how your Elements site should work, can tune our servers specifically for it, and can support it without telling you to “go ask your developer to fix it”, which we see a lot with other web hosting providers.

With that said, Early Testers will likely get an “Early Testers Discount” :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi @PMUK

Not a problem at all! Our hosting is an option for those that want the ease and convenience of having their sites hosted by the same people who build the Elements app and want a no-hassle hosting experience that just works so they can focus on building their sites instead of chasing down technical problems with their web hosting.

If you are happy with your current hosting relationship, by all means keep it! We aren’t forcing people to join our hosting, just giving them the option. :slightly_smiling_face:

P.S. - We think those who join are going to love it though. :wink: :heart:

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Dan hope weathers not been too bad for this weekend?

I know you are not forcing it on anyone but I feel there has to be a bit of loyalty in my life!:heart:

First of all I want to reiterate I am NOT a Developer, I am NOT a web host and I have NO intention of selling anything on here but happy to give concepts as freebies, however theres a fine line in my acceptance of what is moral and what is right. I am from the “older” generation and perhaps our views are different to modern thinking, after all I was born BC - Before Computers, so a GEN-Ancient! :joy:

I am also a professional and business owner so can see things from all sides, however, it has taken years for companies to build trust, platforms that work and service and support that is brilliant. Slowly this is being eroded and as a user I just want purely what is best for ME!

I invested loads of time and money in RW and stacks and a community was built, now the stacks community has been eroded as the new boy comes to town and developers are doing their best to survive. Whilst I understand the politics of what not having a store presently means to you sadly it is THE USERS that are the losers here. Now a new hosting scenario comes into the loop and once again it’s a threat to anyone who hosts. So once again it could be to the detriment of USERS in the future.

At the end of the day your business model is of no concern to me, all I want is a simple life and I will show my loyalty to those who have supported me for many years but more importantly eroding businesses that support you IMO is not a good model to have.

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The weather has been terrible non-stop since the first storm blew through. Raining everyday. I feel like I’m channeling the UK’s famous wet weather here. :rofl:

Loyalty is great! I love it. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I don’t know, I don’t think it has to go that deep. :slightly_smiling_face:

There has been thousands and thousands of web hosts since RapidWeaver came into existence. People have always been able to choose who they want to go with. You could also say that GoDaddy is a threat to anyone who hosts, or HostGator is a threat to anyone who hosts, etc. etc. The list goes on.

Personally I’ve always thought RapidWeaver should offer in-house hosting, going back to when I started using the app around 2011 or 2012 (too long ago, can’t remember). Like Apple, it just makes sense being able to control both the web building app and the web hosting service, for an integration that allows an “It just works” dynamic.

Trust me when I say after doing support here for more than 3 years now, the current status quo doesn’t “just work” for a lot of people unfortunately, as evidenced by the sheer amount of people I have supported when their web hosting providers would not or could not.

At the end of the day we just want our customers to be able to focus on building and publishing amazing websites with RapidWeaver, not having to fight technical issues with their web hosting provider. Hence, Elements Hosting is born. People are free to choose whatever works for them. :slightly_smiling_face:

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@differentdan if any spots come up happy to move, I use my server only for testing Elements layouts, pages etc on a continuous basis. I publish everything and anything, when Elements release new components I upload

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Hey @upssjw

Absolutely! Got you added to the list :100:!

I’d actually love to see all your amazing creations on our hosting. :heart_eyes:

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thanks, or not so great creations if I am trying anything that comes to mind

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Dan sorry to hear its still bleak, its wet and floods all over country here, Luckily just rained everyday so far this year and very grey and gloomy! We’re on a “hill” with a water “moat” filling into a flood plain here so OK! At least I don’t have to wash the car!:rofl::rofl:

I know we sometimes have problems as you helped me out a couple of weekends ago. I have used RW since 2014 and I can honestly say I have never had any problems with Chillidog since moving over to them about 2017. I have only had problems with Elements! So maybe this is the problem and not the hosting? :frowning:

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I am looking forward to you hosting service as it eliminates one additional billing service, ie, a third party hosting service.

