FutureQuest, Inc. is closing our virtual doors on or before July 14th, 2023

[JimJ26]

Originally Posted by RedPanda

I have one client that is a very large Transatlantic NGO, hosting a week in Washington DC starting July 24. How can you say "on or before July 14." Aside from the fact that I'm sure you could have told us earlier (like you didn't know?), you must be able to give a definite date of closure.

I won't even go into the legal ramifications, but we have trusted you for more than 20 years, and you're just flushing us all down the toilet without any regard for our OWN businesses.

No hearts and flowers from me.

That is so true. Just dumping us to the curb with 14 days OR LESS goes against all of their "values". Apparently this money issue has been on-going for three or more years. I can't afford to just run and jump to some other host without due diligence and I'm leaving the country in six days for a 10 day vacation. I guess my website is going to disappear for a while. I get it that companies close and go out of business but there was ample time to warn us. They chose not to. So not cool.

[retroman]

mromero - I contacted Knownhost, and the customer service is good. My only question - they don't have a dedicated IP address at my price point, which I get with FQ. In your opinion is this as important as it once was, say 15 years ago? I like the dedicated address.

[Syneryder]

Firstly, I'm sad to see FQ go. I've been here since 1999, glad I stayed to the very end. Might be the only company where I can remember the names (and even faces!) of the support & tech support teams. I got one of my first paid programming gigs because of these forums and even flew around the world to meet some of the forum members here. Thank you to all the staff over all those years.


Tips for other FQ customers:

* If you use the mailing list manager, don't forget to export your mailing list! In your CNC, click on Mailing Lists, then the name of your mailing list, and under List Options click on Download Subscriber List.

* If you have cron tasks, don't forget to record what's in your crontab file and set the cron tasks up again at your new host.

* Don't forget to update your SPF / DKIM / DMARC records with new IP addresses in your DNS if you're moving email to a new host. Otherwise your own SPF records may flag your outbound emails at the new host as spam.

* Consider that you don't need to choose the perfect new provider right now, just what will get you migrated in time and keep you online. You can always move again when you've had more time to evaluate what's out there.



Provider Suggestions:

Hosting: DreamHost, since I already had an account there. They allow unlimited sites in one account. In my experience, their shared plan was nowhere near as fast or reliable (in terms of uptime) as FutureQuest was. I expect I need to upgrade to their VPS plans to get similar speed.

Email: FastMail, I'm very, very happy with them. Separating email & web hosting was a great idea, glad I did it.

Mailing List: MailChimp, since I'm already setup there. However they were recently bought by Intuit, so I'm also considering MailerLite.

Registrar: Namecheap, their DNS name servers are faster than the FQ ones in my experience. Keeping DNS separated from web & email providers has really saved my bacon. I like the Namecheap DNS management interface too. (I also used to like Hover many years ago.)


I'll miss these forums, it's nice to see names I still recognize. If anyone wants to get in touch, or wants to ask questions about this stuff, my contact details are here: http://kohanikin.com/contact/

I'm also @syneryder@mastodon.sdf.org on Mastodon.

[Erica C.]

For people with multiple sites, would you use a single host for all of them? I expect what's happening with FutureQuest isn't common but would I be risking having to switch them all again?
Thanks!
Erica

[skolnick]

The splash page for FQ just shows the closure notice. Does anyone have the URL for the CNC pages so I can export data?

[idealord]

Originally Posted by skolnick

The splash page for FQ just shows the closure notice. Does anyone have the URL for the CNC pages so I can export data?

https://xyourdomain.securecnc.net/CNC/index.cgi

[tjemison]

I have not signed into CNC for awhile… is the login supposed to work with syntax this simple:
mydomain.com/CNC/
Update: see Idealord's post a few comments above... he reminded us of the newer syntax.

And is this 2-year-old announcement about a then-new feature for users for "backup of their files with a single click" -- to a .zip or .gz file of up to 1 GB in save-to-account mode -- changed at all? https://www.futurequest.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=26461
Update: I've found FTP is so fast to grab each gig that I just dragged key content folders with Fetch and I don't see the benefit of the above.

[Erica C.]

Originally Posted by Syneryder

* If you use the mailing list manager, don't forget to export your mailing list! In your CNC, click on Mailing Lists, then the name of your mailing list, and under List Options click on Download Subscriber List.

Thanks so much for these suggestions! I'm in the process of downloading a number of subscriber lists.

For people who need something more like EZMLM it looks like Dreamhost has announcement and discussion mailing lists.

[dotk]

I just downloaded the BlogVault plugin and did a backup, so when I join a new host, I believe it will be a simple process.

[dotk]

Everyone needs to make an immediate backup. Download the free plugin BlogVault, make a backup and then you can download a copy to your computer. They also offer migrate as an option to switch to a new host. Fastest & easiest solution, as we don't know when the doors will close here!!