Silentweb — News

A new website, and a bigger Silentweb

2026-08-08T00:00:00Z

Welcome to the new silentweb.ca. If you've been with us a while, you may remember our news and notices living at DigitalOrphans — that whole archive, going back to 2009, now lives here in one place, and the old links will bring you here automatically.

The new site marks more than a fresh coat of paint. Here's what's changing.

Design and development projects are open again

For the past few years, hosting and existing clients have taken all the available hours in the week. That's changed: we're once again taking on select new design and development work. We will be choosy with the projects we take on, but we want to support artists and creators, software and trades builders, engineers, and organisations with a positive social mission. If you've been waiting for a "we have room now," this is it.

Cybersecurity services, officially

Security work has always been part of what we do quietly; it's now a proper service. We offer security posture assessments for small businesses, and penetration testing for teams building software. One engagement, plain-language findings, and a prioritized list of what to fix first — not a hundred-page PDF that never gets read.

Free for not-for-profits and charities: if you run a not-for-profit or registered charity, our security consulting is free. Organisations doing good work are targeted just as often as businesses and usually have less help. Get in touch and we'll set something up — no strings, no upsell.

Training

We're also offering training services: security awareness sessions for staff, and workshops on AI-assisted development for teams that want to adopt the new tools with their eyes open. In person or recorded, sized to your group.

Still Canadian, still yours

None of the new things change the old things. Silentweb remains a small Canadian practice — your websites, databases, email, and backups stay in Canada, under Canadian law, on hardware we administer ourselves in a hydro-powered Montreal data centre. No US cloud touches client data, and we'll name every supplier in the chain if you ask. You can read more on our data sovereignty page.

As always, if you have questions — about the new services or anything else — get in touch. Replies usually come within three days.

Server migration notice: websrv06

2024-03-31T00:00:00Z

From a performance perspective, websrv05 has been great for us. That said, I knew it would be a relatively short run, given that it runs CentOS 7, which is officially end-of-life in June 2024.

Today I'm announcing our upcoming migration to websrv06. Like its predecessor it is fast — 40 CPU cores, 128 GB of RAM, and 4 TB of RAID 1 storage. It runs PHP 8.3 and MariaDB 10.11, and the latest Plesk 18 for hosting management.

Migrations start this week and will finish by the end of April. Once your account has moved, you'll get an email notification. As with the last migration, you should notice little or no downtime.

Known issue: after your account moves you may receive “Could not issue/renew Let's Encrypt certificates” emails from the old server. These can safely be ignored until all domains have migrated.

Known issue: if you had set your mail server to websrv05.digitalorphans.org to avoid TLS errors, change it to websrv06.digitalorphans.org. Most people point mail at their own domain and are unaffected.

PHP 7.4 is well past end-of-life and will not be supported on websrv06. All sites move to PHP 8.3 during the migration. If that breaks an older PHP site, let me know and I'll help.

Server migration notice for websrv05

2022-12-28T00:00:00Z

Over the next month we'll be migrating all hosting accounts on websrv04 to their new home on websrv05. The new server is substantially faster — 40 CPU cores, 128 GB of RAM, and 9 TB of storage — and you should notice a clear speed improvement.

PHP 8.1 and 8.2 are available, and MariaDB has been upgraded to 10.5.

Once your account has been migrated you'll receive an email notification and can log into Plesk on the new server. As with the last migration there should be little or no downtime, but if you hit issues please tell me directly.

PHP versions upgraded on websrv04

2022-03-19T00:00:00Z

A brief notice for users on websrv04: if your site was running an unsupported version of PHP (7.1 through 7.3), it has been automatically migrated to PHP 7.4 this evening.

Most sites can safely switch to PHP 8.1. Please do so in Plesk at your convenience.

Email server changes on websrv04

2020-10-04T00:00:00Z

On Saturday, October 10th I'll be making a significant change to email services on websrv04: migrating the mail server software from QMail+Courier to Postfix+Dovecot, and changing spam and virus protection from MagicSpam to Plesk Email Security Pro.

Mail services will be offline for a short period — under 30 minutes. Your local email client may re-download all messages once the migration is complete.

Plesk and PHP updates on websrv04

2020-03-07T00:00:00Z

The SMTP issue we were experiencing after the Plesk upgrade has been resolved. It was caused by a strict TLS cipher setting I applied after the upgrade, and was not related to the upgrade itself.

Take a moment to log into Plesk and have a look around. Plesk 18 is a real improvement, and PHP 7.4 became an option last night as well.

