As many 34SP.com clients use Gmail as either a primary or secondary email contact address we felt compelled to report that Google’s Gmail service is currently experiencing a persistent and apparently worldwide outage as of February 23, 2009 at 12:00 pm GMT.

34SP.com conducted extensive internal staff testing – both within and external to our firewall – and then sought outside confirmation that the service was indeed down. The URL: http://mail.google.com/mail/ remains unresponsive.

External sources reporting the outage at this hour include:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Gmail_Down_19

and when searching Twitter for Gmail one sees the confirmation clearly:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=gmail

When there is clarity on the disposition of the service from official sources – we will be adding them to this post.

In the meantime if you do need to contact 34SP.com and you don’t want to set up a temporary alternative free email (such as Hotmail) then you can alternatively:

Use our new Live Chat feature to chat directly on the website with our service and sales departments;

Give us a phone call at: 0161 200 1855.

Incidentally – all other Google services such as Google Apps and Google Analytics appear fully funtional at this time. More information will be posted when it becomes available.

Update
It seems that service has now been restored, with the following from http://mail.google.com/support:

“Many of our users had difficulty accessing Gmail today. The problem is now resolved and users have had access restored. We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

My name is Olly and I am one of our website hosting and domain name experts in the 34SP.com Support Department. This post contains a number of tips on getting the most out of your 34SP.com account by using our free scripts.

Not everyone may be aware of this, but here at 34SP.com we offer a number of free to install scripts that any of our clients are welcome to make use of. A script is a program that is installed directly onto your account that makes a complicated or repetitive task easier and quicker. Whether you have a standard hosting account, WordPress hosting, business web hosting, or even a vps hosting account, you may find a script that will benefit you. Several of these scripts will also allow you to make major changes to the look and feel of your website without the need to be an expert in web design or coding.

The scripts on offer are available from http://scripts.34sp.com and fall into a few general categories:

CMS (Content Management System)
>From our installers page, these include: e107, ExponentCMS, Joomla, ModX-cms, Website Baker and WordPress.

A Content Management System allows you to design a basic (and in some cases quite advanced) website – it does exactly what it says on the tin, giving you the ability to ”manage” your site ”content”. Although some of the more advanced scripts require a bit of getting used to, there are a couple that can certainly be considered more user friendly such as WordPress and Website Baker – if you can use a word processing package, you can use these to create your website.

Gallery
>From our installers page, these include: Coppermine

A gallery is a script which allows you to upload a number of photos to your website via a management interface. These images can then be set to periodically change on a given page, or to format the layout so multiple images can be displayed in a neat format. Some html / php coding experience is advisable if you wish to incorporate this script using the same look and feel as your existing site.

E-Commerce
>From our installers page, these include: CubeCart, OSCommerce and ZenCart

E-Commerce packages give you the ability to set up a shopping cart system on your account. Log in to the admin page, upload a picture of your product, give it a price, description and which department on your site you’d like it to appear. Do be aware that you will need to set up an account with a payment gateway (protx, worldpay etc.) in order to accept online payments. It is also strongly advised you get an SSL certificate to engender some trust in your site when taking client details.

Wiki
>From our installers page, these include: DokuWiki and MediaWiki

A Wiki is described as a ”documentation repository” – think of them as a store house of information. Most allow their content to be defined (and redefined) by site visitors’ contributions – some allow these to be moderated before appearing, and some don’t, so do be aware of this.

Forums
>From our installers page, these include: phpBB and Simple Machines Forums

Forums (or bulletin boards as they are sometimes called) allow you to create an online message-driven community. Messages are grouped by topics of your choice. When a user creates a post, other users are then able to post replies to this. Multiple replies to the same post create a ”thread” which can provide a valuable resource of information contributed by several users.

