iWeb Communities: Blog

Formerly with Cirque du Soleil, Michel Thivierge is iWeb’s new Director of Human Resources. 

Montreal, Quebec, December 5 2008 – iWeb (TSX.V – IWB), a global provider of Internet hosting services and IT infrastructure, is pleased to announce the arrival of Michel Thivierge as their new Director of Human Resources. 

Having previously held various Human Resource management positions at Cirque du Soleil, Bell Canada, Dessau and MIL Davie, Mr. Thivierge joins iWeb, for whom the management of Human Resources is becoming increasingly important. 

“iWeb has grown from 42 employees in 2006 to more than 130 employees today, and we have nearly 50 new positions to fill by the end of the year, “confirms Michel Thivierge, whose first weeks were devoted to developing a strategic plan for the management of Human Resources. “I am really proud to be joining iWeb at such an important moment in its evolution. The foundations are solid, the original team is still in place and the web hosting industry is experiencing tremendous growth. There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the air, and I am convinced that many here, myself included, are aware that we are participating in a great adventure; we are a part of something special.” 

This sentiment is echoed by iWeb’s President and CEO; “We are delighted to welcome Michel,” said Eric Chouinard, who was recently named the FIQ Personality of the Month for October 2008. “He has tremendous expertise in HR Management, and complements our management team extremely well. “ 

One of the challenges facing the company is to continue its sustained growth while preserving its corporate identity and personality, “iWeb is growing rapidly, but we want to grow without compromising our values.” added Martin Leclair, Co-Founder and President, Products and Technology. 

In addition to seeking the right candidates to fill jobs typically associated to a Montreal technology company such as Programmer, Programmer-Analyst and Customer Service Representative, iWeb is also seeking Data Center Operators, a Financial Analyst, Assemblers, System Administrators, a Research and Development (R&D) Manager, a Director for Managed Services (Managed Hosting), as well as several others; iWeb expects to have most of these positions filled by Spring 2009. 

About iWeb 

iWeb is a worldwide provider of Internet hosting services and IT Infrastructure, and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V : IWB).  With three secure data centers, all in Montreal, iWeb has carved out an enviable position on the international scene with more than 60% of its revenues from abroad. 

Founded in 1996 in Montreal, iWeb has recently completed a $22M financing agreement with investment banking giant Goldman Sachs. iWeb now has over 120 full-time employees providing Dedicated Server hosting, Co-location and Web Hosting services to more than 17 000 customers in 145 countries. More information is available at the investor section of the  company’s website. 

For more information: 

Bernard Dahl 
Director, Communications and Public Relations 
IWeb Group Inc.. 
(514) 286-4242 ext 115 
bdahl@iweb.com 

Philip Tousignant 
Chief Financial Officer 
IWeb Group Inc.. 
(514) 286-4242 Ext 149 
ptousignant@iweb.com

If you are french-speaking, if you are considering publishing in different locales, apart from English, we’ve published an article entitled “Le Web en Français” in the french version of this blog, in the goal of discussing localization/internationalization.

Internationalization and support of different languages should be a question every webmaster or web entrepreneur should ask him/herself. English is seen as the de-facto primary language on the Internet, and we forget other languages which are spoken by more people, or which have even stronger history and background.

There’s now 1 new uplink with Tiscali international Network. The service provider’s network covers the U.K., Europe, North America, and a few Asian countries.

This bring the total capacity of iWeb’s network at 43Gbps, up from the 42Gbps announced 2 weeks ago. iWeb is also planning to install in the near future 2 new 10Gbps Cogent links.

You can checkout the new network graphs at iWeb’s main website.

After finding a good web hosting provider, one of your immediate next steps should be writing detailed procedures on how to handle server issues, cope with growth in traffic, website software development, or even cases like attacks from hackers. 

By all means, the following guide is not meant to be definitive, and should be only used as a template, and as such it must be adapted to your special needs and server configuration. 

Follow this step-by-step guide if you find problems while trying to access your servers. As you may discover, in most cases you’ll find solutions within the first steps, and probably won’t have to go up to the last step.

1. Find the kind of error returned by the website. If it’s a 404 error page, it means the website is unavailable. If it’s a 500 page, it’s a problem with your program failing to start and serve the page. Software like Wordpress or drupal will show you on the page if the mysql database is misconfigured. You can see a list of possible errors here, with cues on what might be the problem.
2. Check if the website is available elsewhere if the website is unavailable (404 error). Try for instance with just-ping or host-tracker. These services will ping and try to access your website from different locations in the world. For instance, just-ping will show the percentage of lost packets. A low % might mean that your web server is experiencing massive traffic from websites like digg, or might be the victim of DDOS attack (I hope not so).
3. Try to Disable Dynamic Sections or cache the heavy sections of your website, if the website is still available but is experiencing high load times, frequent time-outs, or uneven performance. If it goes better, it means you have outgrown your server and might need additional servers.
4. Check if the DNS is properly configured and if there’s any potential problems. If you have a server with a dedicated IP, try to access the server by using the IP address, by typing it in your browser bar. One frequent cause of problems is outdated domain names, in the case where webmasters forgot to renew it. Solution: keep a calendar with alerts 7 days before the domain expires.
5. Find if It’s really a problem with iWeb or with a third-party service you are using. If you’re using an external saas service which manage your emails, the problem might be with your provider and not with iWeb. In this case, you should contact them. If it’s a software problem, go to the user group; you can also enquire for help in the iWeb community forum.
6. Check the system status page in the iWeb blog. Any incident will be posted there, as well as scheduled maintenance. If you find a warning relevant to a product you are using, click for details to get the history and also to read comments both by other customers or by the iWeb team.
7. Assess if you can solve yourself the problem, before filing a ticket in the customer hub. If you have a dedicated server, a remote reboot is done in a few minutes. Whereas, with a ticket support, you’ll have to wait until customer support picks up the ticket, then wait for them to understand & find a fix, then go back to you, which might take a few hours to finish. In the same manner, if it’s a DNS issue, you can fix a problem yourself in the Panelbox panel quickly instead of filing a ticket.
8. File a ticket in the customer hub. Before you do so, gather these: passwords, your account ID, and any other relevant information such as the user and port number accessible for ssh. 
9. Be descriptive in your ticket. Writing “It’s urgent” or “I am losing business!!” or “It’s not working!” in bold or capital letters doesn’t actually help the customer support team finding a solution to your problem. Tell them about the problem and steps to reproduce the problem. Helpful description include error logs from web servers, list of unavailable services, and instructions on how to access your server.