Service Interruption: Update

2020-03-07T00:00:00Z

Please note that the majority of the Plesk upgrade and kernel patching was successful; however, we are currently experiencing an issue with outgoing mail (SMTP) at this time. Plesk support is investigating the issue, and I will post an update as soon as this is resolved. For more information, please follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/digitalorphans

Service Interruption

2020-03-06T00:00:00Z

Please excuse the 10 minute service interruption on websrv04 this evening as the system is rebooting in order to apply a patch.

Plesk & PHP Updates on websrv04

2019-03-04T00:00:00Z

Plesk 17.8 Upgrade

Plesk server control panel on websrv04 will be upgraded this weekend
to version 17.8. This upgrade will result in some periodic downtime on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. No significant outages are expected; however, please check @digitalorphans on Twitter for updates.

PHP 7.2 Migration

PHP 5.6 has long been end-of-life’d and it will be removed from websrv04
this spring. Websites actively running PHP 5.6 will upgraded to PHP 7.2 over the next few weeks. If special attention is required in your case, please let us know.

websrv04 account migration complete

2018-02-17T00:00:00Z

The transition to websrv04 is officially complete. All resellers, clients, and sites have been moved, and users are encouraged to log into Plesk to look at the new features.

The server supports PHP 7.2 and Node.js, includes advanced spam filtering and automatic IP blacklisting after repeated failed logins, and issues valid TLS certificates automatically through Let's Encrypt.

Account Migration Has Started

2018-01-03T00:00:00Z

Just a brief note to mention that I have transferred 49 domains from websrv03 to the new websrv04 server tonight. This is going to be a bit of a slower process than I originally hoped, but the migration utilities provided by the Plesk platform are pretty amazing. As a reminder, I will e-mail you when your account has been transferred over. If you encounter any issues after the migration, please be sure to let me know right away.

Silentweb Server Migration Notice

2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

I would just like to let you know that I am starting 2018 off by doing
some relatively significant server house cleaning for DigitalOrphans. This
major server upgrade will begin this week, and I will be moving all 400+
domains to a new better-faster-stronger server. This includes an upgrade to
all server components including Plesk Onyx 12.5, PHP 7.1, etc. It will also
include larger disk-space and data-transfer quotas for you at no cost and
multitude of new hosting account features.

I will notify you by e-mail before I migrate your account, but I do not
expect downtime during the transition. I would however advise you not to
make any changes to your website during the actual migration period.

Horde Webmail Folder Issue

2017-08-09T00:00:00Z

Please note that I was made aware of another issue this morning with the Horde webmail client. Essentially, mail within sub-folders appears to be missing. The messages are in fact there, they are just not being displayed. I will investigate further into this issue tonight, in the mean time domain administrators are encouraged to go into Mail Settings and change the webmail interface from Horde to Roundcube until the issue is resolved. My apologies for any inconvenience.

Horde Webmail Login Issue Resolved

2017-08-08T00:00:00Z

My apologies for the inconvenience today for users of Horde webmail. An unforeseen side effect of upgrading to PHP 5.6 last night was failed logins for users trying to access to that particular webmail client. I have done a quick patch this evening and everything should now be back in order.

PHP Upgraded

2017-08-07T00:00:00Z

A brief note to let everyone know that PHP has been upgraded to version 5.6.31. This is an interim step before we head-on-up to version 7.1 in a few months. Nothing but good things PHP7 and very little breakage. If you have any issues, please let me know.

Scheduled Server Downtime Notification

2014-11-25T00:00:00Z

Please be advised that there is a scheduled server outage on Thursday,
November 27th at approximately 6:30AM EST that will affect all services
(web, e-mail, etc) on websrv03. This outage could last as long as 30
minutes while we perform important system maintenance.

I apologize for any inconvenience, and I hope to keep actual down time to a
minimum. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate
to let me know.

Scheduled Server Migration Notice

2014-02-19T00:00:00Z

The time has come once again for server hardware migration. The current hardware on websrv02 has served us well over the years but the warranty is now up and it’s time to move to bigger and better hardware. The new server I have purchased sports x4 2.13GHz Intel CPU’s, 24 GB of RAM, and 1TB of RAID 1 disk, it’s also running the latest and greatest version of Plesk, as well as Apache 2.2, PHP 5.4, and MySQL 5.5. It has also been running for a few months now to ensure stability prior to actually migrating customers over.

