Product – Reclaim Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com Take Control of your Digital Identity Thu, 20 Apr 2023 21:11:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.4 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/RHprofilelogo-100x100.png Product – Reclaim Hosting https://www.reclaimhosting.com 32 32 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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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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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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Price Changes for Domain of One’s Own https://www.reclaimhosting.com/price-changes-for-domain-of-ones-own/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/price-changes-for-domain-of-ones-own/#respond Wed, 29 Jun 2022 15:55:57 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=37624 Continue reading "Price Changes for Domain of One’s Own"

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Starting January 1, 2023, Reclaim Hosting will be raising the cost of Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) contracts in an effort to implement additional security improvements and help buffer the growing costs of software licensing and server infrastructure. We have happily absorbed these external cost increases since 2015, when our pricing model for DoOO was last updated. But seven years ago support for DoOO looked a bit different: our scrappy team of three (yes, three people!) offered significantly less in-house support expertise, training and documentation materials, as well as limited community assistance. Over the last year we’ve also been doubling-down on community outreach and regular, targeted events. In fact, starting in 2023 we’re excited to include the following:

  • Continual growth of our in-depth documentation, training materials, open workshop curriculum, as well as “starter pack” resource for new admins
  • Institutional partnerships within our EdTech community.
  • Continued improvements to the DoOO backend interface, including starting development of the Domains API.
  • Increased malware monitoring and more regular scans
  • An elegant alternative to administrator access at the root server level

With the above updates and improvements (which we will continue to outline in future announcements) the cost of Domain of One’s Own will change from $6,000/year to $7,500/year for 500 cPanel accounts. This effectively means that cPanel accounts will be $1.25/month per account instead of the previous $1/month. You can find a full breakdown of cost changes below:

DoOO Cost Table

^Click image to magnify.

Timelines for Price Changes:

New DoOO schools can expect price changes to begin on January 1, 2023. Old pricing will be observed through the end of 2022, and schools will have the option to lock in these costs for subsequent years up front in multi-year contracts.

Existing DoOO schools can expect these price changes to begin on August 1, 2023. Old pricing will be observed through July 31, 2023, and schools will have the option to renew early or lock in these costs for subsequent years up front in multi-year contracts.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

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Launching Instructional Tech https://laurenhanks.com/launching-instructional-tech/ Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:02:58 +0000 https://laurenhanks.com/?p=5316 Last week, Reclaim Hosting reached a big milestone: launching a new Instructional Technology service. Our team has been working on this for months, and you can read my some of my thoughts on what it has meant to embed Instructional Tech into the fabric of Reclaim here. For today’s post, and for the next few weeks, I think it is important that we sit with the “what” and “why” before jumping into the “how.” Don’t get me wrong, “how” we’re delivering Instructional Tech is an essential discussion and one that deserves a moment in the sun, but reserving time to honor “why” we’re doing this, and “what” it is we’re actually doing? That comes first!

This was my thought process when designing out the initial website. I wanted it to feel like an introduction… to break down the “why” and then dive a little deeper into what’s possible.

In One Sentence

The header section makes the overview plain as day: Simply put, this is professional development and intentional community support built specifically with Educational Technologists in mind.

The mission section that comes next may be helpful for our community, but it was equally helpful for our team to write. This practice got us on the same page internally, and allowed us to sit with questions like, Why do we want to do this? What are we committing to? Who is this for? What are the goals?

The Larger Mission

We are committed to helping educational technologists do what they do best.

Reclaim Hosting has been providing edtech infrastructure for higher ed for almost 10 years. Now we want to work more directly with the people on the ground and build a broader professional development community for instructional technologists. These platforms are only as interesting as the people behind them, and it’s our goal to create a structure to help edtechs explore, question, learn, and build the future of teaching and learning together. We want to be a niche support hub and learning community for curious minds and creative tinkerers, whether you have a background in Instructional Design, advanced IT Support, or sit somewhere in between like most Instructional Technologists. Join as we explore what’s possible.

What’s Included

I had a lot of fun during the brainstorming phase while we were putting together the actual service plan. In short, Instructional Tech encompasses a lot of the work that Reclaim Hosting has already been doing (the Reclaim Roadshow, for example) except now at a larger scale: more structure, more consistent events, a wider breadth of learning topics, and a lively community space everywhere in between. Breaking that down, Instructional Tech at Reclaim includes:

  1. Consistent, repeating workshops for Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite projects that you can count on for onboarding and refreshers.
  2. Flex Courses, usually spanning the length of a month, on a varying range of topics like docker containers, open source tools, gravity forms, and more.
  3. “Domains Pen Pals” – you’ll be introduced to folks from other schools with similar goals & interests to strategize and learn alongside each other.

