Announcements – Reclaim Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com Take Control of your Digital Identity Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:34:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.4 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RHprofilelogo-100x100.png Announcements – Reclaim Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com 32 32 bava on the Edge https://bavatuesdays.com/bava-on-the-edge/ Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:34:02 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=29647 Continue reading ]]>

On the edge, I’ve been there
And it’s just as crowded as back home.

Dag Nasty, “La Peñita”

Yesterday I did a little experimenting on the good old bava.blog to test the notion of application delivery networks (ADNs). You probably have heard of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) wherein static content is delivered via caches all over a service’s global network (most popular being Cloudflare). Well, in this new acronym, beyond the content the whole application itself is cached across the network, so when one (or in my case both) servers driving the bava go down, the site is unaffected, it begins to deliver the application itself through the network. Which means not only high availability, but virtually guaranteed 100% uptime.* I found it hard to believe, and I have been looking into edge computing thanks to Phil Windley’s recent post, but this was my first exploration of the concept.

Our cloud hosting at Reclaim Cloud is driven by the software developed for Jelastic, which was bought by Virtuozzo. It has been something we’ve been pushing pretty hard on with not only apps well beyond the LAMP stack, but also containers and the wonderful work of Docker, which in turn led us to start building a dedicated WordPress service on top of performant, affordable containerized WordPress hosting: ReclaimPress. As I’ve been working through ReclaimPress, I was shown the tool/service Edgeport. Very much positioned as a simplified, easy-to-use Cloudflare competitor, EdgePort was designed as a security-first, cloud-native Web Application Firewall with a global network that delivers applications dynamically, even when the origin servers are off. Their DNS options are an affordable alternative to Cloudflare for similar plans, which has been a key factor for me. To get in the door for enterprise at Cloudflare is somewhere in the ballpark of $3,000 a month (which the condescending Cloudflare sales agent was sure to remind me), whereas all the features we need–many of which are Cloudflare enterprise only—are part of a $199 a month plan at Edgeport. What’s more, I have not seen anything like ADN delivery networks at Cloudflare, so we now have a viable, affordable alternative to Cloudflare which can do even more. That makes me very happy.

I can harness a globally cached network, as well as load balancing fail-over, and the emergency backup of applications being cached and delivered in their entirety from the network (whether or not my servers load), and that is not even including the vast security tools that I have to dig into with Noah in more detail. It seemed like magic, so I spent much of yesterday testing it on this old blog.

I turned off both servers in the failover setup at 10:59 UTC and then powered them back on at 19:48, so just under 9 hours of downtime that did not stope a single page or post from working cleanly on my site.

Image of Log for when the servers were turned off and then back on

Log for when the servers were turned off and then back on

I had Antonella try and comment and that was not successful, and never thought to try logging into /wp-admin area, given it would seem impossible, but maybe not?  Will return to that, but perhaps comments and posting do work in an ADN?†

Regardless, it was fun to occasionally search for blog posts that I hadn’t read in years, and see them load without issue, even though both servers were down.

This comes at an amazing time at Reclaim when we’re going into our second year of stable, solid .edu hosting for a number of schools, and adding this possibility for not only guaranteed uptime, but increased vigilance and next-level cloud-based security is pretty thrilling. I really want to get out on the presentation trail again and talk this through because more and more these leaps in infrastructure are something we have been just able to almost keep up with, but this one almost feels like we are not only well-positioned to offer it, but maybe even early to the party.

Reclaim4life, small and limber is beautiful!

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*With the caveat that is an imagined Shangra-la if you push hard enough on the idea.

†Turns out they cannot make the database writable in the ADN, so it is read only. They mentioned it is technically possible, but not legally—which makes sense when you think about it in terms of security and spoofing, and then there is the whole issue of syncing back changes. It might make sense, if only for practical purposes, to keep everything write-only during any extended downtime.