The migration to the new server will begin this week, and I will contact you individually to let you know what day over the next 2 weeks I will migrate your account. Migrations will take place in the evenings, and do not require much (if any) downtime. Essentially your account is migrated to the new server, and then deleted from the old server. Once it has been deleted from the old server, it will be live within a few minutes on the new one.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to give me a shout.

We’re All Together Again

2012-11-08T00:00:00Z

I was trying to think exactly when it was that I decided to split our DigitalOrphans website load into two servers… I believe it was in 2005 when I was teaching at St. Lawrence College, and the program coordinator asked me to provide web-hosting for all of the graphic design students. That experience of hosting websites for cohorts of graphic design students went on for about 5 years, and during that time I met a lot of very interesting and very talented designers. I still provide hosting services and keep in touch with many of these folks today.

It has been a few years now since I stopped hosting websites for entire cohorts of design students, and with that decrease in demand on server resources, and an increase in processing power on servers I am pleased to announce that I have now been able to merge us back onto one server again.

This move not only makes it easier for me to maintain the server, but also less expensive to run the service, which will translate into cheaper prices for some clients at their next regular billing cycle.

There are lots of things in the works right now, and I will be posting more exciting news in the weeks ahead.

As always, if you run into any issues or require any assistance please feel free to contact me.

websrv02 Scheduled Maintenance

2012-01-20T00:00:00Z

A brief reminder that we have a scheduled outage this evening of websrv02 so that maintenance can be performed on the server. We will be upgrading to Plesk 10.3, PHP 5.3, and also doing some operating system upgrades. Please expect intermittent outages over the next few hours as these upgrades are completed. I will be sure to post a tweet when they are finished.

websrv01 Maintenance Completed

2011-10-14T00:00:00Z

A quick follow up regarding the emergency maintenance that took place last night. Work started at roughly 9:50PM EST, and service was fully restored by approximately 10:15PM EST. During the rebuilding of the RAID array all services were available, but servers’ performance was degraded. As of 2:30AM EST the RAID array was fully rebuilt, and all services are functioning normally at this time.

If you require any assistance or have any questions please feel free to let me know.

Emergency Maintenance on websrv01

2011-10-13T00:00:00Z

Please be aware that one of the hard drives in websrv01 has predictive failure, meaning that it is possible the drive could fail in the not-so-distant future. I have scheduled a Dell technician to be onsite this evening at 10:00PM EST to replace the drive in the machine, which requires me to schedule 30 to 60 minutes of downtime.

Downtime: Thursday, October 13th, 2011 @ 10:00PM EST for approximately 30 to 60 minutes.

Once the drive is replaced the server will be brought back online and will continue to operate while the RAID array is being rebuilt. You may notice some slowness of service over the next 24 hours while the array is being restored. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Scheduled Replacement of websrv02 Hardware

2010-02-15T00:00:00Z

This is an important notice to inform websrv02 users that we will be replacing the websrv02 server hardware on Friday, February 19th, 2010. The current hardware is about four years old, and while it has not given us any problems we like to make sure our hardware is always in tip-top shape.

The websrv02 server will be unavailable for a short period of time while we shut the old system down and bring the new one online (approximately 20 minutes). This downtime is currently scheduled for:

Friday, February 19th, 2010 around 1:00PM EST

Important Website Warning: While the server downtime itself will be short, we will be starting the data transfer between the old server to the new server at approximately 10:45AM. It is important that you *do not make any changes to your website* between 10:30AM and 2:00PM EST on Friday or your changes may be lost once the new server is brought online.

Important E-Mail Warning: We will be shutting down incoming mail service on websrv02 at approximately 11:00AM EST to prevent any e-mail loss. If someone attempts to send you an e-mail on Friday between 11:00AM and 1:00PM EST the message will stay in their servers mail queue and will automatically resend once the mail service on the new server is brought online again.

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause; however we feel that this is an important upgrade to ensure the long term quality of service you have come to expect.

Apache and PHP Upgraded: websrv01

2010-01-16T00:00:00Z

Just a quick note to inform websrv01 users that I have upgraded both Apache and PHP on websrv01 this afternoon. This server is now running PHP 5.2.12, and previous pdo_mysql issues should now be resolved. Our next PHP upgrade (likely the end of February) will be into the PHP 5.3 branch, so please ensure any PHP applications you may be running are ready for this.

Scheduled Maintenance on websrv01

2009-10-27T00:00:00Z

**Update: 9:29AM EST
**Dell has successfully completed the maintenance work and replaced the failed hard drive on websrv01. All services are currently online; however, the server will be a little slow until it fully syncs the newly installed hard drive with its mirrored drive. We expect that this will take another few hours to complete. If you have any trouble, please let me know.

