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Hosting support is probably the most important factor you overlooked when shopping around for a provider. The promises of unrivaled performance, top-of-the-line uptime, and incredible security probably made you think you wouldn’t need it.

We’re here to tell you that regardless of who you’re hosting with, it’s not if you need support, it’s when. Even the most secure web hosting provider encounters issues outside of their control. A good support team means that when those issues arise, you’ll be able to quickly and effectively negate their effects

This article takes a deeper look at what’s important with regards to a support team and how you can get the most out of them.  

Problems Will and Do Happen

Imagine this: you’re hosting with one of the best providers available. You researched for hours to find one that met and exceeded all of your criteria. They boast incredible uptime, talk about amazing page load speed, and they even provide auto scaling for when traffic spikes. Then one day you open your laptop to a refreshed page of… a 404 error. Your site isn’t there and you’re suddenly aware you’re losing money. Who do you call?

No, not the iconic 80’s team of paranormal experts, you need to get in touch with your hosting support team. You search their site frantically but find nothing. Money continues to disappear. Eventually, you stumble across a contact page in a small, dark corner of their website.

You call the number as fast as possible and… you’re told you’re at the back of the queue and will have to wait for an unknown period of time.

The example above is exactly why you should invest time in finding out about the hosting support your provider offers.

The risks to a data center are multiple and include a number of elements outside of the provider’s control. A good support team means that when these risks become a problem, you’ll be able to quickly and effectively negate their effects.

When Can You Contact Support?

Almost all modern hosting providers offer 24/7 support, so the time of day shouldn’t be an issue. What can be an issue is the type of support you receive.

To get a good idea of how accessible and effective your support team will be, here are four areas you should be asking about.

• The channels available for accessing support (phone, tickets, email, social, etc)
• The support tier team members available
• The support team’s knowledge level (including with your application)
• The support team’s access to infrastructure

Response Time
Many hosting providers advertise a quick response time. Ask them to define what that number means. A 15-minute response time doesn’t usually mean the time it takes for them to solve or begin working on your request, but an initial response time.

How Can You Contact Support?

Multiple avenues for contacting your support team are important. Most hosting providers offer a ticketing system through an internal network. This is great for long-form queries and issues but isn’t always the fastest support option available.

Other support channels can include:

• A ticket system
• A phone number
• An email address
• An online chat box
• Social Media

Some issues have to be solved quicker than others. In these cases, phone support is best. Check to see if your hosting provider offers a 24/7 support line by phone and if you have access to that number.

Who Is Your Support Team?

Finding more out about your hosting provider’s support team is a great way to predict client experience. The aim is to feel comfortable with the level and type of support provided.

Location: The first question you should be asking is where the support team is located. Is support outsourced to third-party companies in other parts of the world? Outsourced support often leads to lower quality service and adds an extra step to the line of communication. Opt for a hosting provider with in-house support for a better experience. This is best when combined with an owned and operated data center.

Experience: The level of experience and background knowledge between web hosting support teams varies considerably. Some providers only hire top-of-the-line support staff, others opt for cheaper options.

Application Support: If your hosting provider claims to provide support for the application you run (whether that is Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, or something else), ask if they have any application-expert support staff. Not only will this help when you run into application issues, it also lends credibility to claims that their hosting solution is optimized for your application.

Support Tiers

Calling your support team isn’t something you should necessarily be doing a lot of, but if you are, then it’s good to know you’re going to be able to reach the right person. Ask about the support tiers available and how easy it is to move between them when required. At Hostdedi, there are three main support tiers:

• Tier 1: Basic support
• Tier 2: Advanced support that requires a deeper knowledge of applications and/or infrastructure
• ESG: (Enterprise Support Group) For enterprise-level clients with more complex requirements

Different support tiers tend to focus on different types of issues. It’s often faster to go to a tier 1 support team for simple issues, and tier 2 for those more complex.

 

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Find out more about your hosting provider and infrastructure. See more information on the types of hosting available, then see what the risks are.

Don’t forget to see how the Hostdedi Cloud can take your hosting to the next level. We’ve created a hosting platform that’s faster, scalable, and more secure. Find out more.

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Hostdedi

Hosting providers are not made equal. Classic server methods of hosting have now diverged into a mix of alternate data center types, each of which falls under the singular heading of ‘data center’.