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Remember to Reclaim September https://bavatuesdays.com/remember-to-reclaim-september/ Mon, 25 Sep 2023 12:49:55 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=29343 Continue reading ]]> It’s been a month, the new semester is in full force and I am just coming up for some air. I’ve a bunch to share in more detail, but this post will be a bit of a summary of highlights to help me get get back in the groove (and doubling as a blog to-do list). So anyway, time to blog!

Thank you, Reclaim

Lauren Hanks has left the Reclaim building! After eight amazing years, Lauren is moving on and we’re thrilled for her and the new adventures that await. That said, anyone who knows Lauren understands how big a loss this is for Reclaim. She was old gold Reclaim through-and-through and her presence will be missed terribly. There’s more to say on this, but all I can say for now is thank you, Lauren, for showing up every day and ruling all.

ReclaimPress Logo

I think I’ve been using the development of a forthcoming product, ReclaimPress, as a way to avoid dealing with Lauren’s departure. Intense work cures many a woe, and ReclaimPress has been a lot of fun to play with.  In short, ReclaimPress is just WordPress. If you want to get up and running with a just WordPress without the overhead of cPanel, this is a great solution, and I think we can price it so that the costs are comparable with shared hosting. What’s more, from this space you can scale from hobby project to enterprise grade without ever moving your instance. Containerized WordPress hosting with a slick user interface is coming to Reclaim, and that is a beautiful thing.

Bryan Mathers Art for the Win!

And as always, we have Bryan Mathers doing his magic with the art. That needs to be its own post given it will help me flesh out ReclaimPress a bit better—as his art always does—so stay tuned for more.

ReclaimPress Dashboard

Part of how I play with any new platform we stand-up is moving as many of my own sites to the new space as possible. This helps me work out any kinks and generally get a sense of the experience we’re providing our community. So, as you might have guessed, this blog is now hosted on ReclaimPress, as is both ds106.us and daily.ds106.us. You can see from the image above I not only have this blog running in two regions (bavamulti-1 on the West Coast of the US and bavamulti-2 in Canada), but now ds106.us is also running as a multi-region—progress!

bryanmmathers.com was the first of the three to come over

After getting comfortable with my own sites in ReclaimPress, I started working with some select folks to help me test the new space. In particular, Bryan Mathers was intrigued while creating the art work, and he has a few sites running on our shared hosting that could use a performance boost. So, we moved them over to ReclaimPress and it seems to be a very good fit thus far, plus his sites are so beautiful!

The great Visual Thinkery site now hosted on ReclaimPress

One of his sites (ulster.visualthinkery.com) was using WooCommerce, and ReclaimPress has a special hosting package just for that plugin, so we tried that out as well, and by all reports it is doing the trick for his Ulster zine project, which is just another stroke of Mathers genius.

Bryan Mathers’s Zine project to focused art on Ulster

After figuring out those sites, we have started the process of moving larger managed WordPress instances from Reclaim Cloud to ReclaimPress, so things are in motion for sure.

National Geographic GIF featuring penguins migrating

In fact, a big focus for Reclaim Hosting this month has not only been on managing the September rush, but also getting a plan together for a bigger migration project of all of our servers off CentOS 7 to Ubuntu. A huge project for sure, but this month we’ve started to dig in our broader plan into action so we can start chipping away at the migrations each day, week, month for the next 11 months. When it’s done our entire infrastructure will be not only have been migrated, but also upgraded in the process. Many of which are security enhancements that will go a long way towards future-proofing our fleet.

There is a lot more on the Reclaim Hosting front for sure, but the above underscores how much of the  focus has been on ReclaimPress and our server migration project, not to mention beginning of the semester!