Original Post: Oct 27 @ 8:02PM EST
I confirmed earlier today with Dell that a service technician will be on-site in our Montreal data centre on Thursday, October 29th at 8:00AM EST to replace the failed hard drive on websrv01. While this maintenance is taking place, all services on the server will be unavailable. We expect that the downtime will no longer than 1 hour; however, your patience as we replace the failed hardware is appreciated.

Just to confirm, all services on websrv01 will be unavailable:
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 @ 8:00AM EST

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

2009-10-21T00:00:00Z

Update: Oct 21 2:24AM
websrv01 is currently back online. Diagnostic tests are currently running on the server as we speak (thanks to Greg), but initial reports indicate that 1 of the 2 hard drives on websrv01 has died. Luckily we run a RAID 1 (mirror) configuration, so the other drive is picking up the slack (whew). Dell is aware of the issue and will get back to me later in the day to schedule a time for them to visit the data centre and investigate further. I will post more information as it becomes available.

Initial Report: Oct 20, 11:03PM
websrv01 is currently off-line. It is highly upsetting to say that; however, we are currently experiencing some major hardware issues / failures. I am currently working with Dell and our co-location provider to resolve the issue; however, we expect that the server will be down most of the day on Wednesday while we recover service.

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

2009-08-27T00:00:00Z

This morning we experienced a short unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to spam attack that took place early in the morning. This incident could have easily been avoided if a select few users had e-mail address passwords that were not incredibly simple. If you have a simple e-mail address password, please change it immediately. Passwords should be alphanumeric and contain a minimum of 6 characters, and no dictionary words.

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

2009-07-23T00:00:00Z

We are currently experiencing an unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to what we believe may be a hardware issue on the server. In fact, I think this could be the same issue we encountered on April 25th, and I hate to say it but our co-location provider *still* has not resolved the misconfigured the power port that our server is plugged into, so I am still unable to reboot the machine.

A technician has been informed of the problem, and someone is going down to the server to reboot it right now. Luckily, I am told there are people in the building today, so it should be back shortly. I will post an update as soon as I know anything.

Update 9:29AM
Data centre technicians are making their way to the server right now to fix the APC switch and restart the machine.

Update 10:26AM
I’m still waiting, and getting more angry by the minute. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Update 10:50AM
websrv01 is back online after the technician finally rebooted the server, I apologize once again for the inconvenience. I am fairly certain that they assigned John to my support ticket:

Data Centre Technician John

Unscheduled websrv01 Downtime

2009-04-25T00:00:00Z

We are currently experiencing an unscheduled service outage on websrv01 due to what we believe may be a hardware issue on the server. Unfortunately our co-location provider misconfigured the power port that our server is plugged into, so we were unable to reboot the machine ourselves. Currently we have a technician assigned in Montreal who is on his way to the data centre to reboot the server and investigate further. We will update this post as more information becomes available.

Update 3:53PM
We are still working with our co-location provider to determine the exact cause of the problem. One theory currently being investigated is that we may be experiencing a distributed denial of service attack on the server. As soon as we have any further information, we will post it.

Update 6:20PM
The problem has now been resolved, and all service has been fully restored. It does in fact appear to have been a distributed denial of service attack, which fortunately ceased on it’s own. We sustained 1Mbit of http traffic to websrv01 for only a short period of time before the server was unable to handle the requests. The 1Mbit wall continued until just after 6PM when it stopped just as mysteriously as it began. Further investigation is on-going and any new information will be made available.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Unscheduled websrv02 Downtime

2009-03-22T00:00:00Z

A quick post to let you know that as of 10:55AM today websrv02 is currently off-line, and we are currently investigating the issue. At this time it appears as though the power port the server is plugged into at our data center has malfunctioned, but we are confirming this now with the network administrators. I will update this post as new information becomes available.

Update 12:01PM
We have confirmed that the problem is an issue with the APC power unit that all servers in this particular rack are connected to. Our network administrators are working at installing a new APC power unit as we speak, and the issue should be resolved very shortly.

Update 1:50PM
I have just received another update from our network administrators stating that they are now replacing the switch that connects all of the servers on the rack. They have informed me that it should be operational again shortly.

Update 2:10PM
Service has now been fully restored. If you have any issues, please feel free to let me know. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Silentweb News Update (Volume 4, Issue 3)

2009-02-01T00:00:00Z

Final Upgrade Status Report

I am pleased to report that the upgrades to both websrv01 and websrv02 were completed successfully, and for the most part without incident. There were a few minor hiccups which were caught by users, reported to us and resolved shortly there after. As of this moment there are no known issues with any services, so if you are having a problem please report it me so it can be resolved.