This can make finding the right type of data center architecture for your business a tricky proposal – especially if you’re unsure what you’re looking for.

As a potential client, hosting infrastructure is something that affects every facet of your hosting experience, from support to performance, and beyond. This article provides an explanation as to the different types of hosting provider available, with the aim of helping you find the right fit for you and your business.

A quick overview of the data center types:

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	Reseller	Colocation	Owned and Operated
Direct access to infrastructure	✕	✕	✓
Root access to the server	✕	✓	✓
Direct support	✕	Maybe	✓
Custom infrastructure	✕	✓	✓
Real application optimizations	✕	✓	✓

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Type R: A Reseller Data Center

Resellers are hosting providers that don’t own or manage their data center facilities but re-sell those of another.

This is great when it comes with added incentives such as development assistance or design and marketing consultation. Moreover, reseller solutions often provide some of the security and performance benefits of a larger data center for a fraction of the price.

Reseller hosting falls down when it comes to the level of support providers are able to provide. Resellers are not given direct root access to a server. This means they can’t handle support requests directly and instead have to follow a complex line of communication. This often leads to multiple voices trying to work on a single problem; including, but not limited to:

• The site owner (you)
• The reseller
• The reseller’s support team
• The data center’s support team
• The data center’s infrastructure engineers

Support becomes especially problematic when you find that most agreements between resellers and infrastructure providers don’t cover the reseller’s client: you. In most cases, infrastructure providers are only contractually obligated to help the reseller, not the site owner.

If you host with a reseller, expect longer support times and a lower quality service with a lower price tag.

Type C: A Colocation Data Center

A hosting provider that colocates is one that doesn’t own their hosting facility but does have root access to the server.

Again, a benefit of opting for type C hosting is that most colocation facilities feature top-of-the-line redundancies and excellent facility features for keeping hosted infrastructure secure and reliable – all at a lower cost for you.

A colocation hosting provider is unlikely to have physical, hands-on access despite full root control of the server. Most of the time, trained remote engineers called smart hands provided by the colocation facility, execute support requests that involve physical changes.

A good way to judge how this may affect your hosting experience is to ask how close the colocation facility is to their base of operations and what level of access they have. If you are lucky, you’ll find that your provider is located next door to the colocation facility and have an agreement for direct, instant access. Unfortunately, this is rare and after setting up server racks, many colocation providers have no access.

If they don’t have access, similar support issues can arise.

What Are Smart Hands?

Many colocation providers offer something called ‘smart hands’. These are trained staff members able to provide onsite infrastructure support.

Smart hands can:

• Provide technical support
• Manage physical infrastructure issues
• Reduce downtime
• Proactively keep ahead of any potential issues in the data center

Ask your hosting provider as to whether they have proactive or reactive smart hands. Proactive smart hands should help stop hosting solution outages before an issue arises, while reactive smart hands will only step in after something becomes a problem.

“Smart hands are trained staff members able to provide onsite support for any issues that need fixing.”

Type O: An Owned and Operated Data Center

“Owned and Operated hosting providers offer the best in terms of support and control.“

Owned and Operated hosting is where your hosting provider and data center facility are one and the same. This type offers the best in terms of support and control due to your hosting provider being a direct line to your hosting infrastructure.

This type of data center is also more flexible. They are often able to provide custom managed solutions due to onsite staff and team members having a deeper knowledge of the infrastructure available. This is perfect for larger businesses with specific requirements.

It is also more likely your hosting solution will be properly optimized for your application, as a result of your support team interacting with the hosting infrastructure daily. Checking what features are available and seeing reviews from other clients running the same application or CMS is a good way to judge the true performance of this type of data center.

Disaster Recovery

In the event of a disaster, peace of mind is knowing that your hosting provider or data center knows what to do. This isn’t always certain with reseller and colocation hosting.

If you host with a reseller or provider that colocates, and their infrastructure provider goes down, they have no control over getting that service back online. In many cases, this won’t only affect your solution, it will also affect their internal services; potentially rendering you unable to contact your hosting provider.

Owned and Operated providers can tell you exactly what is happening to your solution at any given time during a disaster and provide a basic outline of how they will manage recovery. Find out more about data center risk and recovery.

Other Data Center Types

Another classification system often used is data center tiers. The tier system is largely based on reliability, with tier one providers having the lowest uptime, and tier 4 providers the highest.