Other Great Free Resources
Guestbook – Not seen so much these days, but this allows site visitors to leave a text based signature to say they’ve visited and usually a short comment about your site.
Awstats – An advanced statistics and site visitor analysis tool. Learn who’s on your site and what they are interested in.
Dada Mail – A mailing list management system that allows user to subscribe and unsubscribe to your own mailshots whenever they wish.
Contact Form – This adds some code to your site that allows visitors to securely send you an email. As addresses are all hidden, this greatly reduces the amount of spam mail that standard contact forms can produce. The form is fully customisable to include any fields that you require.
Icalendar – Sets up a calendar utility on your site that users can contribute to by adding or editing date-based entries.

General Notes
Have a play – If you’re not sure which script is going to be right for you, run an install on a test folder rather than in the root of your account (i.e. installing to the folder ”test” will mean that it is visible on your own domain by visiting www.yourdomain.com/test rather than replacing the normal homepage). If you don’t like the script, it’s pretty straightforward to simply delete that folder. If you do find one that you like and want it to replace your usual home page, just run the installer again.

Other scripts – obviously we can’t list every script available on the installer page (keeping them all up to date is laborious enough as it is!). If you do decide to install your own script and find that you’re running into problems, install one of the versions of phpcgi found on the main scripts page before contacting support – this gets rid of 99% of safe_mode errors in particular.

If it all goes wrong – Drop us an email or use live chat – we’ll be happy to look over your account to see where the problem might have occurred and advise how to prevent it happening again.

Regular readers of the 34SP.com blog will recall a recent post which outlined the investments being made in the 34SP.com support department. Among the improvements launched in the past few weeks, a very popular new feature is now available – Live Chat.

Live chat is great for taking care of fast support questions that just need an expert’s opinion. Here are a few common questions and pointers on using the new chat feature for purchasing new products or getting access to our World-class support.

Is live chat currently available? In order for chat to function as planned, our service and technical support team must be ”logged in” to the service. Additionally, each team member is currently limited to just 1 chat at a time to keep the quality of response at the highest levels. Therefore, if all team members are either already on a chat, or not logged in due to phone or other responsibilities, live chat will not be available at that moment. There is a convenient visual indication of whether chat is currently available at the top of every page on the 34SP.com website. Just to the left of the phone number at the top of every page you will see a graphic that says, ”LIVE CHAT ONLINE” when team members are available and ”logged in”.

What can I do on live chat? Live chat is great for quick support inquiries, or to ask sales questions about the range of products available from 34SP.com. Our goal is to make 34SP.com easy to work with. We want to let you interact with sales and support in whichever way is most convenient for you: phone, email or chat. Whether you are looking for answers about business hosting, WordPress hosting, or dedicated servers – live chat can get you quickly on your way with accurate and timely information.

Should I use live chat or email? How to start your communication with the 34SP.com team is entirely up to you. However, chat is best suited for quick and straightforward questions that can be answered completely in 1 chat session. More complex issues or those that will require followup are best suited to email – as a support ticket will be issued and the support case carefully tracked to resolution.

In summary, chat has proven to be extremely popular with many clients opting for the speed and ease of chat for quick questions. Here are a few of the recent comments we’ve received regarding our new investments in support.

Rating: Excellent (5) – “Excellent service, advice and suggestions. Couldn’t ask for more. I sincerely believe that the management team should buy at least two rounds of everyone’s favourite tipple as a token of ongoing management goodwill towards the coal-face customer facing team. Or at least buy a box of Cadbury’s best chocolates to share around. Perhaps a vote could help decide. Sincerely, Mark”

Rating: Excellent (5) – “I was very happy with the support I received about setting up an Outlook email account. My query was answered very quickly and even when the problem was not resolved the first time I was offered other suggestions to resolve it. Thank you!”

Rating: Excellent (5) – “I was able to fix the problem using the links supplied in the first response. The only improvement would have been if I could’ve found the link in the first place without having to email.”

Rating: Excellent (5) – “Thanks guys, I don’t usually give feedback as I am so busy but you have helped me a lot recently and it’s greatly appreciated.”