This has without a doubt been the most solid Plesk upgrade in history, and Parallels (the company that makes Plesk) definitely deserves some kudo’s for finally getting it right.

Our servers are now running Plesk 9.0.1, and there are plenty of new features so feel free to log in and poke around. As I mentioned previously the interface is rather different and it takes a bit of getting used to, but I think you will find that it is actually much nicer to use.

New Webmail Interface Option

One of the many new features of Plesk 9, is a new option that allows you to choose a different web-mail client. The default webmail client that you are all used to is an open source application called Horde. Horde is feature rich with tools like calendar, address book, etc., but if you are looking for something a bit lighter try AtMail!

You can choose which web-mail client you want to use on a per-domain basis, and can switch back and forth any time without losing your messages.

To enable AtMail:

Log into Plesk.
On the domains’ “Home” page click the “Mail Accounts” icon.
Now click the “Mail Settings” icon.
Switch the “WebMail” select box to “AtMail 1.02” (the default is Horde 4.1.6).
Click “OK”.

That’s it! You can now visit your web-mail page (i.e. http://webmail.yourdomain.ca) and log into AtMail using your e-mail account username and password. Don’t worry, if you decide you want to switch back, simply reverse the procedure.

Conclusion

I gather from some conversations that some of you are probably reading this message and thinking to yourself “what is Plesk anyways?”. Plesk Server Administrator is a piece of software that we use on our servers to allow *you* to easily manage portions of your domain and hosting account on our servers (i.e. e-mail accounts, spam filtering, web statistics, password protected directories, FTP passwords, etc).

Silentweb News Update (Volume 4, Issue 2)

2009-01-31T00:00:00Z

Server Upgrade Status Report

I just thought I should send out a quick update to give everyone an idea how the upgrades are going.

websrv02:
We successfully upgraded websrv02 last night, with little in the way of problems. There was only minimal service interruption (about ~15 minutes), and all services are operating as normal. If your website is on websrv02 and you are having any trouble, please let us know immediately.

websrv01:
We were having some trouble doing adequate backups of websrv01 and we cannot start these major server upgrades until we are satisfied our backups are reliable. Unfortunately we have no real choice but to push the scheduled downtime back until our backup process is complete, which could easily take another 2 or 3 hours.

Please be advised that there will be a service interruption while we are doing the upgrades.

Silentweb News Update (Volume 4, Issue 1)

2009-01-26T00:00:00Z

New Scheduled Downtime Notice

I would like to notify you that there will be some scheduled downtime on both of our servers this coming weekend while we perform scheduled maintenance tasks and upgrades on both of the production machines.

websrv02: Friday, January 30th at 10:00PM EST
websrv01: Saturday, January 31st at 10:00AM EST

The first downtime should not be too much longer than a few hours per server; however, Plesk upgrades have in the past went over our maintenance window so I hesitate to give a precise amount of time (~1 – 2 hours). There will be a second downtime after the Plesk upgrade is finished, which should be very brief (~15 minutes) as we apply operating system patches and reboot the servers.

During this maintenance window we will be upgrading both servers to the latest and greatest Plesk release (details below), as well as doing all of the regular operating system patches, and a PHP 5.2.6 upgrade.

Plesk 9.0.1 Upgrade

This is a significant Plesk upgrade that has many changes including a rather new visual interface. I will caution you that the new interface is different, and while you will need to learn the new way Plesk operates, I am sure that the new features will make up for any inconvenience.

Here are some of the many new features you may notice:

New visual interface.
Ability to add your logo and branding to control panel.
New optional web-mail client called AtMail.
Upgraded version of IMP / Horde web-mail client.
Option to run PHP in FastCGI mode.
Ruby on Rails support.
Ability to throttle bandwidth on high traffic sites.
Very much improved website backup and restore tools.
New anti-spam techniques (i.e. DomainKeys).
Better support for Safari 3.1.
The usual bug fixes and security hardening.

Website Backups and Account Cleanup

We do fairly regular backups of our servers as part of our disaster recovery plan, but if something happened would you have a backup of your content? I would hope that the answer to that question is yes, but in case it is not now is a good time to remind you.

Please make sure that you keep backups of your websites, databases and e-mail.

While you are looking into what you need to backup, check for things you can delete. If there are old domains in your account they *must* be deleted. Old web-applications *must* be removed or upgraded to the latest release.