Posted in:
Hostdedi

At the beginning of 2017, Matt Mullenweg announced an ambitious project to replace the WordPress editor with a modern block-based editor. Named Gutenberg after the inventor of movable-type printing, the new editor was developed as a feature plugin and then released as the Gutenberg plugin. If all goes according to plan, Gutenberg will be merged into WordPress later this year with the release of WordPress 5.0.

Writing in Gutenberg is quite different to writing in the current WordPress editor. Headers, paragraphs, images, and other elements are contained within blocks. Each block has formatting and configuration options. And blocks can be moved around the page to create layouts.

The WordPress editor is in need of renovation. While usable, no one considers it an example of great user interface design. It is frustrating to new users who don’t understand its quirks. Shortcodes are awkward and unsuitable for a modern content management system. But the editor is used by millions of people every day, many of whom are not impressed with the planned changes.

Gutenberg has supporters, but there are bloggers, business owners, WordPress developers, and agencies that would rather use the current interface. They complain that the block-based system does not provide a good user experience, that it is difficult to write outside of WordPress and paste into the editor — a workflow used by many, and that Gutenberg is not ready for mainstream adoption.

Gutenberg is likely to be the default editor in the next major release of WordPress, but WordPress site owners who don’t enjoy working in Gutenberg can hold back the tide — at least temporarily.

The Classic Editor Plugin

The Classic Editor plugin brings back the original WordPress editor. It is intended to be used by sites that prefer the original editor or that need to use it for plugin compatibility, meta boxes, and other features that don’t work in Gutenberg.

If you are not enthusiastic about Gutenberg, the Classic Editor plugin will turn back time, but it may not be around forever. At best, it is a stopgap that will keep the classic editor alive for a few years.

ClassicPress

ClassicPress is a fork of WordPress 4.9.8. Its maintainer, Scott Bowler, is not a fan of Gutenberg and aims to keep ClassicPress as a Gutenberg-free alternative to WordPress.

A fork occurs when a developer copies open source software and creates a parallel project. Over time, the forked version and the original version evolve differently, even if the developer intends to keep them synchronized. Gutenberg is a key part of WordPress’s future development; users of ClassicPress won’t benefit from those changes.

ClassicPress currently has one developer, as compared to WordPress’s hundreds. In my opinion, forking WordPress is a quixotic protest that is unlikely to last long. I’d advise against moving any important production site in that direction.

Remaining On The 4.9.X Branch

If a site isn’t updated to WordPress 5.0 — or whichever version makes Gutenberg the default — it can continue to use the classic editor.

This is the easiest solution, but it is also the worst. The site would receive no security updates and no new features. It would eventually become incompatible with WordPress plugins and themes and would be unable to update to new versions. Declining to update over the long term is not a viable or safe option.

If you really don’t want to use Gutenberg, the Classic Editor plugin is the best solution. You will be able to keep your site up-to-date and have access to the editor you prefer for the foreseeable future.

Posted in:
Hostdedi

Instead of asking about bandwidth, ask how your hosting provider manages traffic spikes. Not only will this give you valuable insight into how your hosting solution may be treated in other areas, it also lets you know how to prepare for future growth.

The holiday shopping season is fast approaching. If you are an eCommerce seller, this means an increase in traffic and sales, and time to upgrade your hosting solution to match.

Yet traffic spikes don’t only occur during the shopping season. A number of events can cause a traffic spike: content going viral, a product being featured on TV, or perhaps a sudden surge in the popularity of what you’re selling. 

These events can be planned for by knowing what tools you have at your disposal and how effective they can be at improving user concurrency.

In preparation for the holiday seasons, we’ve put together three ways hosting providers tend to manage traffic spikes.

Don’t have time to read the specifics? See our summary below.

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	Optimizations	Upgrades	Auto Scaling
Site Capacity Increase?	✓	✓	✓
Instant?	✓	✕	✓
Available on All Solutions?	✕	✓	✕
Included in Cost?	✓	✕	✕

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Why Check Website Traffic?

Traffic spikes are managed differently by different hosting providers. Not all are prepared to accommodate sales and viral content events.

Some providers stop service after a certain cap has been reached; others continue to allow users to access your site but throttle speed. Only some providers offer the tools needed to maintain accessibility and performance. A good hosting provider accommodates traffic spikes in a number of ways, depending on the solution you have. We’ve identified three primary methods:

• Environment optimization
• Quick upgrades and downgrades
• An auto scaling mechanism

Is Your Environment Optimized?

