Business Catalyst Blog

Hi everybody, 

We are progressing steadily with our Amazon migration, and today we have reached one of our most important milestones. 

Our new Sydney Datacenter is now live!

What does this mean for the regular BC partner?

All new sites that you create from now on in the Sydney Datacenter are going to be created on the new infrastructure. This means that for these new sites, created from now on the new datacenter, you won't worry about changing the DNS settings, or updating your SPF and TXT records. (Please note that you still need to update your old websites and their DNS settings. For more details about this check out our migration website.)

These new sites also will give you an opportunity to test our new datacenter and let us know how you find the new Amazon Web Services hosting. 

What are the next steps?

We are working towards a final migration in June, so as part of our next actions you will see that we open up a new European Datacenter and a new North American Datacenter in the next few weeks.  This will allow our partners in other geographies to test and deploy their websites on the new infrastructure. 

What action do you need to take about your old sites?

If your domain has been redelegated to BC then no action is needed on your side.  However, if your site has the DNS records with another provider, please follow the instructions on the migration site to help you keep your site available to customers through this migration. <.p>

If you are not able to change the DNS and SPF(TXT) records by middle of June we cannot guarantee the availability of your websites for the public. 

If you change your DNS records within the next 5 days you can benefit from our 15% discount code for new websites built on Business Catalyst. Read here more about this special Business Catalyst discount. 

Hi everyone, 

We are one week into the transition process to our new datacenters, and wanted to give you a brief reminder that you have less than 7 days to make the switch and receive our special 15% discount. 

By updating your domain settings within the next 7 days you will receive a 15% coupon for any new site you want to bring to Business Catalyst until beginning of September.  The coupon will be e-mailed to all partners who have successfully updated all their websites by the end of next week, and can be used on any website or websites you want to build in the next 3 months.  To see what needs to be done for a successful migration on your part see more details about the migration below. 

Actions required to keep your sites online

To ensure a painless migration, we've built a reverse proxy that allows you to start routing your client sites through the new infrastructure starting today. This means that you can begin updating your DNS to route through AWS right away, and avoid a last minute rush. We're allowing a 30 day migration window to ensure that all customers have time to update their sites. 

If by June 20th, 2013 your websites are not updated as per the instructions below, we can not guarantee a seamless migration, and your sites and hosted email services will no longer function. 

Sites using Business Catalyst's nameservers

For customers that have redelegated their domain to Business Catalyst the team has worked on a solution that requires no action on your side at this time. Should action be required at some point in the future you will receive a dedicated e-mail. 

Sites using DNS hosted externally with a 3rd party registrar

Sites with DNS hosted on a 3rd party domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy) must update their DNS records to point to one of the the new data center IP addresses. The legacy data center IP address will be decommissioned on June 20th, at which time if you have not updated your DNS records, your sites and hosted email will no longer function. Please update your 3rd party registrar info to our new IP addresses and create SPF records for each domain - you can use either of the two new IP addresses for your region when changing your DNS records:

Europe 54.246.209.120 or 54.246.209.119

United States 54.236.190.114 or 54.236.189.64

Australia 54.252.148.183 or 54.252.148.191

For detailed instructions please refer to this page on the official migration website.

Update your SPF (TXT) records

If your DNS is hosted externally, you are also required to update your Sender Policy Framework (SPF) TXT setup, to make sure emails are reaching customers inboxes. There are two options in this case:

• If the domain has no SPF or TXT record defined, you should add one with the following value: "v=spf1 mx include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all"
• If the domain already has an SPF record, you need to include the following value: "include:worldsecuresystems.com"

For detailed instructions about SPF and TXT records, please read this article. If you are unable to find the necessary tool to do so, please contact your domain registrar.

Visit our dedicated migration website

To make this migration as seamless as possible, we've created a dedicated migration websitethat includes:

• Detailed technical instructions for updating your DNS records
• White-label email notifications for contacting your customers
• Answers to frequently asked questions
• A list of services unavailable during the actual migration

This site will be our main channel of communication for migration-specific details moving forward, so make sure you bookmark it now.

