If you can’t reach your site right away, wait a few minutes for the world’s DNS servers to catch up. When you can reach your site, start by logging in via SSH:

ssh pythonfu.com

Now we can download and build Django.

wget http://www.djangoproject.com/m/releases/1.4/Django-1.4-alpha-1.tar.gz
tar xvfz Django-1.4-alpha-1.tar.gz
python Django-1.4-alpha-1/setup.py build

Afterwards, we can copy the django package to ~/etc/python2.7/ and clean up:

mv Django-1.4-alpha-1/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.6/django/ ~/etc/python2.7/django
rm -rf Django-1.4-alpha-1/ Django-1.4-alpha-1.tar.gz

To verify that Django has been installed correctly, you can fire up python and type import django. If there’s no error, we can go on to installing an actual application

Creating the first app

After we change to the site’s directory, we can use the django-admin.py tool to create a Hello World site:

cd domains/pythonfu.com/
python ~/etc/python2.7/django/bin/django-admin.py startproject yoursite

Connecting WSGI

We’re going to use Python’s Web Server Gateway Interface, WSGI, to run the site. Django ships the entry point we need in a file called “wsgi.py”. We only need to make a small change to that file.:

nano domains/pythonfu.com/yoursite/yoursite/wsgi.py

Right at the top of the file, insert these three lines. Make sure to change the paths. If you have a typo in this file, domains/pythonfu.com/logs/error.log will give you more information.

import sys

sys.path.insert(0, "/home/stefano/etc/python2.6/")
sys.path.insert(0, "/home/stefano/domains/pythonfu.com/yoursite")

Hit Ctrl+O, Enter to save and Ctrl+X to quit.

Now we can move back to the Control Panel to set up the application. Start by going to the Python section of your site, set your Alias, in this case "/", and the path of wsgi.py, in this case “yoursite/yoursite/wsgi.py":

After a few seconds, you should see Django running on your site:

And that’s it! You can now move on to the Django tutorial.

As developers, we are very much used to the idea of filing a bug report and having it read by the maintainer of a project. We are at the very end of the support chain right away. This idea is quite alien to traditional companies. It normally works like this:

• A technician, or more likely a rep, receives a phone call from a customer. If they have a real problem, a new ticket is created.
• The rep tries their very best to file a support ticket that will be useful to lower-level support staff working in the data centre.
• As the issue is being worked on, the support ticket is updated with information about possible causes and attempts to fix the problem. If the report is missing some key information, either go back to step 2, or – even worse – halt.
• When the issue is resolved, the support ticket will be marked “fixed”.

What’s wrong with this workflow? Well the customer is excluded from all steps except the first. They have no insight into the process, have no idea about the cause of the issue. All they know is that something is broken, and they can only hope that somebody has a minute to work on it. Often they don’t even know when the issue has been fixed.

Some very good companies provide support forums, maybe even public bug trackers. These are hard to use and unhelpful, but at least the customer has something to do while his service is out of order.

What’s the solution?

If you mean well, there is no reason to hide the fact that software systems will have issues. The smart company includes the customer, not trying to make them feel like they’re important, but showing them that they actually are.

• A customer files a report, using an easy to understand interface, and having the freedom to not learn the technical process of issue tracking before they do.
• The issue report is constantly edited, updated, commented on by both other customers and technical staff. From small things like a “+1, this issue affects me” to detailed technical reports that are helpful for technicians.
• When the issue is resolved, they have an insight into what went wrong and how staff went about fixing it. They can estimate how long it takes, and they have a real sense that people are working to help them do the things they need to do.

The idea is straightforward, but is almost never implemented well. These are some attempts at customer-centric support I’ve come across:

• Exposing Bugzilla, Launchpad, Redmine to your customer (i.e. treating your customer as unpaid technical staff)
• Support forums, Q&A systems, things like get satisfaction (i.e. the modern equivalent of a suggestion box)
• Twitter accounts, asking the customer to describe their important issue in 140 characters to someone, hopefully human, who may or may not respond.

This was not good enough

Ondina, we understand that your issues are just that, issues. They are not discussions, questions, inquiries, suggestions, nor crowdsourced debugging. Tracker has been designed with that in mind.

Easy to use

Even if you are technically versed, it should not be your job to file a perfect report that a technician can work on right away. You are allowed to put as little or as much effort into your issue report as you want. Tracker will make it easy for staff to update the issue until it is actionable, and it lets you check up on the progress as often as you want.