Environment optimizations are usually accessible from your control panel and do not come at an extra cost.

The Hostdedi Cloud Accelerator is an example of an environment optimization. This feature is designed to take advantage of NGINX and enables higher user concurrency without having to upgrade or enable auto scaling. It is turned on by clicking a button in the Hostdedi Client Portal.

What Is Your Upgrade/Downgrade Policy?

As hosting technology has developed, so too have upgrade and downgrade procedures and policies. These vary depending on the type of solution you have.

Cloud Solutions

Cloud solution upgrades and downgrades are fast and easy. Most of the time, cloud solutions can be upgraded through your Client Portal or admin panel with a few clicks and should scale instantly.

Classic Solutions

Upgrading and downgrading traditional hosting solutions requires a migration. This means going through data replication, client testing, a final database re-sync, and a domain repoint. This takes from 3 to 5 days, which includes time for scheduling, client testing, and common delays in communication.

If you intend to downgrade a classic solution, and you’ve paid for several months in advance, check how your hosting provider manages any amount you haven’t used.

Cluster Solutions

Upgrading a cluster solution is relatively easy and can be done by adding a node (web application server). This will, in most cases, take between 72 hours and 2 weeks.

Due to the nature of hosted clusters, upgrading and downgrading in short succession is not efficient or economical, it is usually much better to maintain a high-performance cluster for a longer period of time than just upgrading for a sales event. Consult your hosting provider on their recommended course of action.

Cloud Auto Scaling

Instead of upgrading your hosting solution entirely, auto scaling allows for your site to scale capacity only when it needs it. This allows for your solution to meet any traffic spikes you face while keeping costs down.

Auto scaling mechanisms vary by provider. Generally, the process involves the scaling of PHP threads: individual processes a server executes. Each user action on your site executes a certain number of PHP threads: the more you have access to, the more simultaneous actions can be performed.

Use Your Hosting the Way It’s Meant to Be Used

You have a number of tools at your disposal for increasing the performance of your hosting solution. Find out exactly what your hosting solution includes by asking your provider the 5 questions you really should be asking.

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Still haven’t chosen a data center location yet? Find out how to choose a data center. Alternatively, see how the Hostdedi Southfield data center compares.

Want to know more about your data center? You can also see how to make your website migration as seamless as possible, or find out the real risks to the data center facility you host in.

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Hostdedi

A critical vulnerability in the popular Ultimate Member plugin was discovered earlier this month. A patch was released to fix the problem on 9th August, but researchers report that bad actors are using the vulnerability to compromise WordPress sites using earlier versions of the plugin.

If you use Ultimate Member on your WordPress site, it should be updated to version 2.0.22 or newer as soon as possible. Failing to update could lead to your site being compromised.

Ultimate Member Vulnerability

Ultimate Member is a popular plugin with over 100,000 active installations. It adds membership-related features to WordPress sites, including user profiles, custom form fields, member directories, and more. Ultimate Member is one of the most widely used plugins for building community and membership sites with WordPress.

The vulnerability in Ultimate Member is classified as an Unauthenticated Arbitrary File Upload vulnerability. A flaw in the plugin allows a bad actor to upload arbitrary files to a WordPress site, including PHP files.

To remove the vulnerability, update Ultimate Member as soon as possible.

The Vulnerability Is Actively Exploited By Hackers

Researchers discovered that a large number of WordPress sites were being compromised with a PHP backdoor. Once the backdoor was installed, the attacker used their access to inject code that redirects site visitors to web pages under the attackers’ control.

The attackers probed WordPress sites for vulnerable versions of Ultimate Member and used the vulnerability to upload the backdoor. Additional code was then injected into various files on the WordPress site, including all files that contain <head> tags and all files with jquery in their name or content.

This is an unsophisticated approach, but it worked – several hundred WordPress sites are known to have been compromised in this way. Users were redirected to pages that presented a Captcha test and asked for permission to send browser notifications.

The Problems Of Disclosure

Many of the attacks happened after the patch to fix the vulnerability in Ultimate Member was released. This is a common pattern: fixing a vulnerability alerts bad actors to its existence. The likelihood of a vulnerable site being attacked increases once the patch is released. WordPress site owners who update promptly are protected; those who delay are not and their sites face increased risk.

