Lauren Hanks – 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 Lauren Hanks – 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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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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Removing Advanced CloudLinux Apps in cPanel https://www.reclaimhosting.com/removing-advanced-cloudlinux-apps-in-cpanel/ https://www.reclaimhosting.com/removing-advanced-cloudlinux-apps-in-cpanel/#respond Tue, 07 Dec 2021 18:35:50 +0000 https://www.reclaimhosting.com/?p=36112 Continue reading "Removing Advanced CloudLinux Apps in cPanel"

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Starting in January 2022, Reclaim Hosting is removing support for advanced CloudLinux applications in cPanel dashboards, as well as removing the ability to install these applications. Going forward, all advanced applications like Ruby, Python and Node.js should be managed in Reclaim Cloud.

You might be impacted by this change if you are currently using one of these advanced applications under the Software Section of your cPanel account. If you are interested in keeping these advanced applications, we strongly recommend they be moved to Reclaim Cloud. For those who aren’t familiar with Reclaim Cloud and would like a chance to look around prior to migrating, you can sign up for a free trial account with your .edu email address. (If you don’t have a .edu email, no problem, just let us know!) We also have a collection of Reclaim Cloud guides, including a Getting Started in Reclaim Cloud article that covers the basics.

Our team is in the process of reaching out directly to folks that are using Python, Ruby, and Node.js, both in Shared Hosting and Domain of One’s Own. If you are not inclined to move to a Reclaim Cloud environment, please note that your existing applications will no longer be compatible in Shared Hosting cPanels starting January 17, 2022. If you are a Domain of One’s Own school and would like keep CloudLinux installed on your server, please let us know so it is not automatically removed on 1/17/22.

Moving these advanced tools to Reclaim Cloud will let us focus our support and resources on environments where they are better suited to live. Please reach out to Reclaim Hosting Support if you have any questions, and do let us know how we can best support you and your work when this transition begins in January.

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Plugin Review: Ultimate Dashboard https://labrumfield.com/plugin-review-ultimate-dashboard/ Thu, 30 Jul 2020 19:03:28 +0000 https://labrumfield.com/?p=4701 Read More »Plugin Review: Ultimate Dashboard]]> Ok, folks- I’m pretty jazzed about a new plugin that I came across just this afternoon that I really think could change the game for #DoOO SPLOT/Site Template Builders and WordPress Multisite Administrators. My research for something like this began from an email I received from Coventry University asking about the extent that we could generate “getting started” language within new sub-sites of a WordPress Multisite. Coventry Admins were looking for ways in which they could guide beginner users, encourage them to build an “About Me” page as part of a larger Portfolio, and simply offer additional resources as users begin to settle into their new site.

The plugin I found is called Ultimate Dashboard and, as the title suggests, it allows you to customize and simplify your WordPress dashboard. There’s a free and a pro version, and quite a bit can be done with the free version. Check it out:

What I first see when installing WordPress-

What I see after playing with Ultimate Dashboard for a few minutes-

^ To Summarize the above, I was able to:

  • Remove the “Screen Options” and “Help” tabs from top right
  • Add a StateU Support admin page to the left dashboard menu bar and order it in the list
  • Completely remove existing WP Dashboard widgets
  • Create my own WP Dashboard widgets and order them
  • Alter the footer language

I’ll explain the steps I took below, but I was shocked with how simple and intuitive it was. Also, its pretty cool that you’re able to do so much with the free version alone.


How to Remove “Screen Options” and “Help” Tabs

Go to Ultimate Dashboard > Settings and check Remove Help Tab and Remove Screen Options Tab. Done. (On this page I also have the option to rename the Dashboard to something else, but I decided to keep it the same since any and all WordPress documentation will refer to it as a Dashboard.


Add a StateU Support admin page

Go to Ultimate Dashboard > Admin Pages and click Add New. Next you can begin adding in your content like any other WordPress post or page. I’m able to embed videos, add in images, headers, etc. I also set this as a Top Level Menu item, but it can be added as a submenu item to any parent menu item as well. Finally, I assigned it the #2 order so it would show up right underneath the Dashboard in the sidebar. I was able to customize the menu icon as well:


Removing Existing WordPress Dashboard Widgets

Go to Ultimate Dashboard > Settings and check All next to Remove All Widgets. The Pro version of this plugin allows you to easily remove third party plugin widgets (things like Elementor, Google Analytics, WooCommerce, etc) as well. However to work around this I quickly reenabled the ‘Screen Options’ tab, unchecked third party widgets there, and disabled the Screen Options tab again. Ha!