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Reclaim EdTech, Year Two https://www.reclaimhosting.com/reclaim-edtech-year-two/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/reclaim-edtech-year-two/#respond Thu, 20 Apr 2023 21:11:17 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=39816 Continue reading "Reclaim EdTech, Year Two"

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As we head into May 2023, Reclaim Hosting will celebrate the first anniversary of Reclaim EdTech. Over the last twelve months we ran five workshops and eight flex courses as part of this offering, with at least one event a month, contrasting with previous years where we ran at most two workshops or trainings a year. It has been a tour de force of building out entirely new events, fine-tuning existing ones, and exploring new and interactive ways to connect and learn online. 

We have a lot to be proud of; the introduction of Discord as a homebase for informal conversations, events, and deeper discussions around the work we do has provided a space for connection across the broader Reclaim community, and it feels good and right! Curating these moments and spaces has been a top priority for Reclaim Hosting since its inception, and with the welcome updates to community.reclaimhosting.com, and we’re excited to be at this point some ten years later. It is a pleasure to be able to walk the walk of an edtech and build out compelling, communal learning environments to do this work.

We’re energized about what’s to come, and Reclaim EdTech is certainly not going anywhere. We’re kicking off year two as an opportunity to learn from at least one of the lessons from year one: all flex courses will be free and openly available to the community. From the beginning we struggled with keeping these courses behind a paywall, but at the same time we were starting a brand new division of Reclaim Hosting and were not entirely sure how we were going to pay for it. Capitalism! But throughout the year we realized these courses were being found well after the fact, and their value was much more inline with outreach and education about possibilities at Reclaim than a product in and of themselves. 

This led us to shift our thinking around Reclaim Edtech more generally going into year two. As of June 2023 there will no longer be subscription costs associated with Discord or flex courses, but rather it will be part and parcel of our support offerings for institutional clients. We will continue to charge a one-time registration cost for multi-day workshops and trainings, but otherwise Reclaim EdTech will be yet another service we offer educational technologists who want exposure to new approaches, applications, and ideas in the sphere of learning technologies. What’s more, going forward we also want to ensure members of this community have the opportunity to participate and help run some of these offerings so it is not only Reclaim Hosting assuming the role of expert/practitioner. 

We hope these changes will make our regular events that much more accessible, given we recognize that the value of Reclaim EdTech is in the process of building community and engaging existing and potential members more than a subscription-based service that might preclude portions of our community from fully engaging in what’s possible.

Thanks to everyone involved for participating in events and helping us think through the possibilities of Reclaim EdTech over this last year. For more information about what’s to come, make sure to check out the following: Event Calendar, Community Site, Discord Server

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March 2023: JetBackup2 RAID array failure https://www.reclaimhosting.com/march-2023-jetbackup2-raid-array-failure/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/march-2023-jetbackup2-raid-array-failure/#respond Wed, 22 Mar 2023 19:42:04 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=39621 Continue reading "March 2023: JetBackup2 RAID array failure"

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During our regular audits of backup servers, our infrastructure team identified an issue with two hard drives being used in a RAID array on one of our backup servers, jetbackup2.reclaimhosting.com. Our server provider (OVH) replaced the hard drives, but after replacement the RAID array failed to rebuild itself. Attempts were made to recover data, however those have been unsuccessful. Our infrastructure team has since moved all impacted servers over to new backup locations and those are once again running successfully.

Extent of Incident

Data recovery from 01 February to 16 March has been unsuccessful. Data includes standard cPanel account-level backups on impacted servers only. Reclaim Hosting does have multiple backup methods in place for redundancy, including Installatron application-level backups, JetBackup cPanel account-level backups, cPanel Backups manually generated by end users, and bare metal server-level backups. Relevant support guides can be referenced below:

JetBackup backups running from 17 March and onwards are in tact. Reclaim Hosting is notifying the administrators of impacted servers directly for any other questions or concerns.

