How much did renewal cost?

Renewal @ Namecheap was $9/year, cheaper if bought in bulk (~$35 for 5 years!).
There's definitely some alternatives out there, but I haven't experimented with them yet...
(Startcom's 2 year cert looks interesting - $60 for 2 years, with wildcard + multiple domains - but it looks kinda fishy...)

Migration Update - 10/17/2014

Importance: URGENT
Author: albert
Date: Fri, October 17th, 2014 at 9:36:06 AM PDT
Blog post: http://withg.org/blog/index.php?post=1413563766

Migration Update - MANDATORY FORMS
==================================

Almost there!
-------------
We're almost done with tooling for the migration, so migration is
imminent!

(HW peeps might've heard about tooling before! In this context,
tooling is designing tools to help manage the migration - no worries,
this is NOT like last time - these are very specific tools designed to
do very specific things for the migration process.)

MANDATORY FORM
--------------
That said, you MUST fill out the "I'm alive" form ASAP, if you haven't
already!

http://bit.ly/withgalive

NOT filling this out can lead your account to be "archived". The
unarchival process does exist, but it will be a hassle, since you will
be considered inactive in our system.

(Essentially, you're filling out a form like the sign-up form to get
your account back. Your data is still there, but your account just
doesn't exist.)

We're not trying to be evil - there's a LOT of users on this server
that we would consider significantly inactive! Freeing up resources
allows us to make the migration smoother, and for the resulting server
to be much faster and lighter!

So please - help us help YOU - fill it out!

http://bit.ly/withgalive

RSS/Pushbullet Support!
-----------------------
Random aside - our blog now supports RSS and Pushbullet Channels!
(Thanks to Sorunome for adding the support!)

RSS: http://withg.org/blog/?rss
Pushbullet Channel: https://www.pushbullet.com/channel?tag=withgusto

Subscribe to receive updates on your RSS reader or mobile device
(via Pushbullet)!

---

Also there's an RSS feed now.

(Yes, thank you Sorunome! )

Knew that the move wasn't going to happen

* Sorunome runs

Oh gee thanks for having faith in me... :p /s

All jokes aside, I'm disappointed that I couldn't deliver the migration on time (and no surprise, since I'm in school)... but rest assured, the new server DOES exist, and we're working to make this a success!

This time, we're going to make sure that the migration moves past tooling! :p
(Last time, it died because it was difficult to make an automated migration tool - this time, we're limiting the tool's scope, and making multiple tools to handle certain cases.)

See you in 2015! (First milestone is January 12th, 2015!)

Due to a DDoS attack, withg.org is down for the moment. It may not be back up for a while. We'll keep you posted as things update. Sorry about that!

Update on Server Downtime

withgusto is now back up... but ZNC will continue to remain down for another day or so. SSH and other services requiring a direct connection will remain down as well. Sorry about that.

I'll say it now - we screwed up. The DDoS was pretty bad, but it definitely could have been preventable. In fact, a free solution like CloudFlare was really all we needed to prevent it.

What was the attack? Well, a certain user's public folder was harassed by many online bots, to the point where 10000+ requests to the user's folder were made per day in the past few days, totaling 40386 requests overall... just in February! (29581 of those requests were made to a single 18 MB file!) Obviously, this is enough to trigger a DDoS null-route.

Security has been lacking as of late, and I feel that we definitely could do better. As of today, CloudFlare is enabled on all withgusto domains... with the exception of a secret domain, which is being purposely withheld for now. We are planning on developing much better mitigation methods in the future so that this kind of attack won't take us out again.

At the same time, we should also examine the cause of the attack. Usually, these kind of attacks are caused by conflicts/arguments with other people, hence causing a DDoS. As some may know, we host a ZNC on withgusto. We'd like to continue ZNC service, but at the same time develop policies to avoid getting into this kind of situation again. These policies are in development, but include ZNC usage guidelines, as well as security guidelines for setting up ZNC. Even if we do get better DDoS protection in the future, it's way better to prevent a DDoS than to fight one!

Again, we apologize for the massive downtime. It was unexpected, but we definitely could have done better to prevent this kind of problem from occurring.

That's it - stay tuned for more information as we recover.

EDIT: For everyone that uses withgusto services (IRC, ZNC, etc.), please visit here and test out which location downloads the fastest. Once you have figured it out, post your best location here!

Hey, no worries alberthrocks, every body makes mistakes, what counts is that you can figure that out and prevent such things in the future