I anticipate the greatest hurdle will by setting up the DNS. In your docs there was a suggestions that the Domain registrar Elements would be working with is Cloudflare. As a test I moved an unused domain name over from NetworkSolutions to Cloudflare. I have struggled with NS and slowly hope to cease doing business with them. Cloudflare is marginally better. (BTW moving a domain name to Cloudflare registrar took about a week and some serious chat discussions with NS)

The difference is the Cloudflare requires you to use their name servers and set up: “Add an A, AAAA, or CNAME record for www so that www.yourexamplewebsite.com will resolve” rather than just pointing to the hosting services name servers. I am hoping that you that Elements has worked this out and will assist in Adding an A, AAAA or CNAME as at this time I find this very confusing.

I am hopeful for good instructions from Elements.

Mark

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@PMUK I want to gently correct a couple of assumptions here.

When issues crop up, we’ve consistently helped you investigate and resolve them, including giving up our own time on weekends. That support has never been conditional on hosting choice, and it still isn’t.

Elements itself does not randomly break working sites, in almost every case we see, problems surface due to server configuration differences, security software, PHP versions, caching layers, or other environmental factors. Hosting quality and setup absolutely play a role in how smoothly modern tools behave, especially ones doing more advanced work like Forms and the CMS in Elements.

You are, of course, free to host wherever you like. Elements Hosting exists simply to remove a large class of variables we routinely have to debug for users, not to force anyone to move or to criticise other providers.

If you’re happy with your current host and have no intention of moving, please refrain from continuing to post in this thread, as it derails the discussion for those who are actively interested. If you run into concrete issues with Elements itself, we’re always happy to help in a separate support thread where we can look at specifics.

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“Elements Hosting exists simply to remove a large class of variables we routinely have to debug for users”

Precisely the reason Element’s Hosting is appealing. Plus great interest in seeing you business expand and prosper.

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First of all apologies for posting! I thought this was a forum for discussion?

On a personal note I do receive excellent support from @differentdan and I Di pay a massive plaudit post over this. I NEVER said Elements broke anything all I said was I never had any problems with hosting - publishing of sites, until I tried with Elements - this is not anything other than fact. I DON’T appreciate nor understand the ins and outs of the problems because as a user thats why I hope the support I get - paid for in my product costs - helps resolve my issues.

So once again this will be my last post in this thread and once again I will add that the support you and your team has always been exemplary to me.

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Thanks @PMUK, I appreciate you saying that.

There’s no issue here, and I’m glad the support you’ve received has been positive overall. As you say, users shouldn’t need to understand the technical details, that’s exactly why we’re working to reduce those moving parts wherever possible.

We’ll leave it there and keep this thread focused on Elements Hosting for those who are interested. If you need help with anything Elements-related in future, just open a support thread as usual and we’ll take a look.

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Exactly, thanks for your kind words :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

We’re working hard to make sure our hosting works as seamless as possible for all Element users :flexed_biceps:

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Hi @MHA

Thanks for the kind words, happy to hear you are looking forward to our hosting service. :smiling_face:

Domain transfers typically take that long to process. After you initiate the transfer process it’s usually 5-7 days before the transfer completes. Depends on the registrar that you are transferring from. I’m not sure if Network Solutions offers any service to expedite that process.

Absolutely! Elements Hosting is a fully managed hosting service so we’ll assist with DNS setup if needed. I’ll also add some more information to our docs about DNS and all of that. Fun fact, you should add an A or CNAME record for www regardless of your DNS provider. Most providers just set those up automatically so you never have to touch it on your end. You just update your domain nameservers and that’s it.

The way it works on our hosting is the same, your DNS zone file (where all your DNS records are stored) are set up automatically, it’s just we won’t be offering DNS hosting so that DNS zone file doesn’t really do anything. You can use our built-in Cloudflare integration to sync those DNS records over to your Cloudflare account, so you don’t have to go and manually add a bunch of DNS records yourself. Then you point your domain nameservers to Cloudflare’s nameservers and your website would properly point to our server.

And just to point out again, our customers won’t be locked into Cloudflare if they prefer to use a different DNS provider. We give them the choice to use whatever DNS provider they prefer. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I would be interested in finding the full facts about this service. @dan this a genuine request.

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Hey @PMUK

Yeah absolutely. Just let us know what questions you have and we’re happy to answer them. :slightly_smiling_face:

Also if you want to make another thread for your questions to keep them separate, that’s cool too. Everybody can create new topics in our new Elements Hosting forum here Hosting - RapidWeaver Support Forum :slightly_smiling_face: