New Client Area and Site Tools are coming your way very soon!SiteGround
I am not a native English speaker; yet, I know the definition of soon – in or after a short time
– and I don’t think that 10 months fit with this definition! Yep, 10 months after the announced start of the migration1, there is still no sign of the so dreaded Site Tools (see SiteGround New Client Area and Site Tools – part 1). On the other hand, it took only 7 months for SiteGround to switch my account to the New Client Area (see SiteGround New Client Area and Site Tools – part 5). Unexpectedly, both interfaces were not updated together. The migration is apparently a two-step process and, as explained in the previous post, the second step (cPanel Switch to Site Tools) was not scheduled yet
three months ago!
Let me tell you upfront: it is not yet show time!
Nope, this post will not be about the Switch to Site Tools because I still have no information whatsoever on that matter! Instead, it will be about an unscheduled Scheduled Server Maintenance.
A serendipitous detection
Upon login to my account – or should I specify to the New Client Area – I was bewildered by an Important Notification:
What? What server maintenance? There was nothing SCHEDULED!
Of course, it is usually nice to see the words successfully completed
once you start a process. However, things are slightly different when you didn’t initiate anything (or when you don’t even know what this is about). Needless to say, there was no email – neither a scheduling email nor a completion email!
The report
The CHECK REPORT button was all I had; yet, the report was quite informative. In addition to a Status: Completed and a list of the Impacted Services (i.e. my website and server), there were two notifications in reverse chronological order – 13 hours and 7 minutes apart!
The first (or last, chronologically) was nothing more than the notification of successful completion:
Dear Customer, We are glad to inform you that the maintenance was completed successfully. We would like to thank you for your patience and understanding on the matter!
Best regards, The SiteGround Team
The second, however, was the actual scheduling – the notification that I never saw/received:
Dear Customer, In order to continuously offer the best quality hosting services, we will be performing a maintenance on Monday, 08.06.2020 from 01:00 AM CDT to 06:00 AM CDT. Date:08.06.2020 Time:01:00 AM CDT to 06:00 AM CDT Duration: 5 hours Expected downtime: up to 20 min While we do not anticipate any impact on your overall website performance, short service interruption may appear. We recommend postponing any updates and new content uploads on your hosting account during the maintenance time so that no changes are lost. We apologize for any inconvenience during the maintenance and thank you for your patience and trust. Best regards, The SiteGround Team
Let me highlight a key point:
We recommend postponing any updates and new content uploads on your hosting account during the maintenance time so that no changes are lost.The SiteGround Team
How to do so when you are not even aware that a maintenance is scheduled?
What the f…
Irritated, my first reaction was to blame the New Client Area and the associated paring down of features! Should I add email notification to the list of lost functions? Then, when the irritation was subsided, I started to wonder if SiteGround ever notify me of upcoming downtime for server maintenance before (i.e. with the previous interface). I always received timely email warning from them for anything. However, I could not remember any for a scheduled server maintenance. Could it be because of the lack of server maintenance (during that period)? Honestly, I don’t know.
Now, in the previous User Area, the status of the server could be checked under Support > Server Status Update. Guess what! I could not locate this feature in the New Client Area and, once again (see SiteGround New Client Area and Site Tools – part 5), the “New Integrated Help” did not help!
While I am not that concerned with the new User Area, replacing cPanel with the new Site Tools is a titanic change to come – I hope it will not encounter any iceberg.CogitActive
This excerpt/quote is from my comment (posted on August 22, 2019) to SiteGround blog post announcing the upcoming change. Almost a year later, I can tell that I am not convinced by this so-called ‘upgrade’ (User Area Switch to New Client Area) and I am more than ever concerned by the second step (i.e. cPanel Switch to Site Tools)! If this was not enough, I am now also dreading the next renewal of my hosting account given the recent hike in SiteGround prices2 for their shared hosting plans.
To be continued… (one day, maybe?)
1 I am not referring to the announcement at the end of July of the advent of their new interfaces. No, I am talking about the actual migration! Their Upcoming switch to our new Client Area and Site Tools
email was clear enough: Starting from the second half of September 2019, we will gradually roll out the new setup to all our existing clients, replacing the current User Area and cPanel
. ^
2 Until recently, the regular price for the StartUp plan was of $11.95/mo. (or 9.95 €/mo.) Excl. VAT (see SiteGround New Client Area and Site Tools – part 2), but since June 18, 2020, this plan now costs $14.99/mo. (or 12.99 €/mo.). Why did they increase their price, knowing that they will not have to pay for cPanel anymore? ^