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In addition to focusing on increasing last minute holiday sales, now is the time to make sure everything is in place to make 2011 a great year for your site and business.

We should all check our sites for errors and be focused on SEO and Social Media all year long but not everyone has the time or knowledge to do everything they should.  If you are one of the offenders, now is the time to make it up to your neglected website.  Go through the checklist below and make sure you have everything in place to start 2011 off right.

An old Chinese Proverb says

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”

That kinda says it all!  Now on to the checklist

12/13/10, 11:30 am
One of our hosting servers is down and technicians are working on the problem. If your site is affected use domain-based email or forwarders, your email should be held in queue and delivered once the server is back online.

It looks like the attack that occured on 12/08 is resuming. We will post updates as soon as we have them.

Thanks you for your continued patience.

12/13/10, 1:15 pm

Server functionality has been restored. Please let us know if you encounter any lingering issues.

12/08/10, 9:00 am
One of our hosting servers is down and technicians are working on the problem. If your site is affected use domain-based email or forwarders, your email should be held in queue and delivered once the server is back online. We’ll post updated information as it becomes available.

11:45 am
We’ve confirmed that the reason our server was shut down was due to a malicious attack.  The on-site server administrators continue to work on the problem; until the attack source is terminated, our server must stay offline.  Mail runs through a different machine but is not able to be directed for delivery until we can put our server back online.  This attack is affecting servers in addition to our ours; you are not alone in your frustration.

1:50 pm
We’ve just been informed that the malicious attack is increasing in severity.  Your data is safe.  Your email is safe. The only way for us to keep it that way at the moment is to keep our server offline.

If your site is NOT affected by this issue, there is no need to worry;  we’re told our other servers are [a] not under attack and [b] there is no reason to suspect they will be.

Dartmouth is a shared server, meaning we share the hardware with other companies and do not yet know if it is one of our sites, one of the others, or the machine itself that was targeted.  All of our other servers are dedicated, meaning every site on the machine is one we have built and administrate.   We will be evaluating the need to move sites on the shared server to a dedicated server when we have more information.  Any of our customers who want to make that move regardless just need to let us know: 360-642-4431 or webmaster@beachdog.com.

3:15 pm
From CEO of the company managing our hosting machines:
“Just wanted to update real quick, we have been working on this non stop and hope to have this resolved very soon.  This attack is on a scale that we haven’t seen in many years and the normal protections were not able to handle it (Cisco Guard and a lot of other protections). We are working closely with our DC to stop it and will have an update soon.”

4:10 pm
We’re pretty sure at this point that we are a part of the Wikileaks attack.  More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11935539
Based on Wikileaks statement of who they are trying to attack, we are confident that none of our sites were targeted but are rather casualties of the war.  We still don’t have an ETA on our server coming back online.  However, now that the attack is slowing down and malicious traffic is becoming almost manageable, we’re re-booted and able to access some of the back end of the server.  If this course continues, as we expect it to, we should see sites coming back online over the next couple of hours.  Many are back online now.