In this case, the developers of Ultimate Member did exactly what they were supposed to. The presence of the vulnerability was unfortunate, but any complex software is likely to develop such problems at some point in its life. Of more importance is the fact that it was patched promptly when the vulnerability was discovered.

If you suspect that your site has already been compromised, Sucuri’s mitigation guide includes more information and instructions for removing the malicious code. If you need help, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Hostdedi support team by opening a ticket in your Client Portal or by email.

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Hostdedi

This week Alex, the Hostdedi Team Member Relations Specialist, walked us through the ins and outs of hiring the right people to work in a data center.

Why Are Human Resources Important In a Data Center?

Team members are an important part of any team. This is especially true at Hostdedi, where our services and solutions revolve around offering unparalleled hosting support to clients.

In order to do this, our human resources department works tirelessly to find and hire the right candidates and to help create a company culture of growth and fun.

Teams Important to a Data Center

Alex identified four primary team categories integral to the running of a data center.

• Support
• Research and Development
• Administrative
• Sales

The teams that fall into these categories work independently but also connect to deliver the best client experience possible. To make this process as efficient as possible, it’s important to hire experienced candidates that fit the company culture and believe in it.

As Hostdedi is a hosting provider that focuses on support, the support category often takes precedence over others. A great client experience from point A to B means paying attention to what the client needs and our support department is one of the best ways to understand what this means.

Finding the Right Candidates

Finding the right candidate for an open position means finding someone who fits the company culture. Hostdedi believes in autonomy and innovation, and focusing on what you’re good at.

To this point, experience is just as important. To provide excellent service to our clients, we try to find knowledgeable and expert support staff. Many of our staff members are referred and recommended to us. Which brings us to our final point.

Willing to Go Beyond

A Hostdedi, we believe in going beyond. In fact, our values all revolve around going beyond in one way or another; whether that’s with work, team spirit, or contributing to innovations.

If the right candidate is willing to go beyond, they get a lot back, including some great perks, unique opportunities, and the chance to work remotely.

Interested in Joining Hostdedi?

If you’re interested in becoming part of the Hostdedi team, you can see what opportunities are available here. If you think you’re the right fit, what are you waiting for? Apply now.

Posted in:
Hostdedi

ModSecurity helps to protect your site from a variety of attacks by matching up known attack patterns and identifying anomalies. Here’s what you need to know about the web application firewall and how it protects you.

 

 

What Is ModSecurity?

ModSecurity is a web application firewall designed to protect against web-based threats (we’ll come back to these later), including:

• Brute-force attacks
• SQL injection
• cross-site scripting

ModSecurity works by detecting and blocking requests that match signatures of known attack patterns and/or through the use of anomaly scoring. On occasion, ModSecurity may misinterpret a legitimate user’s actions as a threat. Such users will usually encounter a 403 “Forbidden” HTTP status code.

Finding The Issue

The first step to identifying mis-sent 403’s is investigating your website’s error logs. If these logs indicate your site blocked a legitimate request, ModSecurity may be the cause. Resolving the issue is usually a matter of confirming the blocked request was indeed legitimate, then either adding a whitelist or adjusting ModSecurity’s ruleset to prevent it from blocking similar legitimate requests in the future.

If we host your website, and you don’t have the time or resources to investigate, our support team can do it for you. Just open a ticket through the Client Portal, and we can examine your logs, determine the cause, and apply one of our application-specific rulesets. These rulesets help ModSecurity better recognize legitimate users, and include Magento, WordPress, and other platforms featured on our website.

Brute-Force Attacks

Brute-force attacks attempt to access your site’s admin panel with fast, repeated attempts to guess the password. This method follows a consistent pattern. First, the password is entered into the login form, then sent to the server. If the attack succeeds, the server rejects the password, and content management system (CMS, like Magento, WordPress, and so on) returns an unauthorized token, which redirects the user to the login page. Brute force attacks repeat these login attempts at a furious pace and continue until they succeed, or are detected and stopped.

When the web server notices a high rate of failed logins, ModSecurity blocks the IP address attempting to log in. However, our settings require a relatively high number of failed password entries before perceiving those attempts as a brute force attack. If you are a legitimate user struggling with a password, you will come nowhere near this threshold.