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Friendly Reminder about Custom Installers https://www.reclaimhosting.com/friendly-reminder-about-custom-installers/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/friendly-reminder-about-custom-installers/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2022 18:37:21 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=38557 Continue reading "Friendly Reminder about Custom Installers"

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We wanted to send out a friendly reminder that Reclaim Hosting is continuing to move towards this updated process for maintaining custom application installers in cPanel environments (announced at the beginning of 2022). As part of this work, most custom installers will either be removed or managed entirely by application web developers by the beginning of 2023.

Please note that cPanel users will still have the option to manually install any open source application compatible in a LAMP environment, however the 1-click installer option for the following applications will be removed:

  • FreshRSS
  • Lychee
  • Big Picture Calling Card*
  • Dimension Calling Card*
  • Highlights Calling Card*
  • TRU Collector*
  • TRU Writer*

Common Questions

Will I still be able to install these applications after January 1?
Yes, these applications will still work in cPanel, but the process for installing them will be a little more manual. You can read about how to do that by following these resources:

I’ve got one of these applications already installed in my account. What will happen to it?
In short, nothing. Any sites using one of these installers will not be removed due to this change. Keep in mind, however, that these installers will be a legacy feature and they will not receive maintenance going forward.

For Administrators

What about Installatron Site Templates?
Reclaim Hosting has no plans to remove or change workflows to Installatron Site Templating options, meaning that Admins of Domain of One’s Own or Managed Hosting cPanel schools can still create site templates as expected.

Can I save these installers as Installatron Site Templates?
If you wish to copy a SPLOT installer as a Template to keep them around longer term, you will be able to do so between now and January 1 when installers are removed. Simply follow this workflow to template any sites as you wish. After January 1, you would need to install the SPLOTs manually, and then save the site as a template.


*A massive thanks to Alan Levine for allowing Reclaim Hosting to adopt his SPLOTs through the years and build them into custom installers for our community. If you wish to stay updated about the latest happenings with SPLOTs, or custom WordPress installers with preconfigured demo content, please visit splot.ca.

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Regular, scheduled updates to DoOO Homepages to begin on 11/20 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/regular-scheduled-updates-to-dooo-homepages-to-begin-on-11-20/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/regular-scheduled-updates-to-dooo-homepages-to-begin-on-11-20/#respond Thu, 03 Nov 2022 12:57:13 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=38439 Continue reading "Regular, scheduled updates to DoOO Homepages to begin on 11/20"

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Hey there, Domain of One’s Own Admins!

In case you missed the announcement in the October Roundup Newsletter, our infrastructure team is excited to begin regular, scheduled updates to core files, themes, and plugins for the main WordPress Homepage portal of Domain of One’s Own schools. Prior to this change, Reclaim Hosting has worked directly with DoOO admins to help oversee updates at their convenience and request. While this process has worked well enough in the past, it historically has led to delayed updates to WP DoOO Homepages, which ultimately becomes a security risk in the long run. We look forward to minimizing this risk by pushing out updates on a monthly schedule that folks can come to rely on. In addition, we hope this change will provide some relief to folks that were previously responsible for overseeing this work.

Our infrastructure team will use InfiniteWP to manage these updates, and our first scheduled maintenance is slated for Sunday, November 20, 2022. Going forward, updates will be scheduled on the third weekend of each month.

No additional steps are required of DoOO admins to be included in this scheduled work. If you would like to opt-out, however, please contact us to let us know.

Other details:

  • This work includes updates to core WP files, as well as installed themes and plugins; it does not include updates to PHP Versions or anything else
  • This work only applies to the main WP DoOO Homepage; it will not impact other WordPress sites living on your DoOO server
  • As always, we keep backups on hand and will make sure those are captured before any work begins.
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[RESOLVED] Temporarily Disabling New Scalar Installs https://www.reclaimhosting.com/temporarily-disabling-new-scalar-installs/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/temporarily-disabling-new-scalar-installs/#comments Thu, 22 Sep 2022 19:53:25 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=37974 Continue reading "[RESOLVED] Temporarily Disabling New Scalar Installs"

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UPDATE:

December 14, 2022: This work has been completed and Scalar application installers are now available once again across all Reclaim Hosting cPanel servers.