Creating my own Dashboard Widgets

Here’s where it really started getting fun. Ultimate Dashboard allows you to create three different types of Dashboard widgets with the free version: Text, Icon, and HTML. I tested all 3 and they’re beautiful!

Text Widget

Go to Ultimate Dashboard > Add New. Give your Widget a title, choose the Text Widget Type, add in your content and click Update. At the bottom you also have the option to set a fixed height, which may be recommended if you’ve got quite a bit of text.

Icon Widget

Go to Ultimate Dashboard > Add New. Give your Widget a title, choose the Icon Widget Type, and select the icon that you want to use. From there you can add in extra text that will fade in when you hover your mouse over the top right-hand question mark. The bottom field allows you to add a clickthrough URL for the widget. In this case I used a relative WordPress URL that points the user back to their individual ‘Add New Page’ section of the dashboard. (So cool!) Finally, click Update.

On my dashboard I also created another Icon Widget with an external link. So for example if you’ve got a class site or suite of resources that live outside of the WordPress instance that you want to point folks to, this works great.

HTML Widget

The final widget type works well if you quickly want to embed something without messing with formatting. Go to Ultimate Dashboard > Add New. Give your Widget a title, choose the HTML Widget Type, and paste in your HTML code:

The Pro version of this plugin has actual Video and Contact form widget types, but doing this through HTML is another great workaround.


Altering the footer language

Lastly, the Ultimate Dashboard plugin allows you to alter footer language in the dashboard from something like this:

…to this:

To do this, all you’ll need to do is go to Ultimate Dashboard > White Label and add in your own content to the Footer and Version Text fields.

The Pro version of the plugin way more customization options to allow you to brand the dashboard even further, which may be worth it for a large WordPress Multisite. But for admins that are looking to simplify the WordPress dashboard or offer guidance to new users in a Site Template, the free version may be all you need.


If anyone ends up using this plugin, please let me know! I’d be curious to see how you adopt it for your community.

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Finding my footing in the Cloud https://labrumfield.com/finding-my-footing-in-the-cloud/ Fri, 17 Jul 2020 20:25:23 +0000 https://labrumfield.com/?p=4687 Read More »Finding my footing in the Cloud]]> With the steady introduction and roll out of Reclaim Cloud, I’ve really just scraped the surface of the technical components and have spent more of my time focusing on how these new cloud offerings fit in with our existing suite of Reclaim Hosting products. There are quite a few differences between Reclaim Cloud and cPanel, but there are also some similarities, too. So while it may be helpful for some to ‘forget everything you thought you knew about hosting’ in order to get into this new Dockerized mindset, I find myself falling back on compare/contrast visuals and old gold hosting metaphors to make sense of it all. So for those of you who may be struggling to understand where Reclaim Cloud fits in, keep on reading!

Here’s a running list of the differences between cPanel and Jelastic PaaS (i.e. Reclaim Cloud) that have stuck out to me so far:

The other day the Sales team (i.e. Katie, Jim, and myself) had a brainstorming meeting discuss how we can talk about Reclaim Cloud has it relates to our other products. Aside from the obvious reasons it will be important to know the Cloud Hosting model inside and out, it will also be crucial to understand it in relation to what we currently offer and support. The fact that I can signup for a Shared Hosting cPanel account at Reclaim and install WordPress and Omeka, and then simultaneously head over to Reclaim Cloud and install the exact same applications will raise the question, “when would I use one over the other?” And by extension, “who is Reclaim Cloud for?”

I’m copying a piece of the Reclaim Cloud about page that has stuck with me:

The term “cloud” can get bandied about when it comes to the internet, but at its core Cloud Computing was inline with the vision that resources could scale seamlessly based on usage rather than some perceived notion of a high-water mark of usage. Like other utilities such as water, electricity, and gas, computing power would be a resource that you would pay for based on actual usage rather than projects. 

https://reclaim.cloud/about/

This got me thinking about the well-loved (or not-so-loved, lol) House metaphor. If we think of our web presence or website as our house, in which all rooms are a different page of your site, and your street address and directions to your house are essentially DNS records, the world of web hosting very quickly starts to take shape. For me, Reclaim Cloud now fits into this particular metaphor as a lightbulb, or more broadly, as my utilities. When I go to the store and buy a pack of lightbulbs, I do my research beforehand. I figure out which lightbulb is going to last the longest, which lightbulb is going to be the most energy-efficient, and which lightbulb is going to put out the best type of light based on my needs. I may even be willing to spend a little more money up front to make sure I check these boxes. Then when I come home, I don’t plan to install my lightbulbs, turn on all the lights, and then leave the house. I will turn these lights on and off as I walk into each room to conserve energy.

That is the main mindset shift between Reclaim Cloud and Shared cPanel Hosting. My current cPanel account has quite a few WP installs, some of which I use frequently and others I just spun up one day to test and then left there. In cPanel, there’s no additional cost to me to turn on all my lights and then leave the house. cPanel Shared Hosting is a fixed cost of 30 – 100 bucks a year, and I know that no matter what, that’s all I’ll owe at the end of the day. But if I’ve got a lot of big projects that require a lot of energy (i.e. resources), or if I want to play around with apps that aren’t compatible with cPanel’s infrastructure, I’ll begin to hit limits.

At Reclaim Cloud, I’m no longer confined to a single software stack. (In my last post I wrote in depth about creating new environments.) I can play around with almost any application out there, and I can temporarily turn them on and off as I see fit. Reclaim Cloud isn’t a fixed cost, but I’ll only pay for the exact resources that I use. This will keep me engaged with my web presence, constantly grooming it and evaluating what I’m using and what is a priority to me. And for big WordPress Multisite that’s sitting on a 32GB server simply due to the infrequent moments they have busy traffic day, Reclaim Cloud could be a cost saver since resources will automatically scale up and down with the traffic. This also means those pesky ‘Resource Limit Reached‘ errors in cPanel are no more!

I recently sat down with Tim and Jim to get their thoughts on all of this, and we ended up chatting for over an hour for Reclaim Today’s latest episode, 018: Cloud Q&A. Worth a listen if this conversation is of interest to you!

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Reclaim Cloud: Setting up an Environment & Topology Wizard Overview https://labrumfield.com/reclaim-cloud-setting-up-an-environment-topology-wizard-overview/ Mon, 08 Jun 2020 23:04:36 +0000 https://labrumfield.com/?p=4658 Read More »Reclaim Cloud: Setting up an Environment & Topology Wizard Overview]]>

June’s Intentional Learning topic is Reclaim Cloud / Jelastic. This is my first time writing about Reclaim Cloud here so for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Reclaim Cloud is a new service offered by Reclaim Hosting and scheduled to launch at the end of the summer. I’m completely new to cloud-native container-based hosting and there’s quite a bit to unpack in this new environment, so I plan to record some of my findings here. At times that may look like unorganized note-taking or word vomit, but I suppose its all in the name of #learning! My goal in all of this is to be able to translate and communicate the super powerful possibilities of Reclaim Cloud to a non-developer. (Hi, hello, former English major here.) And the first step to getting to that point is to fully understand it myself. I’m excited for you to join me on this journey, and in the meantime if you’re interested in learning more about Reclaim Cloud, I encourage you to read the following:

  1. Tim Owens, The Evolution of the Cloud
  2. Jim Groom, bava in the cloud with clusters

I was a little overwhelmed the first time I logged into the dashboard for Reclaim Cloud, so before really playing around with the available applications, I set out to make the dashboard feel less scary. This meant reading through documentation, creating test environments over and over again, and taking notes like I was back in college. But! The good news is I now feel like I have a solid (read: slightly better) grasp how navigate through Topology Wizard. Here’s some new language I’m now using:

Ordered from Smallest to Biggest
  • Cloudlet: Jelastic’s unit of measurement based on usage for pricing on an hourly basis; 128MB RAM & 400MHz CPU
    • Reserved Cloudlets: reserved in advance; always charged; can incur discounts when increased
    • Dynamic Cloudlets: your resource ‘ceiling’; only pay for what you use
  • Container (node): isolated virtualized instance; could be anything from an app server to a database to a load balancer; each container can be scaled vertically & horizontally
    • Vertical Scaling: paying only for the RAM & CPU that you use; your resources change dynamically according to your current demands.
    • Horizontal Scaling: automatically changes the # of containers within a layer based on incoming load; you can set custom conditions called “tunable triggers” for adding/removing containers as needed
  • Layer (node group): set of similar containers in a given environment; designed to perform different actions at once
  • Environment: interconnected container layers running application services; can be stopped, started, cloned, migrated, shared
  • Application: combination of environments for running a project. // note: a simple application will likely only need 1 environment to run properly.
  • Host: physical server or big virtual machines sliced into isolated containers
  • Environment Region: set of hosts orchestrated within a single isolated network; one type of hardware
  • Jelastic Platform: Group of environment regions where each one can be physically located in a different data center
Reclaim Cloud’s Topology Wizard

Ok, so there’s two main ways to ‘install’ or ‘set up’ a tool/application/etc. on Reclaim Cloud. The first is by using the one-click installers in the Marketplace (comparable to cPanel’s Installatron & pretty self-explanatory). The second is to create an environment manually using the Topology Wizard shown above. That’s what I’ve spent the majority of my time wrapping my head around so far.

The recommended order for setting up an environment:

  1. Choose Programming Language or Deployment Solution
  2. Configure Topology (layers structure)
  3. Configure Nodes resources & specific settings
  4. Review/Confirm/Create

1. Choosing Programming Language / Deployment Solution

From what I’ve gathered, choosing a programming language on Reclaim Cloud means to choose a Certified Container. These software stack versions are configured, updated and patched by Jelastic. Your options are Java, PHP, Ruby, Node.Js or Python.

The alternative option (i.e. the Docker tab) would be to choose a Jelastic System Container. This is the oldest container type; it is an operating system solution that behave like a standalone system, meaning it doesn’t require specialized software or custom images.

2. Configuring Topology

Configuring Topology comes next. You can choose from the following:

  • Load Balancers: stacks that operate as an entry point for the environment to distribute incoming requests and even the load across other containers
  • Application Servers: runs the application
  • Databases: database solutions to storage and manage data
  • Cache: caching system for speeding up applications by alleviating database load
  • Shared Storage: dedicated storage node
  • Elastic VPS: Virtual Private server on top of CentOS, Ubuntu or Debian
  • Build Node: a build automation tool for Java projects
  • Extra/Other: any of the tools mentioned above

Once that’s selected to preference, choose your method for SSL. You can 1) use the built-in SSL method; 2) upload your own SSL cert; 3) Install try Let’s Encrypt SSL Add-on afterwards in Marketplace.

3. Configuring Nodes Resources & Specifics

After setting topology structure, you can then adjust each particular layer by:

  1. toggling on/off
  2. configure vertical scaling (i.e. set reserved & dynamic cloudlets)
  3. configure horizontal scaling (i.e. define # of nodes within each layer; similar reserved/dynamic concept; choose scaling mode)
    • Stateful scaling mode- sub-sequential creation of new nodes; configuration settings are copied over from master container
    • Stateless scaling mode- simultaneous creation of nodes from the base image template
    • Stateless is faster because nodes are created at the same time, but configurations aren’t copied over. Therefore the stateful scaling mode is usually recommended. Also noticed that when you switch between different containers, the scaling mode changes by default. So unless you really know what you’re doing, I would think that the default mode is best.
  4. Configure additional settings (different options will show up depending on what programming language/ container you’ve selected. This might look like: Auto Clustering, Disk Limit, Restart Delay, High Availability, Public IPv4/IPv6
    • High Availability: due to DNS Round Robin load balancing across multiple data centers; configures 2 application clusters with the same content at different data centers so in case 1 data center goes offline, all incoming requests will be redirected to another region; binds multiple IPs to a single domain name
  5. Additional buttons for advanced configuration: variables, links, volumes, ports, command/entry point management

4. Reviewing and Confirming Environment Creation

After the configurations are done, you can review allocated resources and estimated costs for the environment you want to create. Reserved and Dynamic (or scaling limit) cloudlets are available for review.