SQL Injection

ModSecurity uses a similar technique to derail SQL injection, a common form of attack that attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in an application to insert a malicious SQL statement into your database. These statements normally run automatically as part of database operation. If successful, these attacks can change or disclose your data without your knowledge, or even destroy such data.

SQL injection usually inserts these statements into entry fields, such as those requesting usernames or passwords, and require a security vulnerability that allows user input to be unexpectedly executed as an SQL statement. While the technical details are beyond the scope of this entry, it’s enough to know that ModSecurity resists these nefarious activities.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

In cross-site scripting (XSS), malicious users inject scripts into the HTML of vulnerable websites. When an unsuspecting user clicks the compromised content, the script gains all permissions attached to that user’s system. With this method, attackers can learn login credentials, upload viruses, and even gain administrative access.

ModSecurity intervenes by detecting and blocking requests that attempt to exploit this class of vulnerabilities.  

ModSecurity Alone Isn’t Enough

Like any security system, ModSecurity cannot credibly claim perfection. It will, however, make you a harder target. Combined with other best practices like prompt installation of your application’s security patches, a strong password policy, cautious deployment of plug-ins, and two-factor authentication for admin access, ModSecurity plays a key role protecting your website.

 

For help getting the most of ModSecurity, or for general inquiries, please contact our 24/7 Support Team by email or through your Client Portal.

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Hostdedi

Dear Summer,

It seems like you arrived only yesterday. Won’t you consider staying for another month or two? Halloween is so anxious to meet you!

Forever your friend,

Michigan

 

 

Sigh.

Summer will decline like it always does, of course, and fly back south for the duration of The Season That Must Not Be Named. It is the way of things.

At Hostdedi, we’ve learned the best way to forget about our on-again, off-again relationship with Summer is to grill a few hundred pounds of meat and invite a few friends. Enter our Annual Grill-Off, now 5-years old and counting.

On August 13, we hosted 130 team members. vendors, customers, and partners for an evening of meat-tastic merriment and charity fundraising. For the feast, leadership from multiple teams sizzled, smoked, and sliced their way through:

• 120 lbs of ribs
• 200 lbs of brisket
• 50 lbs of chicken
• 20 lbs of steak fajitas
• 100 lbs of pork butts

The bounty of meat was once again supplied by our customer-turned-vendor, huntspoint.com. Beans, salads, breads, and all manner of dessert rounded out the feast with a potluck effort.

Once again, the shining tool in our griller’s arsenal was our retired-and-repurposed power distribution unit (PDU). Our four-time Grill-Off Champion, Adam (who also happens to be our Chief Financial Officer), still claims its the best smoker he’s ever used. As a Texan and a harsh critic of all things grill-related, we consider this high praise.

Adam has drawn fire recently for perhaps having an unfair advantage – beef brisket, made from cows that were fed a fine blend of tall fescue and Texas bluegrass, given daily Swedish massages and bathed in unicorn tears. Alleged unfair practices aside, we thank all of our grillers – Brad, Josh, Frank, Kevin, and Adam – for toiling through the night to deliver delicious eats to us all!

And what’s summer without swimming? Our Charity Dunk Tank returned, this time for Habitat for Humanity. For $3 a ball, guests lined up to douse our leadership. Our Chief Operations Officer, Vik, had the honor of going first. If you’re hungry for a highlights reel, please check out our video!

By sunset and about a half-dozen managers (and one client!) later, our guests had raised nearly $1,000 for Habitat for Humanity.

Rounding out the event were tours of our data center, an inflatable jousting arena, and a  mechanical bull, the latter of which had its way with the author of this blog after three ill-advised attempts to crack the 10-second barrier.

All of us at Hostdedi would also like to thank all of the teams that worked together to sing a sweet swan song for summer. These included HR, Facilities, Administration, Sales, Project Management, and the sun-scorched volunteers that made this event possible. We’d be remiss if we didn’t also give thanks to Mother Nature, who saw fit to provide skies of blue and clouds of white.

… And the brisket’s staying. Boss’s orders!

 

Jay Dobry

Our technical writer of 4 years and counting, Jay wrangles our Knowledge Library and occasionally dabbles in blogging, sarcasm, and getting wrecked by mechanical animals.

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Hostdedi

A guest post contributed by our technical writer Jason Dobry, about how bringing everyone together helps to create a team that knows more, does more, and makes for a great game of Zombicide. 