As of September 22, 2022, Reclaim Hosting is temporarily disabling the ability to install new Scalar sites in cPanel via Installatron.  Our team was recently made aware of a possible vulnerability in the Scalar application, and we are actively working with application developers to investigate further.

In the interim, this change should not impact existing application installs. However, if you are running Scalar, we do recommend that you change the Registration Keys for Scalar accounts. Additionally, please check over your installation for any books or users you did not add and remove them, as well as reset any and all user passwords for your site.

Relevant Support Documentation: Registration Keys in Scalar

Please continue to check back here for further updates, or reach out to us at support@reclaimhosting.com with any questions or concerns.

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A New Model for Domains: DoOO & WPMS https://laurenhanks.com/new-model-for-domains-dooo-wpms/ Fri, 02 Sep 2022 15:28:36 +0000 https://laurenhanks.com/?p=5535 Read More »A New Model for Domains: DoOO & WPMS]]> As separate entities, Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) and WordPress Multisite (WPMS) are not new ideas. What’s more, we’ve known for quite a while now that they’re not in competition with each other at all; DoOO & WPMS serve different user groups with different needs. For many years, when taking meetings with prospective schools, the conversation has always been a matter of choice– Do I need Domain of One’s Own or WordPress Multisite?

More recently, the “either or” decision has changed to a dialogue about the value in running DoOO and WPMS side by side. These tools can offer a pretty powerful way to meet the needs of a much larger, diverse group of learners and educators. I’m really fascinated by this conversation, and have enjoyed watching a few schools in our community lay the foundation for bringing these two services under one roof. Before diving further, let me first outline DoOO and WPMS for those that are hearing this for the first time:

Domain of One’s Own:
In short, Domain of One’s Own is at-scale cPanel hosting for a higher ed community. These cPanel dashboards include access to over 100 open source applications like WordPress, Omeka/S, and Scalar, as well as access to key functions for managing a digital presence like DNS, Databases, and File/PHP Managers. cPanel accounts are automatically provisioned to end users upon signup, and all accounts sit behind a custom homepage/login portal that can be branded for a given institution. The beauty of Domains is that end users can login quickly with their campus credentials via Single Sign On, and they can be up and running with a domain of their choosing in a matter of seconds. Domain of One’s Own encourages freedom, ownership, and exploration in a digital space, and cPanel is completely transportable when students are graduating and ready to leave the institution.


WordPress Multisite:
WordPress Multisite offers the ability to run many WordPress sites in a single install. This means that WPMS Administrators can oversee a network of hundreds (or even thousands) of WordPress sites from a single dashboard. Network settings allow admins to pre-approve themes and plugins that users have access to. As with Domain of One’s Own, users can log into a WordPress Multisite homepage with their campus credentials via Single Sign On, and be up and running with a WordPress sub-site in no time. WordPress Multisites work well for showcasing work in ePorfolios, blogs, and course sites.

Both DoOO and WPMS have pros and cons when thinking about onboarding, supporting, and offboarding a higher ed community. For example: Domain of One’s Own, while offering a perfect sandbox to build and explore, might feel overwhelming for beginner users. In some instances, it can even be a bit overkill to offer a full-blown cPanel account to all end users that are only really looking for a simple WordPress site. On the other side of the coin, WordPress Multisite might be a perfect fit for beginners that are dipping their toes in building a digital presence for the first time. That said, end users are only able to build and explore with the plugins and themes that have been made available to them. And if not regularly maintained, that growing list of plugins and themes can become overwhelming for administrators to maintain.

