Dear Frauke Spanuth,

On January 15, 2012, VeriSign®, the registry for .COM will increase prices by 7%.

Avoid this price increase. Renew your domain names* before January 15 and add another year to your current expiration dates. You have the option to register or renew for multiple years and lock in long-term savings. Of course, should you have any questions, please give us a call at 1-480-505-8821.

Thanks for being a Go Daddy customer.

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com

According to Verisign’s official statement not only will the price increase by $.51 for .com domains, but also by $.46 for .net domains. This affects all domain registrars and of course, in the end us, the domain buyers.

Unfortunately, as different sites reported yet, some domain registrars use this change as chance excuse to raise their prices in general.

On Monday, January 2nd, the next catastrophe happened. Author Tiffany Clare contacted me to inform me that her site got hacked, and shortly after more authors all hosting with Janus Portal reported hacks. Not only were the sites hacked, but the CPanels, phpMyAdmin and a lot of other hosting software were infected too. First we tried to fix it, but as soon as we were aware of all the ramifications of that crisis, we decided to back-up the accounts and then wipe the server, doing a fresh install of everything. On Wednesday as we started uploading the accounts back and restoring them one by one, but unfortunately the server didn’t think it was fun. It kept going down, and we had to restart it often to be able to work on it. We, however, slowly restored everything, how could we put this way such a strain on it? So we started emailing back and forth with the server farm to check what the heck was going on now on top of all the other stuff. And let me tell you their response time has been really sh*tty. The result: some scripts were producing a high load. The solution: To wipe and rebuild the server once more. Our reaction: Heck, no! Our solution: Finding a new “home”, a new server farm.

On Friday I had already started moving the first accounts of clients who couldn’t wait any longer for their sites, and especially email, to come back, to new hosts. On Saturday then Janus Portal started uploading two “test” accounts over to a new server, at a new server farm. Currently we’re waiting how this went, but if that’s going to work, we will email all other clients and ask them to a) move to a new host or b) if there’s still trust in Janus to move to the new server. Either way an update to the domain’s nameservers will be required. And yes, Janus will help its clients here.

After this week from hell, I prefer to get hacked myself, instead of seeing so many sites not only of fabulous author, but dear friends get hacked, taken offline and feeling more or less helpless the whole time. Good no one saw my red puffy eyes. *big sigh*

I wanted to start my own blog for quite some time now, actually it’s been a 2011 new year resolution. *lol* I know I’m way late. And as I imagined to get started with it this year, even although it right now feels as blogging is way out, I never imagined to start with such a crisis packed blog post.

One of my belated Christmas presents (belated as it arrived not before the new year) was a MacBook 11″ Air, that I can’t stop starring at longingly, waiting to explore it. 2012 means a lot of change, and the biggest change will be that I switch from Windows over to Mac. I’ve been in love with everything Mac for a couple of years, w/o having one myself, so I’m looking forward to finally explore everything I loved from afar for so long. I keep you posted on how this all goes.

And I will start blogging about website emergencies and how to make WordPress more secure, because I seem to become really an expert here. (And boy, did I wish that would be so not the case). Plus I can create this way a back-up of all tricks I learned and collected along the way. Some solutions and tips I found online were really great, but finding the really great stuff took quite some time, so I definitely need to get them all in one place. Be warned this will be more likey “nerd herd” posts. (Reading right now Hunted — book five of the House of the Night series, and Aphrodite is really growing on me; she’s the one who calls Zoe, the Twins, Damien and Jack the “nerd herd”. Though, she isn’t referring to them as computer nerds if she says that).

Then I need to get started back on showcasing my work. Honestly, the old site here hasn’t been updated for over 2 years. I’m good at updating my clients’ sites but not my own. This has to change. I really need a chance to show you all the great new indie covers self-publishing authors hire me for like the following ones:

And last but not least, I hope to give you all an insider view of how things work at Croco Designs (and at the team members Sondra, Jo Ann and Emma), taking you with me to the first LoveLetter (= German Romance Review Magazine) Convention in Germany (Nalini Singh, Lara Adrian and other authors will attend) in June, talking with you about books (hope you like UF and YA) and simply telling you how much I adore working not only with my authors but also for Carina Press/Harlequin. (Right now Harlequin and I are working on a new author website design for one of their authors).

That’s for now except for one thing: THANKS TO EVERYONE who sent me tweets and emails during the last week to cheer me up and support me in this hosting/server/hacker crisis. Especially thanks to Sylvia and Sondra for working with me around the clock and Alison Kent for her hugs.
The online (romance) community is the best I know!

* * *

Reading right now: HUNTED, House of Night #5
Reading next: A MILLION SUNS, Across the Universe #2 (releases Jan 10) and the other House of Night novels