Bringing customers and technicians together

While dedicated support staff might make the developers’ lives easier, some customers would actually rather talk to low-level engineers. Tracker is therefore designed with both customers and technicians in mind. Supports staff is still able to do their bit, improving issues with detail the customer can’t (or doesn’t want to, shouldn’t have to) provide, but at the same time, developers, support, and the customer get to be on the same platform.

Tracker is transparency

At the heart of tracker is the idea of being transparent, open, and accessible. We set out to deliver a very high quality experience, a feat impossible to archive without constant interaction with you.

One more thing!

If you like the way tracker works, and we hope you do, the code is available freely, so you can install it, use it for your own projects, or just play with it. The license is GPLv3, and the repository is up on GitHub.

The first batch of Private Preview invitations go out. If you’ve received one, simply follow the instructions to get started. If you’ve signed up but have yet to receive an email, fear not! We’ll be sending additional invitations as time progresses. Everyone who has signed up before this date should have an invite to the platform within the next three weeks. That being said here’s what you can expect from the platform:

• PHP Support
• Python Support via WSGI
• Email Accounts and Forwarders
• MySQL Databases
• Multiple Sites per Account
• Simple DNS Management
• Key based SSH access
• Totally awesome Control Panel
• Solid platform built on top of rock solid Ubuntu servers

This is just a short list of the features available for testing. In the upcoming months, during our Private Preview we plan on adding some of the following:

• Ruby Support
• 1 Click installations for all the popular software
• Deep account analytics for monitoring usage and growth
• Domain purchasing

As well as many other improvements and features proposed by you during this Private Preview. To kick off this week long celebration we’ll be providing video walkthroughs of all the sections of the Control Panel completed thus far, as well as a surprise for all our Private testers for their hard work.

So what do we ask of you, the tester? Simply test our services, put them to use, and anytime you find a bug, a lapse in design, or a new feature report it using our built in tools!

We’re building a shared web hosting service. We’re innovating shared web hosting. Quality above all else. It wasn’t until I stepped away for a few days that I realized compromising on features for an early private release achieved none of the goals. After playing Team Fortress 2 with Gaming Stack Exchange people I was reminded of an interview with Valve about the delay of it’s Half-Life 2 release. They said, and I’m para-phrasing, “We’ll release when it’s ready.”

We weren’t ready. With only a few functioning sections, inconsistent User Interface, and no real means of use, the Control Panel amounted to an over-glorified DNS editor. In order to get back on track, and to avoid another letdown for those waiting for PPR, I effectively turned off the flow of information. No more announcements. No more posts. If we were going to still do this, we needed to circle the wagons and get to building — and that’s what we did.

I finally feel we are ready to try this again. A lot of lessons have been learned from what happened back in October. As such, February 13th the first of the invites will be going out! We are very excited to show off a nearly complete control panel, and a hosting service that’s secure while providing features seldom found in other services, such as Python and Ruby (Rack, Rails) hosting along side your PHP sites, an efficient, simple, and powerful control panel with which you can manage your sites, multiple database engines, simple DNS management, and the ability to fine tune all aspects of the sites you can host on your account.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing all new videos of the now nearly completed control panel along with additional information about what to expect from the service during PPR and public launch. As always, we’re happy to field questions about the upcoming service and take requests for features. Let us know below in the comments below!

One piece of functionality I know for certain needs to work flawlessly is the Feedback Form. Because of this, I’ve spent quite some time scoping out how other popular services prod users and take feedback from them. Since the majority of web hosting providers don’t seem to have a way to submit feedback (As cPanel and other Web Control Panels don’t anticipate there being any feedback necessary for their product), I looked into how Google managed feedback from Google Plus users.

Google Plus Feedback

It’s simple: describe the problem and give users the ability to “highlight” areas of the page to be included in the report while blacking out private details. It does have a few drawbacks, though. For starters, it’s slow. To even load the interface it takes approximately 45 seconds.  Before submission, there’s a preview step and, finally, the submission. Getting from one step to the other incurs a 30-45 second load time. Like so many other sites that sport a feedback button, this one is located outside of the realm of design: Bottom right of the window. Most sites seem to anchor theirs on the right or left of the page in an off-beat, annoying color.

Well, it's not that far away.