Sustainable growth and account cleanup also have to be considered with working with DoOO & WPMS. We encourage schools with Domain of One’s Own programs to regularly cull through accounts and clear out those that are no longer in use, given DoOO is charged on a per/cPanel basis. By comparison, WordPress Multisite hosting costs are entirely based on server storage and resources, reducing the need to closely watch the number of active users. When it comes time to clean off or remove accounts, cPanel has a built-in migration path, whereas converting a sub-site to a single WP instance can be quite manual.

These are just some of the considerations when thinking about running DoOO and WPMS programs on campus. But by taking the time to understand the value of both, you can further understand what will make the most sense for your community. And for some schools, the answer is clear: both are necessary.

Coventry Domains

I’ve admired the work that Coventry University has done with their Domain of One’s Own program for years, and in fact, I wrote here about their DoOO knowledge base, coventry.domains/learn. I recommend checking it out, as it does an amazing job of bringing beginners up to speed with best practices on the web. Now many years later, coventry.domains incorporates a larger mission around working with Domains in general– both in DoOO and WPMS.

Coventry.domains is now a landing page that delivers a larger “domains” idea, and the opportunities are framed differently for students and educators. Prominent login & signup buttons encourage folks to start by building an online presence with a WordPress Multisite sub-site, which is completely self-service. Alternately, users have the ability to request a Domain of One’s Own cPanel account. This strategy pushes most growth to the WPMS and allows admins to go through a vetting process for anyone interested in working with cPanel.

Domain Structures

OU Create

Similarly, Oklahoma University recently launched their own landing page for Domain of One’s Own & WordPress Multisite at create.ou.edu. The homepage promotes information literacy, digital citizenship, and skills development. Like Coventry, the folks at OU have also chosen to drive most traffic to the WPMS via self-service login buttons, whereas users must request a DoOO cPanel account.

Domain Structures:

I love how OU Create makes use of a .com top level domain as well as .edu URLs for managing their Domains program.

So where do we go from here?

In both examples above, I really like that the “integration” between DoOO & WPMS is not overly complicated. These schools are using a simple landing page with menu links to redirect traffic to one platform or the other based on the goals for each project. By offering both services, admins can be quite strict about what plugins & themes are supported in WPMS, allowing the curated list to be small and maintainable. If users then want to work with a different theme or plugin, they might be a good candidate for a cPanel environment. This also naturally begins to define where and how support is provided. (i.e. Here’s what we can offer vs. here’s what we can support in house.) There’s no doubt that these tools are powerful, and that’s made even more clear when they are running parallel to each other. DoOO programs are able to have intentional, steady growth, and legacy WPMS instances are given a fresh purpose.

One of my goals for Reclaim Hosting would be to help make the marriage of DoOO and WPMS a little bit easier. Can we build on stateu.org demo DoOO theme to incorporate more templates for these landing pages? Can we have a similar demo theme for WordPress Multisites? And even more, how can we incorporate Reclaim Cloud for those looking for a sandbox space outside of the LAMP stack? (This also gets back to the idea of tiered/layered services, which I wrote more about here.) I’m excited to continue tackling these questions, and look forward to hearing how others are doing the same.

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Exploring the new Ghost Installer for Reclaim Cloud! https://jadin.me/new-ghost-installer/ Sat, 13 Aug 2022 01:05:11 +0000 https://jadin.me/new-ghost-installer/ Today Jim and I did a stream showcasing a new Ghost installer for Reclaim Cloud that should automate a lot of common setup tasks that people run into when using Ghost. I’m really proud of this installer because I’ve put a bunch of time into making this thing really simple to use for folks who don’t have experience with Docker or Reclaim Cloud, but just want to get Ghost up and running quickly.

