Hosting your Internet resources for EVE Online can be a challenging endeavor. You can go the route I have gone, host with a standard web hosting company and do all the work yourself or you could use a service geared towards your needs.
If you are looking for a EVE specific blogging hosting community, you head to over to Podlogs (http://www.podlogs.com) with their extensive selection of EVE based WordPress themes and blogging tools.
If however, you are looking for more than a blog hosting solution, a hosting resource for your in game organization to have forums, a killboard and voice communications, you have many choices.
LoneTrek Hosting is one of those many quality providers that services the EVE Online gaming community. With continued success as a service provider,t hey are engaging in some changes to enhance their service offerings and expand their business operations.
Below is a copy of the announcement that is being sent to their customers outlining those changes. I have to say, this looks interesting.
Dear <client>,
I started Lonetrek four months ago with the goal to provide fast, powerful web and voice hosting solutions to the players of EVE Online at an affordable price. I am happy to say that I believe that I have succeeded in this goal. We are providing some of the highest quality services to the EVE Community, at some of the most cost effective prices out there.
I sit here looking the future of Lonetrek and the possible courses that it can take. It can blossom into a true business, remain a on the side hobby, or flutter and Die. I want to take this into a new realm, develop this into a real business, and do everything in my power to keep it from dying. This announcement is the first step towards that goal.
Currently we offer 8 web hosting packages and 16 voice hosting packages some available for ISK and some for USD. Originally the idea for offering USD packages was to help pay the RL costs of hosting the ISK packages, and up until recently it has done its job. But in order to step further towards that goal some changes are about to be made, changes that I feel are necessary. We are completely rewriting our web and voice hosting packages and the associated features. We are also rewriting the role that ISK plays in our billing model. But more on that later…
Announcing Lonetrekhosting.com
We are moving URLs, the old lonetrek.ws URL will continue to be valid for the month of February, after which it will just redirect visitors to lonetrekhosting.com. You might be wondering why we are changing URLs. It’s a long story, but the TL’DR version is that the old URL was created with our old name in mind(Lonetrek Web Services) hence the .ws, it just seemed to fit. But recently we have had problems with payment gateways not trusting our site because of that .ws domain url. So we are taking this new initiative as an opportunity to move to a new common domain url. So effective Febuary 1st our new URL, www.lonetrekhosting.com will be activated as our new domain.
Service Changes
We are completely rewriting our hosting packages and services. Our current web hosting packages are being split, and expanded. Our basic shared hosting packages are being converted into what we are calling “Grid Hosting” packages, and our semi-dedicated packages are being converted into what we are calling “Node Hosting”. We will also be expanding in the coming months to provide fully dedicated servers, as well as offering the Plesk control panel as an alternative to cPanel. As part of the re-vamping the following features will included with ALL packages:
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Unlimited Emails
- Unlimited MySQL
- Unlimited Websites(add-on domains)
If you want to get a sneak peak at our new packages you can visit the new website located at http://www.lonetrekhosting.com(note: the packages will not be available until on/around Feb 1st)
ISK Service Changes
We are also completely changing how ISK is used around here. Currently we offer 4 ISK Web Hosting packages, and 8 ISK Voice Packages. This is about to dramatically change, for the better. We will continue to offer our ISK Web Hosting packages, with a few changes to the packages. The big change is in the voice department. As you may be aware, the cost of running voice operations is quite high, the bandwidth and CPU needed is expensive. So it is a very large burden to offer these packages for ISK only. Which is why a change is needed, and happening. We will continue to offer 5 slot “Trial” voice hosting for the low cost of 10 Million ISK per month. 10 Slots and over will require a 1 time “setup fee” of 4.99$ to help go towards the cost of providing an ISK service. I realize that to most this is a deal breaker, but we also have a work around. IF you have a real currency Web Hosting account through us we will waive the 5$ Fee, effectively making your voice server ISK only. This of course means that our ISK voice prices will be changing to reflect the new 5$ fee. Meaning even lower Voice for ISK prices.
So you must be wondering if you already have ISK voice account “what will happen to us”. Well, we don’t believe in changing the deal after the order has been made, so your account will remain active until your next due date(if you pay monthly, march 1st). After that point if you want to continue hosting voice for ISK you will be required to pony up the 4.99 or purchase a web package of ours.
The new URL for our EVE/ISK Services will be http://eve.lonetrekhosting.com(not currently active yet)
Introducing the “ISK Discount”
When we originally launched we had an ISK discount, but it got lost in time. But we are bringing it back, and it should be a popular thing, here is why. For a yearly ISK Fee you can reduce your real currency bill by 25, 50 or even 75%! Below are the available “Discounts” and the associated ISK cost to you:
- Basic Discount: 50 Million ISK per year – Get 25% off
- Extended Discount: 100 Million ISK per year – Get 50% off
- Ludicrous Discount: 200 Million ISK per year – Get 75% off
How the process will work is you will sign up for the ISK discount, pay your ISK and then you will be given a special code that gets you the % off your bill. I should clarify, this is not a onetime discount, this is a discount on most real currency Lonetrek service you order for the duration of the year in which you paid.
For example, If I paid the 200 Million for the Ludicrous discount, I could get the Grid Power package(Unlimited Everything) for a mere 2.50$ a month, or a 10 slot Ventrilo server for the ridiculous price of .88cents a month!
We are very excited about this discount, and we hope that you choose to take advantage of it. It should also be noted that the discount will only work on the new packages/plans, so if you wanted to take advantage of it, you would be required to upgrade your service to one of the new plans.
Welcome Installatron
As most of you already know we currently offer Fantastico Deluxe as our Auto Installer of choice. This is about to change. Fantastico is a great package, but it is not updated as quickly as one would like. Which can lead to security issues. So we have decided to start using Installatron as our new Auto Installer, Installatron offers the same great software packages, even some new ones, but the key is that they are updated more often and the UI is much prettier(in our opinion). We will continue to provide Fantastico on our servers, but we will recommend using Installatron when installing software into your web space.
Server Changes
You received an email earlier this week about server changes. Well now let me explain how cool this upgrade really is. Not only have we upgraded servers, but we have implemented a redundant DNS system. We now have DNS servers in Seattle, WA(NS1) and Washington DC(NS2) and will soon be expanding to have DNS in Dallas, TX(NS3) and Chicago, IL(NS4). This means that your should one of our DNS servers fail, or is unreachable you will have 4 separate locations in different parts of the US to provide visitors access to your site.
Previously all DNS was located on the same server that your site is hosted on, which works, but doesn’t help you if something goes wrong. This new DNS system will also allow us to transfer accounts between servers without needing to update your nameservers, meaning no 24-48 hour wait, changes will be almost instant. Meaning upgrades can and will go a lot smoother when it requires a server relocation.
We are also going to be running two servers. The new server “New Eden” is taking all operations while we revamp and upgrade “Genesis” and redeploy it as one of our node hosting servers.
Conclusion
I know these are a lot of changes, but I feel this is the best course of action that will insure the future success of Lonetrek and our ability to serve you. This email is already getting rather long, so I won’t say much other than that we would really like your feedback on these changes. If you would like to share your thoughts on these changes please send an email to feedback@lonetrekhosting.com. I can’t wait to hear from you
Sincerely,
Anthony Thurston
CEO
Lonetrek Hosting
So, there you have it. Head over to LoneTrek Hosting and sign up today!
Tags: Blogging Tools, LoneTrek Hosting