Event Calendar

In the next section I broke down the calendar of events a little further by just barely getting into the “how” territory in order to help new viewers begin to conceptualize what’s possible. Instructional Tech is exciting for us because we’ll have the opportunity to work with key players in the community to help lead workshops and flex courses. Tom Woodward will be leading our Flex Course on Gravity Forms, which I’m particularly stoked about, as well as helping run our workshops on WordPress Multisite throughout the year. My hope is that, over time, we will have a new person headlining the flex courses each month so that we can highlight a diverse group of individuals doing cool stuff.

This section of the site also allowed me to really frame out a space for Reclaim Hosting Events (www.reclaimhosting.com/events) in general, and even play with a new plugin called The Events Calendar. The plugin is super slick and incredibly easy to work with. We have the Pro version so we can embed the calendar elsewhere, add in recurring events for newsletter publications, highlight hybrid events, and more. There’s still a lot of customizing that can be done here, and I’ll be excited to see this space grow over time.

Community

I’m quite excited for the Instructional Tech Discord server, which is being rolled out as a part of this larger service to help build intentional community support. When running workshops, conferences, and in-person training events, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard things like, “If only there was a way to get all DoOO Libraries together to talk about X” or “I’d love to see how other schools are working with SPLOTs” or “How are other WPMS schools using plugins?” In the past we’ve tried to point folks to our community forums as a place for these conversations, but ultimately that space has felt bulky, inflexible, and in some ways too open for strategic, sensitive conversations. Oppositely, the Discord environment has been amazing in past virtual events and has allowed folks to speak more frankly and with more personality. So much so, that as events are ending, we have been have asked to keep Discord up and running for future conversations. Managing a Discord server does require some overhead, so it was never something Reclaim could agree to long term for a past event.

Now, by having a single Discord server for all events and Domains PenPals, as well as a steady stream of blog posts, tweets, and links to various resources, we’re excited to keep this one around for the long haul to use during and between events throughout the year. Anyone will be able to get access to the Discord server to introduce themselves, share ideas & resources, and hangout in future community chats. Folks that are a part of the larger Instructional Tech professional development subscription will then have full access to event & domains penpal channels as well. :) Looking forward to sharing more on this in future posts.

Call to Action & Coming Soon

In the final section of the page, I’ve highlighted our next event (and first in the larger ProfDev subscription) as well as a link to share interest in learning more about what’s possible.

I think this webpage gives a great overview about Instructional Tech at Reclaim Hosting, as well as a look into what’s coming soon. I like that there’s room to grow, and we’ve built in flexibility on the front end to add in more events, training opportunities, and room for community engagement as this grows. Additionally, I also have to take a moment to shout out Bryan Mathers, who has once again nailed it in the art department. The art alone deserves a separate post. :)

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Introducing Instructional Technology at Reclaim Hosting https://bavatuesdays.com/introducing-instructional-technology-at-reclaim-hosting/ Tue, 05 Apr 2022 14:31:41 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=26345 Continue reading ]]> It’s happening! I’ve alluded to the idea that Reclaim Hosting is exploring edtech a couple of months ago, and yesterday we officially announced the launch of our instructional technology offering. Lauren Hanks provides an excellent overview in the following video, which is then followed by the group explaining how we got here, why we’re excited, and what’s to come—a document of a momentous occasion.

So what is Reclaim Edtech? It’s a professional development and support community built specifically with Educational Technologists in mind. We will be rolling out more details and specifics over the course of April and May as we gear up for the first major event which is the Domains 101/201 Workshop on May 24th and 25th. But if you take a look at the Reclaim Hosting Events Calendar you can see we are programming up to a year out with numerous flex course and workshops that are aimed not only at educational technologists working with Domain of One’s Own and WordPress Multisite, but also for those who want to learn more about Gravity Forms, Docker containers, headless web development, and/or open source applications like OBS, Ghost, PeerTube, and Jitsi. And that’s just for starters!

image of tvs with writing "Reclaim Network"

The real gold will be in the Reclaim Networks, a Discord community wherein folks can access the various workshops and courses we run, as well as commune and share the work they are doing and connect around shared interests and beyond. We saw the power of Discord during the OERxDomains21 conference we helped organize last year as well as the subsequent Virtual Domains Workshop in June of 2021. The possibilities of bringing together educational technologists around various explorations of an assortment of technologies is quite exciting, and that was a huge reason we wanted to pursue instructional technology at Reclaim to begin with.

