I just got off a chat with tech support at our hosting company.   Here is the transcript from that chat:

Gordon: Thank you for contacting Technical Support. Currently there is a system wide outage that is affecting all of our clients. We have our full team of systems administrators working on this issue and they have been working since yesterday afternoon when this issue manifested itself. We currently have an ETA of 8:00 a.m. MDT.

Gordon: The issue has been a result of an error made by a vendor that was inspecting the fire prevention system on the data center floor.  At this time we believe that there has been no data loss.

Gordon: We understand the impact this has caused you and the frustration it has generated. Please keep in mind we are working as quickly as possible to resolve this issue. Once the issue has been resolved we will send out an e-mail reporting what the issue was, how it was corrected, and the steps put into place to ensure this type of outage does not happen in the future.

Gordon: WestHost greatly values your business and we appreciate your patience and understanding while we work through these issues. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Gordon: When the issue is resolved there will be an email that is sent out informing you the details of what happened and how it was resolved.  Thank you for your patience.

Gordon: We understand that this ETA has been moved forward several times, this is due to the fact our administrators needed to correctly identify the issue and give a best estimate on the resolution time. As they were working on the issue they discovered that in order to fully resolve this issue it would take a longer time than they had originally anticipated. With further insight gained from working on the issue the current estimate should be far more accurate.

Gordon: http://forums.westhost.com/showpost.php?p=46980&postcount=84

Again, we apologize for any hassle this may have caused you or your business.  Know that the situation has been completely out of our hands, and that only the hosting company could fix this issue.  We will be creating a backup/mirror server starting tomorrow to prevent this issue from happening again.

Nick

This upgrade adds in several new things a fixes a bunch of old ones.  The coolest new stuff from a user point of view is:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

For the full upgrade announcment, including all the bug fixes, please see this page.  Enjoy!

1. Post materials and resources

The web is a fantastic tool when it comes to distributing resources – all you have to do on your Skyrocket Website is upload, or copy and paste, your materials to your blog and they’ll be instantly accessible by your customers and fans. What’s more, you can easily manage who gets to access them through password and plugin safety measures.

2. Host online discussions

If you’ve ever struggled to create an online discussion space – you’re going to love what Skyrocket will do for you. Fans can simply respond to blog posts and discuss topics you’ve set them through comments or through our simple forum functionality – commentators can also sign up to receive emails when their comments are replied to and you can easily manage and edit all responses through your blog’s administrative panel.

3. Replace your newsletter

Always enjoyed photocopying and stapling pages and pages of newsletters on a Friday afternoon? Though not! It’s ridiculously simple to post class information, news, events and more on your Skyrocket Website.

4. Get your fans blogging

It’s all very good sending your fans off to blog sites, or even creating them for them, but you need to operate as a hub for their work and a place where they can easily visit each others blogs from. Your Skyrocket Website can be used to glue together your fan blogs, and besides which, if you’re asking your fans to blog about you… you should certainly be doing it yourself.

5. Integrate multimedia of all descriptions

With a couple of clicks you can embed online video, multimedia presentations, slideshows and more into your home website and mix it up with your text and static resources. No CDs required, no coding necessary – just select the video, podcasts or slidecast you’d like to use and whack it in your blog to illustrate, engage and improve your marketing toolbox.

6. Get feedback

There’s nothing that says you can’t allow anonymous commenting on a blog (although you’re also entirely within your rights to put all comments through moderation!) but why not think about using a blog as a place for fans and customers to air issues, leave feedback or generally tell you how great you are.

7. Create a fully functional website

One of the great things about Skyrocket Websites are that they are much, much more than just blogging tools. In fact, you can use your  Skyrocket Website to create a multi-layered, in-depth, multimedia rich website – that hardly looks like a blog at all. So, if you’d rather create a set of static content, archive of important information or even index for your library – you can bend a Skyrocket Website to suit your needs.