We'd like to thank you for your understanding and patience during this migration period, and are hoping to make the switch as painless as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch in the comments section below.
The Adobe Business Catalyst Team

We'd like to thank everyone who was able to make it out to Los Angeles this year for Adobe MAX 2013. We had around 50 Partners in attendance, and a fantastic week of sessions, labs and social events.

Check out our BC @ MAX 2013 Facebook photo album to see the BC community out in force.

Watch the session video recordings

If you weren't able to attend, don't fear - we've got you covered with full video recordings of our Business Catalyst sessions presented by leading Partners.

---

Digital Marketing Best Practices with Business Catalyst with Brett Stockley from Pretty

Learn how to develop and execute an effective online marketing plan for your client's online business. Join Brett Stockley from the agency Pretty to: 

• Learn best practices deployed by Pretty Pollution across search, social networks, and more
• Discover how Pretty Pollution utilizes Adobe Business Catalyst to offer clients complete online marketing solutions
• See how you too can put these best practices in place to help your clients

Watch the recording on Adobe TV

---

Measuring and Optimizing your eCommerce Checkout Experience with Karim Ardalan from Dashbee

Learn how to test, measure, and optimize the online shopping experience for your e-commerce projects. Join Adobe Business Catalyst partner dashbee to glean best practices based on real-world use cases. Join Karim Ardalan, founder of dashbee, to:

• Learn how to identify fallout points and areas for improvement during the purchase experience
• Hear best practices for optimizing and measuring the impact of changes to your checkout process
• See real-world case studies of these practices in action

Watch the recording on Adobe TV

---

Developing an Effective Sales Strategy for Your Web Agency with Tim Gentle from Design Experts

Learn how to develop and implement an effective sales and retention process for your web agency. If selling solutions is something you need to brush up on, you don't want to miss this session. Join Tim Gentle from the agency Design Experts as he:

• Uncovers the importance of documentation in the sales process, from the phone ringing to closing the deal
• Provides tips on identifying and qualifying customers
• Outlines methods of scoping out the specific requirements of a project
• Defines how to create and deliver profitable sales proposals

Watch the recording on Adobe TV

---

Zero to Hero: The Business Catalyst Partner Journey with Brent Weaver from BC Gurus

Join Brent Weaver, CEO of BC Gurus, to glean insights from his impressive career, which has included launching hundreds of sites; consulting with many partners; and maintaining the popular education, tool, and template site BCGurus.com. Leveraging his experience with Adobe Business Catalyst, Weaver will:

• Take you on a journey through Business Catalyst partner stories from around the world
• Outline simple concepts that Business Catalyst partners can use to compete and grow their web business

Watch the recording on Adobe TV

---

We hope you enjoy the recordings, and thanks again to everyone who was able to make it!

Until next time,
The Adobe Business Catalyst Team.

Thanks to those of you who attended our orientation webinars yesterday.

If you were unable to join us live, you can access the recordings below:

Developing an Effective Sales Strategy for Your Web Agency - with Tim Gentle from Design Experts

Dreamweaver & Business Catalyst integration - with Adam Broadway (Download presentation deck)

Business Catalyst integration with Muse -  with Daniele Beaumont and Chris Kellet

 

Also, don't forget to register for our two upcoming webinars:

Wed, June 12th: Online Marketing with Brett Stockley from PrettyPollution

Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)

US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

Wed, July 10th: Learn how BC Gurus leverages Web Apps to power their popular Business Catalyst community website with Brent Weaver from BC Gurus

Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)

US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

To help you put your learning into practice, webinar participants will be receive a 15% discount on their next website. (*Some conditions apply, see below)

If you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to send them over to BCPartner-Team@adobe.com. We will be happy to answer all your inquiries.

Thank you and hope to see you in next month’s webinar.

*15% discount coupon applies for new site upgrades on any yearly/biyearly desired plan. Coupon validity: 31-Jul-2013, only available for the webinars’ attendees.