At the same time, one of the things we’re trying to balance is making sure we can sustain the time and energy it will require to manage this offering while also making it accessible. We want to ensure all experts running flex courses and workshops are compensated for their work. At the same time we will be dedicated Reclaim’s staff to not only running sessions, but also planning and programming the calendar as well as managing the community. This all takes time and resources to ensure consistent, reliable professional development, part of why paying for professional development is nothing new in higher ed. And up and until yesterday we’ve been assuming it would predominantly appeal to colleges and universities we currently work with as an additional service at a yearly subscription fee. But as more and more individual consultants and one-off edtechs reach out, we’re thinking through and individual/consultant tier to make this accessible to folks that may not have an edtech group larger than one person or institution willing and able to foot the bill.

Not only does the immediate interest suggest a need, but seeing who is interested highlights we may have to think beyond the institutions we currently support, which is doubly exciting. YEAH!

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Custom Application Installers at Reclaim Hosting https://laurenhanks.com/custom-application-installers-at-reclaim-hosting/ Thu, 20 Jan 2022 14:41:02 +0000 https://laurenhanks.com/?p=5160 I’m excited to announce that starting this month, we will be allowing Web Developers to share their custom, 1-click application installers with the Reclaim Hosting Community. This means that if you have an application in mind that you’d like to make widely accessible to 200+ institutions, you may do so by building out a custom, 1-click installer and submitting it to Reclaim Hosting for review. We’ll still be watching our Feature Requests for improvements and additions, of course, but now anyone who wants to share their application and build alongside the Reclaim team will be able to do so.

You can view our full list of existing 1-click application installers (both in cPanel/Installatron and in Reclaim Cloud), and you can also learn more about our existing custom 1-click installers (and how they differ from Site Templates) by reading this article.

Overview

This has been an internal topic of conversation at Reclaim Hosting since roughly October of last year. The idea of allowing others to contribute to applications available to the Reclaim Hosting community is exciting for me, but the process is quickly muddied when thinking about all the different types of applications out there. Installatron vs. Reclaim Cloud installers… what are the steps? How can developers test the installers in our environment? What if the applications aren’t kept up to date over time? How do we support installers we haven’t built? How do we make sure that what we’re offering is sustainable for the community? All of these questions were considered as I put together the following webpages:

Landing Page

Given there would be different instructions for Installatron and Reclaim Cloud, as well as potential questions about how to submit an application for review and what developers are agreeing to in the process, it was super clear that we needed a landing page that we could point folks to that had all resources available. I needed this page to offer an overview, include stepping stones for resources, highlight our commitment to sustainability, and take submissions. I used an Elementor template for the design, so it was ultimately quite simple to get up and running once it was properly formatted and we had the correct content to fill in.

Hovering over each block shows “Learn more” buttons.

I also like that this page gives me the flexibility to layer in additional “stepping stones” or resources as this project ebbs and flows. One of the first things I’m looking to expand upon will be a Case Study with Learnful Labs, but I will save those details for another post. :)

For the Submission form at the end of the page, I’m actually using a generic Elementor form here. I tested a Gravity Forms embed, and there was nothing particularly wrong with it, but I ultimately liked the look and feel of Elementor’s. The submission form is made up of three parts: Contact Info, Application Info, and Agreement. To help with the Contact & Application info sections, I created a Submission Checklist page. As for the Agreement step, I added in a checkbox with an embedded link to Reclaim Hosting’s new Software Developer Agreement, so anyone who submits an installer must first acknowledge these terms. Here’s what was used:

By checking this box, you are agreeing to the terms outlined in the Reclaim Hosting <u><a href="https://www.reclaimhosting.com/applications/software-developer-agreement/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Software Developer Agreement</a></u>. 
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If you have any questions, please <u><a href="https://support.reclaimhosting.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500007028041-How-to-Contact-Reclaim-Hosting-Support" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">contact Reclaim Hosting</a></u> before proceeding. 