 

 

The best geeks are unashamed, even proud,  of their geekhood. As a technical writer in web hosting company, I’m just one more happy geek in the sea, lost in the tides of Linux, Magento, and obscure quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

To be fair, I’m a writer first, and a tech second, or perhaps even fifth. I work with nearly every team and learn something new nearly every day. The upswing of this is I know about 70 percent of our faces and names. The challenging part is my technical knowledge rates better in “breadth” than “depth.”

Building a Multi-Talented Team

Job challenges aside, this cross-team familiarity is a tremendous asset. Like many companies, we use an instant-messaging tool, email, and other means of digital communication. The ability to connect a name to a face provides an extra incentive to help each other out. It’s easier to ignore Joebob (Needy) McGreeblies when I know him only as pixels on a screen, rather than someone I’ve met.

Of course, that assumes Bob and I actually liked each other when we met. Maybe Joebob is socially awkward, or maybe I stayed up too late watching Westworld for the second time and yawned every 30 seconds during our conversation. Or, maybe we just work in web hosting, and both of the extroverts already found their way to Sales.

Sometimes meeting these strangers isn’t enough. In a company of mostly tech-minded introverts, how does one encourage them to rub elbows?

It’s a myth that geeks don’t enjoy the company of others. They just tend to prefer the company of other geeks, which is why I organize Games for Geeks (GFG) at Hostdedi. We meet on the third Friday of every month for company-supplied pizza and a geeky board game or three. These aren’t “party games,” these are games that make you either think of ways to cooperate or ways to conquer.

Team-Building Without Team-Building in Mind

Mind you, GFG wasn’t devised to be a team-building activity. I was just looking for a way to add board games to my busy schedule of writing, children, and subservience to my feline captors.

It’s just a fortunate side-effect. We’re a small group, but games bring together people spanning teams that normally don’t interact much: System Operations, Support, Software Development, and Billing.

I didn’t stop to appreciate this perk until recently. As I said earlier, my role as technical writer spans nearly every team, but some teams don’t naturally interact all that much. GFG gives these teams a reason to do so without feeling contrived or “required.” Participation is voluntary… but

FUN IS MANDATORY

Except it’s not, of course. I’ve found the most reliable way to get people to attend is just to be “the best geek” I can. Jump in with both feet, sound like a borderline lunatic, sprinkle a dash of cheerleader, and be personable. I’m not outgoing by nature, but I can fake it if it means I can get my game on.

It’s not even exclusive to people identifying as “geek.” There’s no litmus test, no threshold for admission The geek-curious are welcome, and we always appreciate new blood. In past months, we’ve hosted spouses, neighbors, family members, and sometimes just co-workers with a grudge against zombies or cosmic evil.

Ultimately, it’s just about sharing light-hearted fun in an intellectual activity while eating far too much pizza and not nearly enough veggies. Not a hard sell for anyone that’s curious about games in which we:

• Survive armageddon in End of the Line, a post-apocalyptic tale of family survival, radioactive zombies, and fuel shortages. Just because life is brutal, doesn’t mean it can’t be fun!

• Team up to take down the ancient horror slumbering beneath the city in Arkham Horror, even if we succeed only in annoying the Great Old One and are devoured like buzzing mosquitoes.
• Choose sides in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Flick ‘Em Up, a game where the white hats only win if they shoot straight and stay cool. Regrettably, the good guys in our game did neither.

GFG has run more or less every month since October 2016. We’re small – about a half dozen regulars and handful of “occasionals” – but it’s one more way to have fun in a “work setting” while forgetting we’re in a work setting. Added to other company social events like trivia, softball, charity events, and perhaps even a company Grill-Off, it creates another vector for shared experiences.

“Shared” doesn’t even have to mean “cooperative.” Plotting against your coworkers in a low-stakes environment makes for a good laugh, and everyone’s content to leave past squabbles on the table. Well… except for me, against a certain person by the name of “Alan,” who stole my family’s grain in a game of Agricola and left us with no recourse but to eat our family pig, Mr. Ribs.

You know who you are, “Alan.” Better be watching your back during that next game of Zombicide. Sure, it’s cooperative, but accidents happen…

 

 

Jason Dobry

Our technical writer of 4 years and counting, Jay wrangles our Knowledge Library and occasionally dabbles in blogging, softball, and being the second loudest person on his team.

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