We are absolutely delighted that so many musicians, writers, artists, speakers, and small businesses have been able to use the service for so many different reasons, and we want to continue improving, expanding and developing the site so that we can make Skyrocket available to thousands more people.

To do that, we’ve been working feverishly to set up, configure, manage, and deploy hardware and a system which will allow this to happen – so that your site(s) will be quick, reliable, safe and ever improving over the years to come.

But in doing so, of course, we had to revisit our business plan because planning on hosting several thousand blogs is a pretty costly endeavor!

Now, a lot of you may know about Launchpad – our full-service website design/marketing solution used by our top clients, but there are lots of DIY, web-savvy folks out there who could benefit from the service.

Well, today we’re rolling out a new option (in Beta) to accomodate you.

Introducing Skyrocket Professional, which allows you to subscribe to receive extra features and more storage.

Pro members will get massive amounts more storage (we’re increasing 100MB to 3GB… a 30-fold increase!), along with exclusive access to tools like the Blog & User Creator, existing plugins (and new ones to come) and other great features.

Also, occasionally, we have displayed ads on sites to assist with covering hosting costs. This is something we’re going to have to increase on free blogs, but of course Supporter blogs will not have any third party advertising on them.

And more importantly, what we’re also now allowing Pro members *turn off* advertising on up to 2 different sites – as well as your own blog being turned off automatically.

There are a couple of catches, first up we’re having to increase the price of upgrading to Skyrocket Pro to $49.95 per year (that’s still less than $5 per month!).

Also, as I mentioned previously, extra functionality (plugins, premium themes, blogs & user creator and a few others) will only be available for Pro blogs, and there will be a reduction in storage for free blogs too.

Is this ideal? Well, in a utopian world we’d like to give everyone, everything, entirely for free and without any ads! But we’ve got bills to pay too… so, barring that, we hope to still provide great free blogs alongside an absolutely premium Professional service that is more than worth the price of a large coffee per month.

We welcome your feedback, thoughts and requests for new Supporter features in the comments.

Also, if you are experiencing any issues with your Pro subscription or previous credits that you may have lost, please email us at support (at) skyrocketwebsites /dot/ com, and we’ll fix you up (there are always hiccups in a big move).

You can find a bit of a better write up about what Skyrocket Pro offers here.

As of today, we’ve implemented an automatic sitemap generator, along with the famous All in One SEO pack – all set up and ready to go for your site.

What’s even better is that it’s already done for you — nothing more to worry about!

We will automatically create sitemaps for every site you create with us, then submit them to Google and automatically update them every time a new post is made.

Our All In One SEO pack is smart — it adds dynamic keyword and description tags based on post or page content to every post and page on your site – making them extremely tasty search engine morsels indeed!

Just another way Skyrocket Websites is making your life easier!

First and foremost, 2.8 is way faster to use. WordPress has changed the way it does style and scripting.

You can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.

Finally, you should explore the new Screen Options on every page. It’s the tab in the top right. Now, for example, if you have a wide monitor you could set up your dashboard to have four columns of widgets instead of the two it has by default. On other pages you can change how many items show per page.

Finally, if you’re feeling especially nerdy, you can find all the details here.  Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What it Teaches

“RSS in Plain English” introduces RSS as a way to subscribe to websites and save time on the Web. An “old vs. new” theme illustrates how RSS differs from visiting web sites. The video includes:

• The new and old ways of reading news on the web
• An introduction to RSS Readers (using Google Reader as an example)
• How to identify and subscribe to an RSS feed
• What to expect when using an RSS reader

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What it Teaches

“Online Photo Sharing in Plain English” introduces the basics of websites that work to keep photos safe, organized and sharable. The video compares the “old and new” methods of sharing photos. The video includes:

• The problems with traditional offline photo sharing
• How photo sharing websites keep photos safe and organized
• Public vs. private sharing and the benefits of public sharing
• The opportunities for photos to be social.