As a small aside, while doing this^, I ended up learning about something called Tabnabbing. Essentially this an exploit that uses the browser’s default behavior with target="_blank" to gain partial access to your page through the window.object API. So basically this just means that when you’re creating hyperlinks that open up in a new tab, you should add rel="noopener noreferrer" to prevent that. The more you know!

Installer Instructions

For each set of installer instructions, I worked with Tim to make sure we were providing an outline of requirements, packaging instructions, and testing information for each environment. Given every application and their required environment(s) will look different, the instructions are fairly open-ended, though pointed towards existing documentation from our providers. For example, this is the quickest way to create a Reclaim Cloud installer, as described from our upstream provider, Jelastic. In terms of testing, Reclaim Hosting is happy to provide access to a Demo cPanel/Installatron server or extended Free Trial access in Reclaim Cloud as necessary.

I chose to use a Tab layout for both sets of instructions in order to simplify the look of each section. Each step is inconsistent in that some have screenshots and they vary in lengths, so placing things in a list format, for instance, would ultimately look choppy and incomplete. Similar to the landing page “stepping stones” I also like that this allows me to add new steps or information with minimal disruption to the page design.

Software Developer Agreement

Incorporating a Software Developer Agreement was a less glamorous, but no less important step for us. In order for protect our community and guarantee that what we’re offering is sustainable long-term, it is crucial that Web Developers are taking ownership of the application installers that they are building. Big shoutout to Chris & Justin Webb for their insight & help with this. Here are the cliff notes:

  1. You (Web Developer) acknowledge that software updates are a continued requirement within an ecosystem that relies upon other products and services. As such, it is expected that you will update and maintain your product on a recurring basis and no less than annually.
  2. Reclaim Hosting reserves the right to periodically review all applications and custom products. Upon review, if vulnerabilities or impacting issues are found that affect (or involve) your application, Reclaim Hosting will notify you of the issue with the expectation you will patch or update your product and submit for review within a timely fashion. Issues are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and in circumstances where vulnerabilities are severe or present risk to the customer or other systems, Reclaim Hosting reserves the right to temporarily remove your product until such time as it has been updated successfully.
  3. Reclaim Hosting works to provide support to all of its customers and to conduct basic triage, troubleshooting and assistance. However, for in-depth (“2nd tier or 3rd tier”) support related to your application, Reclaim Hosting reserves the right to redirect customers directly to you for investigation or remediation of issues.

Next Steps: Submissions & Review

Those interested in building out a custom application installer may reference the Submission Checklist, which provides a full list of what’s needed for a complete submission. Custom Installers that are submitted to Reclaim Hosting will undergo internal review with our Support and Infrastructure Teams, and we’ll be in touch throughout that process to work through any areas of improvement. This will allow us to make sure that what we’re releasing to the community at large will be solid and around for the long haul.

This is an exciting step for Reclaim Hosting, and I can’t wait for what’s to come.

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Building a Community Showcase for Domains and Beyond https://bavatuesdays.com/building-a-community-showcase-for-domains-and-beyond/ Fri, 07 Jan 2022 16:28:46 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=25977 Continue reading ]]> On Wednesday, January 12th from 12-1pm EST, Reclaim’s latest edition of awesome, Taylor Jadin, will be sharing a site template he created in WordPress—something of a SPLOT—that will help folks quickly and easily build a website for showcasing work. It comes complete with a simple submission form for non-logged-in users that all SPLOT admirers have come to know and love. It’s aimed at folks trying to open up the blackbox that is cPanel for their Domains projects, but it’s an idea/technology that can be used for a wide range of use-cases well beyond that.

Below is the form to sign-up, and it is free and open for anyone to attend: https://forms.gle/dkHo8ZzwvQJNHXnC6

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A Follow-up on Costs in the Cloud https://bavatuesdays.com/a-follow-up-on-costs-in-the-cloud/ Tue, 01 Sep 2020 09:50:30 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=24207 Continue reading ]]>

Some new Reclaim Cloud art from Bryan Mathers, isn’t it beautiful?

Yesterday marks the first full month of my being a paying customer in Reclaim Cloud. I wanted to take the occasion to follow-up on my post in July where I started projecting what the costs of hosting on Reclaim Cloud might look like given you only pay for what you use, and that will be variable over time. The uncertainty of variable pricing can be scary, but at the same time once you have a sense of what to expect it starts making a lot more sense. So, below is a look at my total monthly cost for August hosting this blog, ds106.us, my own Jitsi instance (which I turn on and off as needed), Etherpad, a YouTube Downloader app, as well as a number of parked applications I’m experimenting with.