You can check out the video above, or jump to individual sections of the video via the chapter links below:

Chapters:

  • 0:00 - Intro and starting the install
  • 3:12 - What is Ghost? Why are we making a new installer?
  • 10:42 - On Ghost as a blogging platform
  • 11:55 - Disqus and Ghost’s lack of built-in comments
  • 17:08 - Setting up Ghost and the Ghost dashboard
  • 23:36 - Configuring Ghost via Reclaim Cloud Add-ons
  • 25:32 - Updating your Ghost install
  • 28:19 - Mapping a custom domain
  • 33:09 - Setting up Mailgun for Newsletters
  • 38:30 - Looking under the hood / Technical details
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9 Years of Reclaim Hosting https://bavatuesdays.com/9-years-of-reclaim-hosting/ Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:50:50 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=26815 Continue reading ]]>

Happy 9th birthday to our dear @ReclaimHosting! ?

— Lauren Hanks (@brumface) July 23, 2022

On Saturday Lauren Hanks reminded me that Reclaim Hosting celebrated its 9th birthday. I get confused on the official formation date, I oscillate between the 28th of July (which Gusto—our payroll/hr service—notes as my anniversary) and the 23rd—the date I traditionally associated with it in celebratory posts over the years like this one. So I guess am going to make 23rd the formation date and the 28th my first day of work 🙂

Nine years. Crazy to think we are approaching a decade of Reclaim. I mentioned in the 7 year post how Reclaim was 1) growing and starting to dial in a more definitive sense of culture, and 2) imagining a reality where Tim and I were not as central as we had been to start.

Image Image of TV with Reclaim EdTech on screenTo the first point, I think our hires in 2021 and 2022 have really solidified the questions around culture, which have been to intentionally build a team that is rooted in a support mind-set that is informed and reinforced by educational technology. It helps that Goutam, Pilot, Taylor, and Amanda all came from Domain of One’s Own programs, there understanding of higher education and a deep commitment to vision of technology to both augment and transform education is foundational to being able to both dream up and roll-out an Instructional Technology team in a few short months to start 2022. That has been a gigantic shift in Reclaim’s understanding of itself, that said what it means more specifically is still yet to be determined—which makes it that much more fun! It’s a moment where we can explore, experiment, and figure it out, which i believe is a sandbox for all kinds of magical possibilities.

As to Reclaim operating without Tim and I as central, this has been sealed over the course of our ninth year. If you told me a year ago that Tim would be entirely removed from the day-to-day of Reclaim Hosting starting January 2022, I would’ve laughed …. nervously. But that has been the case, between Lauren ruling the Director of Operations position like a boss; Chris taking over infrastructure and truly shining through not only adroitly managing a mighty fleet of servers—but also making them that much more secure; and Meredith stepping up big time on the regular to train everyone on our team to become fluent in frontline support; we’ve all gotten better as a result. And while Tim’s creative innovation at Reclaim is legend, we now have nine well-rounded team members that truly do make Reclaim bigger than either of its founders, and that’s the dream.

As for me, I’m not going anywhere cause Tim now owns the amazing Reclaim Arcade, so Hosting is all I got! It does help that I love it, and I want to keep experimenting with what a marriage of hosting, support, and edtech looks like as we continue on this journey. In this regard, I have to say our ninth birthday marks a moment where we can not only sustain the laser-focused support our community has come to expect, but also provide a broader outreach thanks to Taylor’s community work and Pilot’s Roundup newsletters—we’re now able to think beyond the immediate. This means building on experiments like the OERxDOmains21 conference delivery platform for ongoing professional development (thanks to Tom Woodward and Michael Branson Smith); more experimentation with container-based edtech; as well thinking through how Domain of One’s Own, WordPress Multisite, and Reclaim Cloud represent a multi-level offering for schools to provide a wide range of options as part of our services—all of which remains undergirded by edtech-drive support.

So, as I reflect on our ninth year of Reclaim Hosting I believe we are entering a new phase wherein we have the headspace to experiment more, re-think how all our seemingly unrelated products can be understood as part of a greater whole, all while creating a culture of the possible at Reclaim Hosting that understands educational technology need not be a clarion call for the apocalypse, but an imaginative way to build cool, fun things that make a difference on a human scale. I’ll take nine more years of that!

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