Phillip Zedalis and ServerWarp, again.

I have been with 1701 since before Xojo Cloud existed. Up until last Autumn, Phillip’s service has always been excellent.

We already had discussions about him suddenly becoming unresponsive:
https://forum.xojo.com/58544-phillip-zedalis
https://forum.xojo.com/54658-is-serverwarp-working

That was 2 month ago. He chimed in 5 weeks ago, on Feb 17:

Since then, I had two tickets filed on the ServerWarp site – no reply. I tried to email Phillip. No reply.

I am starting to get real concerned, not only about Phillip’s health, given the current climate. But also about my business. How long can ServerWarp go on autopilot. Heaven forbid if any major issue happens, I hope the janitor has been briefed about what to do…

Anybody got more recent than 5 weeks old news ?

When it comes to business, you need to do what is best for it. I think its time to move on to another hosting solution.

When it comes to personal, I hope Phillip is ok.

I plan on moving my automated software delivery system to Xojo Cloud, now. Praying I will have time to make the move before any major down time.

Hitting a hurdle at the moment, since XC does not support Php, and I need it to serve files > 50 MB.

I plan this week end to try and figure using chunks with BinaryStream, and HandleURL Request.Print. Wish me luck :slight_smile:

I take it this is something that you can’t just do with Apache?

Sorry to hear that but it sadly confirms my impressions. I have unanswered tickets for months, but nothing critical. I’ve got a lot of promises from Philip for years but everything seems much more difficult since 1701 became ServerWarp.

XC is not an option because it lack too many features.

I’m looking at other solutions but haven’t found anything yet.

Sorry Michel. For the last two weeks I have been very unwell and this last week my entire family has had the flu including an elderly member in the hospital. I am just now able to start work again but my voice is quite choppy and fever subsided. I hope it hasn’t been anything more dire… my elderly family member has shortness of breath and this has been a challenging time for us.

From time to time we have failed. ServerWarp has grown and Xojo users are not our largest customer base anymore. We do much more DevOps consulting and such. We still have our new platform in the works but its not something I can easily share here as forum rules, etc.

Suffice to say… if we have impacted our damaged our relations with any customers I will do everything in my power to make it right. I always have. We are a small business and that can be quite challenging as many of you know. I ask for understanding and forgiveness but understand that is not always possible.

Thanks in advance.

~Phillip

Actually, my code, based on the HTTPDownloader example, simply chokes on files larger than 50 MB. It never completely downloads.

The solution I found was to hand the process to a Php script. I use it to enable download of a file which is not in the web space (my own App store, as it where).

If you have any better suggestion, I will love that.

I am relieved to learn that you are doing better. Best wishes of recovery.

I suspected you had trouble scaling. I started to freak when I realized I had not been able to communicate with you since your last post, or to get a reply to the couple of tickets I filed on the ServerWarp site.

I am a small business as well. Actually, a one man operation, and in these dire times cannot afford a major issue. It happened over 20 years ago, when I lost many customers, not to mention a $20,000 a year one. Better paranoid than something else.

If someone is in charge of support tickets, perhaps you should look long and hard at his customer relations record. Any company is as good as the weakest link.

Switching now to email. Thank you for your explanations.

@Michel Bujardet, I wish you the best.
I am stuck with ServerWarp keeping billing my credit card that I can’t remove form my account, not getting the refunds and cancellation I asked. Even talk with credit card company and I might have to change my credit card number to stop that crap.
@Phillip Zedalis keep promising and giving excuses without doing anything. Since January that last.

Xojo cloud might be expensive, but customer service is irreproachable.

Avoid business with such an irresponsible guy. He gives such lame excuses always and i am a victim of that.

Why just consider Bad services and Expensive ones?

Is not that difficult: https://blog.timi.me/2020/04/07/deploying-xojo-web/

Hi @Simon Page I was not aware your card was still being charged after we cancelled the account a couple months ago… I’ll audit the account and make it right for you right now.

I asked Phillip about this last Monday - but no response?
I recently purchased a VPS from serverwarp to host a Xojo web app, and I checked the box “install CubeSQL server”

But I cannot find any documentation explaining how to access this CubeSQL server, or how to manage / administer it? How do I use it??

Has anyone successfully used Cube on ServerWarp?? If so, I would be very grateful for some setup info!

I’ll be at the office in a couple of hours and let you know how to connect to cubeSQL

My story of ServerWarp:

1st May - Ordered and payed Managed Linux 2048
Nothing happened for one week
7th May - Created a ticket, Phil answered it fast, told me he’ll send me the server details in the morning
Nothing happened
9th May - tried again in the same ticket, no answer
11th May - Created a new ticket
No answer
13th May - Closed the two older tickets and created a new one
No reply
25th May - PM in Xojo Forum to Phil
28th May - Reply from Phil, told me he was in holiday this last week and that I’ll get the details today
Nothing happened

I’m really sorry, but that’s not the costumer service that I expect. I’m sure, Phil is a very competent and nice guy, but that doesn’t change anything.

