Here at Rochen our focus is on support. We’ve built our entire business on the back of our unrivaled support and careful configuration and management of our servers. To continue ensuring this remains our focus, we’ve just completed a major upgrade of our support Knowledge Base.

You can check out the new Rochen Customer Knowledge Base here. Now, when you visit our helpdesk, perhaps your question will be answered before you even have to ask us for help.

Let’s just review a few of the new articles and sections:

The Billing and Support Tickets sections contains articles such as:

• Adding alternate email addresses to My.Rochen.com profile
• What level of support can I expect from Rochen?

Under Common Issues some articles are:

• Can I access my account before changing my name servers / propagates to your servers?
• My site has been compromised, help!

We even have a Third Party Scripts section, with such articles as:

• Maintaining your website software/scripts
• Transfer a Joomla site to Rochen

… to point out just a few.

We encourage you to take the time to review the new Rochen Knowledge Base next time you are looking for help. You will find the ‘live search’ feature to be very handy, as it searches as you type to pull up articles that you might be interested in. Also, a ‘Related Articles’ section on each Knowledge Base article allows us to group together other articles on the same subject to help you even more. There are also plenty of animated tutorials to help explain things clearly for you.

Finally, last but not least, Rochen is pleased to welcome Adam Boswell on board as a new staff member. Many of you have already been helped by Adam, but when you see him around, be sure to say “hi”.

- Brad

Brad Baker has been a member of the Rochen team since early 2003 and is a founding member of the Joomla! Open Source Project. He currently is part of the Joomla LeadershipTeam, and also blogs here.

Yesterday was an exciting day for Rochen. We finally launched our UK hosting services. You can find details in my previous blog that I wrote prior to the launch. I wanted to use this blog post to address some questions we have been getting as well as provide some discount promo codes. Everyone loves pictures, so I have included some of those too.

1. Can I expect the same level of service with Rochen’s UK hosting?

Yes, our UK service is pretty much a direct copy of our US offering. We have applied everything we have learnt in the US and used all of our best practices. Services like Rochen Vault Managed Backups are included free with the UK plans. Whether you are on a US or UK plan you can seamless login to Rochen Vault via: https://vault.rochen.com, for example. Technical support is all in one place too at: https://my.rochen.com.

2. What services does Rochen offer in the UK?

All of our shared hosting plans including the Starter Plan, Multiple Domain Hosting and Reseller Hosting are available in the UK. Our Managed Virtual Server (MVS) service is available too. The plans are identical to the US offering except we charge in GBP instead of USD. Simply select the US or UK option prior to ordering on the plan page.

Latest enclosed isle technology. Click to enlarge.

3. In the UK does Rochen own and manage all of the hosting infrastructure?

We own and manage everything. Rochen could have probably saved quite a bit if we had started out the UK service with lower capital investments by leasing servers. However, we were not about to start compromising our service standards, so if we were to offer a UK service it had to stand up to its US sister. All the infrastructure in the UK from the enterprise Supermicro rackmount services, to the Cisco switches and backup appliances are all fully owned and managed by Rochen.

4. Is the US or UK service best for me?

It really depends where the bulk of your site traffic originates from. Configuring Google Analytics on your site should be able to tell you. If the bulk of your traffic comes from within Europe or Africa then the UK service is best. If most of your traffic is coming from North America, South America or areas like Australia then the US service is probably best. Some European companies also need to host their data inside of the EU for data protection reasons, so the UK service would meet that requirement. If you host sites with traffic from different regions then splitting your hosting between both Rochen locations might be a smart move. E.g. a Reseller Hosting Plan in the US and another in the UK.

First shared servers. Click to enlarge.

5. I wish to change from the US to UK service. Is this possible?

This is not currently possible. The reasons behind not allowing transfers are purely business ones right now. We could end up with lots of people moving over and filling up the UK infrastructure. This would mean Rochen has huge additional capital and recurring outlays without any additional revenue. We will however allow transfers in the future. If you are upgrading though we can however offer a transfer. E.g. Reseller Hosting in the US to Managed Virtual Server (MVS) in the UK.

6. I wish to open a UK account in addition to my US account. Is this possible?

Yes, this is certainly possible. You can simply order a UK plan via our website. When ordering though please be sure to provide a different email address to the one you currently have on file with Rochen. This is to ensure your UK order is placed under a separate My Rochen customer portal login to your existing US account. Currently our customer portal can not support US and UK accounts under the one login. If you use the promo code UKCLIENT this will apply a 5% recurring discount for the life of your UK account. You must maintain both your US and UK accounts. Be sure to order under the same name and postal address as your US account so we can verify you are a customer already.

Neat Cabling. Click to enlarge.

7. I am not currently a customer. What’s the best way to signup for Rochen UK?

Simply visit our website at: http://www.rochen.co.uk, find the plan that best meets your needs and signup. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to email sales@rochen.com, post within our pre-sales questions forum or Twitter us @rochenhost.

8. Are there any discounts for non-customers?

Yes, you can signup using the promo code UK20 (expires Sunday, 21st June) to receive a 20% discount on your first invoice or UK15 (expires Tuesday, 30th June) to receive a 15% discount on your first invoice. These discounts apply to the UK service only as part of our launch celebrations. You can use the promo code DEAL for a 10% discount on your first invoice with the US service though. If you pay annually for a Starter Plan or Multiple Domain Hosting Plan then the savings can be significant.

Thanks for taking the time to read and do get in touch if you have any questions at all about either our new UK offering or any Rochen service!

- Chris

Chris Adams is the Founder and CEO of Rochen, a web hosting provider specializing in providing a performance tuned hosting platform for dynamic database driven scripts.

.. and guess what, it’s not an iPhone!

I recently switched to a Nokia E71 and have decided that this is the best phone I have used to date. I actually made a conscious decision and chose this phone after evaluating it and the iPhone. Probably one of my favorite features is the keypad, with a full, albeit small, qwerty keyboard. Also, running the Symbian Operating System, many 3rd party applications are available.

It will be interesting to see in a few years how the Google Android phone operating system stacks up, but for now, I’m sticking with this phone.

What difference does it make to you as a customer of Rochen?

Well, for one thing, I can be even more connected. I’m able to receive email the moment it arrives, continue to interact with our staff while out and about via our internal IM (instant messaging) network oh, and in emergencies it even accepts phone calls.

It has inbuilt GPS which I use in conjunction with Google Maps at times.

Did you know?

• If any services fail on any of our servers our remote monitoring system sends all staff an SMS.
• All our staff interact with our servers using a secure method. Sometimes this is via https other times using SSH keys.
• All staff can access their email while away from their desk in case of emergencies or just to monitor the helpdesk.
• It’s not uncommon on any given day for all our staff to have a few conversations together. So despite our geographical location, we’re working together as one team to support you.

I also carry with me an Asus Eee PC in case I need to handle anything more important that can’t be handled via my phone. It runs a Linux based operating system which is both familiar to me, but also efficient on a small machine like this. I have the small 7″ Eee PC.

Technology really has come a long way, and it enables us to continue to provide the high level of service our customers has all become accustomed to.

What kinds of technologies help you to be able to continue to support your own customers?

- Brad Baker

Brad Baker has been a member of the Rochen team since early 2003 and is a founding core-team member of the Joomla! Open Source Project. He also blogs here.