To ensure the highest security and performance levels for our services, we're applying a hardware and software update on servers located in our Dublin, New Jersey and Sydney datacenters. To minimize the customer impact, the updates are scheduled at the most convenient hours for the region and will take up to eight hours to complete.
During the maintenance procedure the Admin Console Access, Partner Portal, FTP, Dreamweaver extension, Muse, Business Catalyst APIs, Partner registration and Trial site creation will experience 2 service interruptions of up to 30 minutes each (first one at the beginning and the second at the end), impacting sites on ALL datacenters. 
Additionally, throughout the maintenance procedure, website front-ends for sites located in the respective Datacenter that have heavy database usage my experience service interruptions of maximum 5 minutes. 
Please find below the maintenance schedule and the list of affected services:

Start of maintenance	Duration	Datacenter	Customer impact
May 18th , 2013,  02:00 – 12:00 PST (12:00 GMT+02)	10 hours	New Jersey & Dublin	2 x 30 minutes service interruptions for Admin Console Access, Partner Portal, FTP, Dreamweaver extension, Muse, Business Catalyst APIs, Partner registration, Trial site creation; this will impact sites on all datacenters • Several intermittent website front-end interruptions for some sites on New Jersey datacenter
May 25th,  2013, 02:00 – 10:00 PST	8 hours	Sydney	2 x 30 minutes service interruptions for Admin Console Access, Partner Portal, FTP, Dreamweaver extension, Muse, Business Catalyst APIs, Partner registration, Trial site creation; this will impact sites on all datacenters • Several intermittent website front-end interruptions for some sites on Dublin datacenter

For up to date information about system status, check the Business Catalyst System Status page.
We apologize for any inconveniences generated by these service interruptions. Please make sure that your customers and team members are aware of these important updates.
Thank you for your understanding and support,
The Adobe Business Catalyst Team

Thanks to all of you who have registered to our webinars so far. 

We need to announce a last minute update regarding the webinar scheduled for this Wednesday, May 15th - Brendon O'Sullivan’s session on adding value to clients by upselling products & services had to be rescheduled. 

The topic and presenter for this webinar session has been replaced with our experienced BC Partner Tim Gentle from Design Experts on Wed, May 15th for a business session, where you will learn how to Develop an Effective Sales Strategy for Your Web Agency.

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

To help you put your learning into practice, webinar participants will be receive a 15% discount on their next website. (*Some conditions apply, see below)

The series continues in June and July with presentations from two of our trusted Partners, Brett Stockley and Brent Weaver, who will teach you how to grow your business into the future. Registrations are now open for those instances as well, and we will be sending out a reminder as we move closer to the presentation dates.

Wed, June 12th: Online Marketing with Brett Stockley from Pretty Pollution

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

Wed, July 10th: Learn how BC Gurus leverages Web Apps to power their popular Business Catalyst community website with Brent Weaver from BC Gurus

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

If you could not join us live, you can click the links below to access recordings of our past webinars:

• Dreamweaver & Business Catalyst integration - with Adam Broadway (Download presentation deck)
• Business Catalyst integration with Muse -  with Daniele Beaumont and Chris Kellet

If you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to send them over to BCPartner-Team@adobe.com. We will be happy to answer all your inquiries.

*15% discount coupon applies for new site upgrades on any yearly/biyearly desired plan. Coupon validity: 31-Jul-2013, only available for the webinars’ attendees.

As previously announced, we're transitioning Business Catalyst from its existing data centers to a new cloud infrastructure, based on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform. This is part of our on-going effort to improve our infrastructure and deliver the highest quality service to our Partners. 

Our team has been working hard behind the scenes to make all the necessary preparations, however there is now action required on your behalf.

Actions required to keep your sites online

To ensure a painless migration, we've built a reverse proxy that allows you to start routing your client sites through the new infrastructure starting today. This means that you can begin updating your DNS to route through AWS right away, and avoid a last minute rush. We're allowing a 30 day migration window to ensure that all customers have time to update their sites. 

If by June 20th, 2013 your websites are not updated as per the instructions below, we can not guarantee a seamless migration, and your sites and hosted email services will no longer function. 

