Our upstream providers Umbrella will be moving all domain names into a new registration and management system. They are being forced to do this with urgency due to performance issues with the current system as a result of it's age, and the underlying software no longer being supported. The new system is built around the Plesk control panel and is very different. It will initially lack some of the functionality of the old system while things are moved and setup. Clients with integrated web and email hosting on this Auckland hosting platform will also be moved by our upstream provider into this system. This will all occur before the end of this month. Please bear with us while these updates occur. We will update this page when we learn more.

 Our upstream providers of our hosting server have announced that they are in the process of upgrading their fleet of servers both from a hardware standpoint, as well as software.  They are doing this in anticipation of the November 2020 Centos 6 end of life.  Please make sure to also always maintain backups of all of your data stored on the server,  to ensure safe keeping.  Our upstream providers do their best to protect it, but it's always a wise decision to have your own. As per our terms of Service, the client is required to backup the data you store on the hosting servers. This includes data such as your website files and databases and email data. In the event of data loss, clients must be in the position to restore their data from their own backups. CPanel has some built in tools that make backing up easier.  As well as regularly downloading and backing up your data from the hosting server and storing it locally,  there are also some third party ...

Due to the  declaration of a State of Emergency in New Zealand over the COVID-19 virus, all New Zealand businesses have had to make some changes. As we are a solely online business, support will largely operate as normal. However we will no longer be able to accept payments by cheque as, traveling to banks to deposit cheques is not considered essential.  Therefore all payments need to be made via Direct Credit / Automatic payment via online banking. Most clients already pay this way anyway. Payment details can be viewed at  http://www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/payment.php  . If you have sent us a cheque in the last few weeks and we haven’t received it with the cheque not being cashed, please email us or make the payment via direct credit as per  the instructions in the invoice or at  http://www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/payment.php We hope all our clients remain safe through this time.

There are a small number of clients who have very old websites hosted on the servers. Some are nearly 20 years old, but many are 10+ years old.  Some use Content management systems that are very old and use very old versions of PHP and MySQL.  Clients are reminded that they are required to keep their websites up to date with the latest versions of software and scripts to prevent the website being exploited. Most CMSs can be updated over time to the newest version via the CMS developers website, and these usually have the latest security patches.  When websites get old and aren't regularly updated they also may become incompatible with the servers software and may malfunction. They also can become a security risk and open to being hacked or abused.  Our upstream providers will be phasing out versions of PHP 5 and older and this will happen without further notice, as they are end of life and no longer receive security updates. They regularly update the server software ...

This is just a note that we have updated out postal details on our website, and our new postal address is as follows: Lounge Network PO Box 47 Greytown, 5742 Wellington Region New Zealand  If you are sending us cheques, please make sure you send them to this new PO Box. If you have recently sent a cheque to our old postal address, it should have been redirected to us. However if it was delayed in the mail, or you sent it more recently, then it maybe returned to you. So when resending, please make sure you send it to our new postal address. We would also recommend paying by Direct Credit instead of Cheque, as Cheques are on the way out, and they can get lost in the mail or get delayed. 

Our upstream providers have been notified about some major vulnerabilities with CPanel's current version of EXIM and it can lead to exploitation for crypto attacks. As a result, they have since the 6th of June been patching all of the servers. All  shared servers are now protected.  We want to provide you with information regarding an Exim exploit that NIST has posted about today: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-10149 This Exim exploit could affect any servers running cPanel & WHM versions below our latest LTS version which, as of this email is, v78.0.27. For more information about this Exim exploit, please see the link above.

Our office will be closed for Wellington Anniversary day. Any support emails during this period will therefore take longer to reply to. As always our servers will be monitored 24/7 by the datacentre techs, and should any issues occur, they will be dealt with as soon as possible. Please note that our office is closed, we will not update any of our network status pages during this period. however that won't mean that issues that may occur, won't be getting addressed. If you need urgent afterhours support, you can use our form. This will be charged out as per our after hour charges. 

 We have a small number of clients who are still hosted on the old Windows hosting platform, which has now reached the end of its life.  This platform is no longer supported by Microsoft and they no longer release security patches for it. Websites on this platform will therefore be migrated by our upstream providers to a new windows platform on the 12 December 2018, which will mean websites will be running on the latest windows server software.  Please note that if your website is old and/or using code that is not supported by the latest windows server software, then it may have compatibility issues running under the latest windows software.  In that case clients may need to their website developer to update their website, so it continues to work on new versions of the server software. Most clients will have kept their websites code up to date and current and, so most websites should not be affected by this server migration. Please note that this server migration is ...

As you may have heard in the NZ media, Vodafone New Zealand is closing down it's NZ Domain Registration, Web Hosting and Email hosting services. Vodafone will need all of it's customers to move their domain, web and email hosting services before 28th February 2019. If you are a Vodafone customer and are in this situation, the Lounge Network can help you with your future Domain Registration and Web Hosting needs. According to the Vodafone website at https://www.vodafone.co.nz/broadband/domains-and-hosting/ , this will affect NZ Domain and NZ Web Hosting and Email services, and they are suggesting their customers move to a specialist web hosting provider like us before the 28th February 2019. These are all the services affected: Domain name registration Email hosting Web hosting Domain name hosting (DNS Hosting) The good thing is that we can host all of these services on our networks. The Lounge Network have been providing NZ Domain Name and Web hosting services to New Zealanders...

Rolling Update Work Window starting from the 12 August 2017 Scope of Work:   CPanel has introduced a new backup system which is going to replace it's legacy backup system.  At some point in the near future, CPanel will no longer support their legacy backup system.  In an effort to stay ahead of this, our upstream providers we will be converting the backups from the legacy system to the new backup system on a few servers every day.  They don't anticipate any loss of backups, but it's always advisable as per our terms of service to retain your own backups as well.  Our upstream providers have tested and verified the upgrade and don't expect any issues.     The new Backup system now functions with a new user interface (UI) and having the following features:   The new Backup system also now supports multiple incremental backups.   Retention behavior - When a complete backup finishes, the system deletes the oldest backup. When the system backup p...