Being a developer, I know nothing about what the average user wants in an interface. If it were up to me, I would hand everyone SSH access and say, “Have at it!” Unfortunately, that really won’t work for everyone, and I know that. With Ondina, I know feedback is going to be the only way to bring Ondina from just another hosting provider to the hosting provider. So I’ve taken some time to build something that will hopefully make your input and you, the user, the single most important entity to this whole operation! I care what you have to say. In fact, without your feedback I’d be stuck at the gates. As a result, I’ve placed a feedback panel in the control panel. On every page you’ll be able to not only report your good experiences with Ondina hosting, but also exactly how you think your experience can be improved. In addition to providing feedback, you can view all the outstanding issues reported on any page ordered by votes.

I look forward to the Private Preview Release and most importantly your feedback!

When I started working on Ondina, I knew the control panel couldn’t be some out-of-the-box solution like cPanel or ISP Config. While they served a purpose in the past, they’re either too expensive to be practical or seem to be stuck in a time warp to 1999. If I were going to do this right, I would need something new, fresh, and simple. This is why I’ve left the control panel as the last thing on my to-do list.

Failed design attempt #9,001

Now that we’re coming to the home stretch and our Private Preview Release is just around the corner, I’ve realized it’s time to take care of what is arguably the most important part of the whole project: the dreaded control panel design. I’ve tried several times during the project to design the control panel area. The best I could do is pictured above. I really don’t like this design, it’s too….something. It’s impossible to describe, and I’m not even sure where I would begin. It has the elements I want: simple overview screen, simple navigation options, fixed width design, etc. It just seemed to fail in it’s overall execution. It just wasn’t sexy.

Luckily, I was able to get some much needed help! Stefano Palazzo, another moderator on Ask Ubuntu, was showcasing a personal project he’s currently working on: Python Fu. When I saw his design for the site, I knew he had what I lacked: the ability to translate a site design into something that is simple, elegant, and sexy while still being completely functional and cross-browser safe. He agreed to assist and was able to whip a mock-up together for me. I loved it. We’ve been tweaking the overall theme elements, but ever since then, it’s been full steam ahead as I continue to design and implement each page’s functionality.

Domain Management landing page

While the majority of the content is subject to change, this one is sure. The simplicity and elegance of this design will ripple throughout the Ondina Network.

The Virtual Host manager where you can configure each virtual host definition

There are a lot of the subtleties lost in screenshots (CSS transitions, Javascript interactions, etc.) that really enhance the impact of this theme.

As we get closer to Private Preview launch, a more in-depth tour of the control panel and its features will be released.

Now, there are hosting companies that are doing a lot of good things for customers; however, generally speaking, the current state of web hosts and how they operate is still a two-way mirror. Your host can see everything you do, but there is no way for you to audit them. How do you know you’re not sitting on an over-crowded server? How do you know that they monitor your machines for up-time and stability? How can you be certain that the downtime which occurred earlier was really because of faulty hardware? You have to take them at their word and trust everything they say.

We’ve been working on a company that operates differently. It operates on Open Source mentality. If you’re going to pay us and trust us to host your website, whether it’s a personal blog or your company’s portfolio, you have the right to know how we operate and how the servers are maintained, and to have complete confidence that what we’re doing is the best possible way to present and maintain your presence on the web. That’s why Ondina is taking business practices and hosting to a new level.

From a company perspective, we plan to provide nearly 1:1 transparency on what we do regarding your account. From displaying account notes to breaking down where each penny goes from your monthly payment so you know the reasoning behind how much your hosting plan costs. We also plan to publish our entire infrastructure’s layout for review by the community and to show you how we think all hosting companies should operate. We plan to spend more time and money on keeping existing customers happy and thrilled with our hosting instead of trying to hard sell new users. Finally, and most importantly, we plan to always offer the highest quality products and services with best practices in business and execution.

From a technical aspect, we will be providing that same 1:1 transparency with regards to your account. We will make our real-time monitoring systems available to you, provide live provisioning and population information for the server you’re on, and detail hardware information and your account’s resource utilization compared to the average account on your server. In addition, we plan to offer diverse hosting options such as PHP, Python, and Rails hosting all on the same account and to provide a simple, yet powerful, control panel with which you can control every aspect of how you host. Ultimately, we will be giving the power back to the user.

Ondina is more than just another hosting company. We’re here to push the limits of affordable shared hosting, offering things that the majority of hosts force you to upgrade and pay more to get. Ondina is here to set a new standard in web hosting.