What happens, when we have a problem with the server or anything else where we need a fast assistance? Should we tell our customers, that their app comes up again in a few days? It’s a shame that this great xojo hosting service has such poor customer service that we can’t choose it for our app hosting.

Hi Tony,

Here you go.

Manage cubeSQL with cubeSQLAdmin (from SQLabs):

Host: IP address of your ServerWarp VPS Username: admin Password: same as your ServerWarp password Port: 4430 Encryption AES256

Connect within Xojo app:

[code]mDB = New cubeSQLServer ‘ mDB is a global var
mDB.Host = xxxxxxx.serverwarp.hosting ‘ your ServerWarp DNS Name
mDB.Port = 4430
mDB.UserName = “admin”
mDB.Password = xxxx ‘ your ServerWarp admin password

if (mDB.Connect = false) then
// your error handling here
Else
mDB.SQLExecute(“USE DATABASE yourSQLiteDBname;”)// yourSQLiteDBname is the file name like mydb.sqlite
If mDB.Error Then
// your error handling here
else
mDB.Commit
// connection succeeded
end if
end if[/code]

[quote=493198:@Tony Davies]I asked Phillip about this last Monday - but no response?
[/quote]
I’m experiencing the same problem, I have unanswered tickets for months, unkept promises for years.
On the other hand, my multiple VPS are running and I have no big issues.

@Tony Davies
I forgot to mention that you need to « upload » the cubeSQL file into cubeSQL server, using cubeSQLAdmin / Databases / Upload

But be aware that in cubeSQLAdmin Preferences, paths are

/var/opt/cubesql/databases
/var/opt/cubesql/backups
/var/opt/cubesql/restore

But these folders are not directly accessible.

On my VPS the backup files are located here:

/home/myserverWarpUserName/_backups/db_cubesql/

I’m using the cubeSQL automated scheduled backups.

I hope it helps.

@Olivier Colard

Brill - thanks so much for the info, much appreciated :wink:

A good web host will be answering tickets in minutes (I’ve run a web hosting company for the last 20 years)

Run don’t walk away from any company operating like the posts above.

Either move to Xojo Cloud or DIY with a Digital Ocean or Vultr or whoever VPS. It’s really simple to setup (but be aware your tickets will be in here or other forums as these are self serve platforms apart from Xojo themselves)

For me, DIY would mean spending precious coding time fussing around with setting up Linux. Don’t take me wrong, I do enjoy Linux. But any time I have gone too deep into it, before I knew it, another week had gone by.

As a single operator company, I need to devote my time to profitable endeavors. Which means mainly maintaining and improving end user software.

The cash register should not be a work in progress, but a reliable part of my business. Once setup, I should be able to forget about it, and concentrate on selling software, rather.

Customer support is awfully time consuming. I try to minimize it the best way I can, by constantly improving my apps. Prevention is the best cure. Yet, everyday I got one or two support requests to address. Would it be someone who need a download reset, or for some reason additional explanations.

In a radical move destined to economize my precious time, I have decided to stop answering the phone. Where it takes 5 minutes to do it by email, it can easily get half an hour on the phone.

Phillip is a great guy, but I am afraid he, too, is a single person company. He probably does engineering, perhaps some custom development, and when he’s got time, customer support.

He started focusing on Xojo apps, and his service was outstanding. But perhaps that was not enough business to really support his needs. It seems he expanded fast by adding international hosts. Maybe that requires a lot of maintenance, and since it must be costly, I bet he had to find new customers.

Classic small business overextending.

Sure, I get that.

You can always deploy with a free control panel like centos we panel but if you want peace of mind go managed.

[quote=493297:@Michel Bujardet]For me, DIY would mean spending precious coding time fussing around with setting up Linux. Don’t take me wrong, I do enjoy Linux. But any time I have gone too deep into it, before I knew it, another week had gone by.

As a single operator company, I need to devote my time to profitable endeavors. Which means mainly maintaining and improving end user software.

The cash register should not be a work in progress, but a reliable part of my business. Once setup, I should be able to forget about it, and concentrate on selling software, rather.

Customer support is awfully time consuming. I try to minimize it the best way I can, by constantly improving my apps. Prevention is the best cure. Yet, everyday I got one or two support requests to address. Would it be someone who need a download reset, or for some reason additional explanations.

In a radical move destined to economize my precious time, I have decided to stop answering the phone. Where it takes 5 minutes to do it by email, it can easily get half an hour on the phone.

Phillip is a great guy, but I am afraid he, too, is a single person company. He probably does engineering, perhaps some custom development, and when he’s got time, customer support.

He started focusing on Xojo apps, and his service was outstanding. But perhaps that was not enough business to really support his needs. It seems he expanded fast by adding international hosts. Maybe that requires a lot of maintenance, and since it must be costly, I bet he had to find new customers.

Classic small business overextending.[/quote]