And the verdict is in, I spent $87.42 in August, and that breaks down as follows:

  • bavatuesdays (WordPress): $35.73
  • ds106.us (WordPress): $26.70
  • ds106club (Ubuntu VPS): $5.93
  • bavanotes (Etherpad): $5.77
  • bavameet (Jitsi): $4.23
  • Youtube Downloader: $2.89

These are the apps I regularly used, and that works out to $81.25, the other $6.17 was spent on the Ghost ($3.04) and Discourse instance ($3.04) the former of which I eventually shutdown and archived to a static site. The remaining .09 cents I spent on testing various environments with a few different apps.

The nice thing about the Cloud billing is it gives you insight into exactly how many resources you used and what they cost at the container level and beyond. Above I exploded the view for this blog and you can see the costs are split up given I moved the environment mid-month. The costs are predominantly for the LEMP application server ($31.37) and the rest is for the dedicated IP address ($3) and the CDN I installed ($1.36) brings the total to $35.73. This is about half what I would be paying with Kinsta, which is nice to know, and about $5 more than Digital Ocean, although that did not include a CDN.

The big win for me once Tim added the Edgeport CDN service that Reclaim Cloud is utilizing is that I really had no more reason to pay Cloudflare for their CDN and caching service, effectively saving me $20 per month (actually $40 if you include I also had a pro plan for ds106). So, I am effectively $90 monthly for my web services through Reclaim Cloud, with a fair bit of room to experiment. I could probably shave off $8 or $9 if I started and stopped Etherpad and the Youtube Downloader application. I think this kind of monitoring of usage makes me consider not only what I am spending, but what resources I am using. And this is a bit different then just minding money—I could probably skip the bill and no one would say anything 🙂 —it’s the fact it makes me more mindful of what I can shutdown to save resources—such as Discourse and Ghost—it goes back to the idea of turning off the lights when you are not in the room. Same thing here, and it is what is unique about the Cloud, in shared hosting I spend far less, but at the same time I hog resources with the 15-20 applications I have installed (maybe two of which I am actively using) and never think twice about it.* I’m not sure sustainability is the right word given its environmental connotations, although it might be, but it does make sense in terms of ensuring our shared hosting infrastructure is not overburdened with accounts that demand more resources, such as mine.

Anyway, I guess I am still blogging about this because I’m so used to paying $30-$100 a year to host any and everything I want on a shared hosting server and I am trying to come to terms with a digital life outside the “free” third party trap services is something I have to start accounting for, and as a result budgeting accordingly.

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*At least until Tim gently reminds me other folks are paying for those resources you are burning.

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Reclaim Cloud’s Free Public Beta Now Open https://bavatuesdays.com/reclaim-clouds-free-public-beta-now-open/ Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:58:41 +0000 https://bavatuesdays.com/?p=23874 Continue reading ]]>

I’ve been writing a bit about Reclaim Cloud on this blog over the past month in preparation for this: the launching of the open, public beta for Reclaim Hosting’s new cloud hosting service! It’s really exciting to share this news, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit I’m a bit surprised how quickly everything came together from the point we realized it was possible in late April to rolling it out publicly today.

What is it? Reclaim Cloud is a container-based hosting solution that allows folks to create custom technology stacks in everything from PHP to Ruby to node.js to Go —not to mention the possibility to load and run just about any Docker container freely available on the web. What’s more, we have a growing collection of one-click installers for a wide range of applications.

So, in short, it’s everything we have not been able to provide in terms of hosting a wide variety of technologies and tools beyond the LAMP stack. What’s more, the infrastructure allows the scaling of computing and storage resources seamlessly. A watershed moment for Reclaim and an important move to ensure we can help our community make sense of the ongoing shift in the hosting landscape.

How can you get help? Throughout the free, open beta period this month we’ll be handling all support through our community forums where you’ll find useful guides, focused video tutorials (like those featured above), and the ability to request help via forum topics.

Where do I sign-up? You can read more and sign-up for the free beta period on our website at http://reclaim.cloud

So, reclaim your sense of edtech exploration and jump on the next shuttle to Cloud City!

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