As I begin to understand the environment wizard, I really begin to appreciate just how slick it is! I love that it color coordinates the reserved cloudlets based on the container they’re coming from. That was something I missed during my first glance.

You can also change the estimated cost from hourly to daily and monthly to get a estimated cost. So even if you hit your ceiling, you know exactly what to budget.

Final piece: create a subdomain name for your new environment and click ‘create’. Supposedly you can point and map Top Level Domains to the environment, but I’ll save that for another post once I figure it out. :)

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Creating a Low Highlight behind Links https://labrumfield.com/creating-low-highlight-behind-links/ Fri, 08 May 2020 01:44:25 +0000 https://labrumfield.com/?p=4589 Read More »Creating a Low Highlight behind Links]]> So this post came about because I was fidgeting with different WordPress themes and decided I wanted to set out and learn how to change the way my post links were appearing. I came across a theme that was highlighting the lower half of text and which looked kinda cool in my opinion. Here’s an example of it working on my personal site:

This quest led me to discover two new CSS functions: Linear Gradients and Transitions. I’m excited to now have these under my tool belt! I’ve never had any formal training for CSS, so this trial & error thing is how I’ve been learning. :)


Linear Gradients

Now I had previously known that using background-color would highlight the entire text, but that wasn’t what I was after. Apparently, if you want to cut the highlight in half, you have to use what’s called a linear-gradient. It works something like this:

linear-gradient(angle, color-stop, color-stop)

I had to do a little reading to wrap my head around the ‘color-stop’ idea, but I found this article helpful if you care to read further. But to break it down, the angle is referring to the angle of the color line. This could be horizontal (my scenario) but it can also be vertical, at a 45° angle, or simply not specified. The next two sections, color-stop, color-stop are basically what’s used to customize the color gradient. You can specify using either length or percentage, and in my case we’ll want to use the latter.

p a {
background: linear-gradient(180deg, rgba(255,255,255,0) 65%, #E6DFE4 65%);
}

So this is what I’m using. I only want these changes to effect the links (a) in the main paragraph text (p). The background of the links (i.e. the highlight) will be a 180° angle (i.e. horizontal). In the second portion, I’m specifying that a little over the top half of the links will be transparent, while the bottom half will be a nice shade of pink. I encourage you to play around with the percentages so you can get a sense for how they work. I could have done 50%-50%, but I wanted the highlight to fall a little below the halfway mark so you could still read the text.

Incorporating a Hover Action

This next piece is pretty simple. Now that I’ve got the links where I want them, I wanted the highlight to completely fill the text when I hover over the link with my mouse. Like so:

This was done by using the background-color property that I mentioned above. Here’s what I used:

p a:hover {
	background-color: #E6DFE4;
}

Easy peasy, right? It’s just basically removing the linear gradient and doing a full blown highlight when I hover over the link. The only issue that I noticed, and it’s super picky, but it highlighted too quickly. Lol, I wish I wasn’t serious, but this led to my next discovery…

Adding a Transition

In reading this guide, I learned that transition properties allow you to change values over a specified duration rather than having them occur immediately. Just what I was looking for. Transition properties take the following form:

transition: [transition-property] [transition-duration] [transition-timing-function] [transition-delay];

For me, this translates to the following:

transition: all 0.8s ease;

I’ve only got one transition, but I’m calling all transition properties to keep it simple. I want the effect to take place over 0.8s and I want it to happen with ease! You can choose from a handful of predefined transition-timing-funtions like ease-in or step-start and I’ll link to them here. Finally, I don’t want to delay the animation so I left the final transition-delay out.

Now when I hover over links with my mouse, it just sort of fades in to a full highlight. *chef’s kiss*

The Final Product

p a {
	text-decoration: none !important;
	background: linear-gradient(180deg, rgba(255,255,255,0) 65%, #E6DFE4 65%);
}

p a:hover {
	background-color: #E6DFE4;
	transition: all 0.8s ease;
}

^I added one last line to the top which is essentially removing any previous text-decoration defined by my theme. Check out the GIF below to view this in action:

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