By updating your domain settings within the next 2 weeks you will receive a 15% coupon for any new site you want to bring to Business Catalyst until beginning of September. 

Sites using DNS hosted externally with a 3rd party registrar

Sites with DNS hosted on a 3rd party domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy) must update their DNS records to point to one of the the new data center IP addresses. The legacy data center IP address will be decommissioned on June 20th, at which time if you have not updated your DNS records, your sites and hosted email will no longer function. Please update your 3rd party registrar info to our new IP addresses and create SPF records for each domain - you can use either of the two new IP addresses for your region when changing your DNS records:

Europe 54.246.209.120 or 54.246.209.119

United States 54.236.190.114 or 54.236.189.64

Australia 54.252.148.183 or 54.252.148.191

For detailed instructions please refer to this page on the official migration website.

Update your SPF (TXT) records

If your DNS is hosted externally, you are also required to update your Sender Policy Framework (SPF) TXT setup, to make sure emails are reaching customers inboxes. There are two options in this case:

• If the domain has no SPF or TXT record defined, you should add one with the following value: "v=spf1 mx include:worldsecuresystems.com ~all"
• If the domain already has an SPF record, you need to include the following value: "include:worldsecuresystems.com"

For detailed instructions about SPF and TXT records, please read this article. If you are unable to find the necessary tool to do so, please contact your domain registrar.

Sites using Business Catalyst's nameservers

For customers that have redelegated their domain to Business Catalyst the team has worked on a solution that requires no action on your side at this time. Should action be required at some point in the future you will receive a dedicated e-mail. 

Visit our dedicated migration website

To make this migration as seamless as possible, we've created a dedicated migration website that includes:

• Detailed technical instructions for updating your DNS records
• White-label email notifications for contacting your customers
• Answers to frequently asked questions
• A list of services unavailable during the actual migration

This site will be our main channel of communication for migration-specific details moving forward, so make sure you bookmark it now.

We'd like to thank you for your understanding and patience during this migration period, and are hoping to make the switch as painless as possible. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch in the comments section below.
The Adobe Business Catalyst Team

As some of you may have noted, some of the websites hosted with BC have been showing a downward curve for the analytics section in the timeframe of April 26th to April 30th. Upon reporting from some of our Partner Advisory Board members, the engineering team has investigated this issue and discovered that due to our proxy system put in place for our planned move to Amazon Web Services, some of the analytics calculations were not performed and displayed correctly. 

This issue has now been resolved, and the calculations and reporting have been fixed. 

However, the data from Apr 26 to Apr 30 is irretrievably lost and unfortunately cannot be reinstated. 

We apologize for this incident and will do our best to prevent any such occurrences in the future, as we continue our move to the cloud. Also, we would like to thank our PAB for the help in noticing this particular incident, and promptly raising the status of the tickets submitted through support. 

The BC Team. 

The team over at BC Gurus have been busy updating their already extensive library of Zero to Hero video training courses. They've also added great new content that will help familiarize you and your team with how DNS works inside Business Catalyst.

New DNS course
Just in time for our upcoming infrastructure migration, Zero to Hero now also includes an in-depth series on setting up DNS with Business Catalyst. Make sure you review this great course ahead of our AWS migration next month so that you're up to speed with managing your DNS records:

• Introduction to DNS
• DNS Basics
• Registering a domain name
• Add your domain name to Business Catalyst
• Managing DNS records
• Setting up MX records and Google Apps for Business Catalyst

Updated getting started videos
In line with our recent Partner Portal updates, the getting started series has been updated and you can check it out at the link below:

• How to use the Business Catalyst Partner Portal

Head on over to Zero to Hero to check out the new and updated courses today.

Join our experienced BC Partner Brendon O'Sullivan from Bosweb on Wed, May 15th for a business session, where you will learn how to add value to clients by upselling products & services.

Wed, May 15th: Adding value to clients by upselling products & services with Brendon O'Sullivan from Bosweb

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

To help you put your learning into practice, webinar participants will be receive a 15% discount on their next website. (*Some conditions apply, see below)

The series continues in June and July with presentations from two of our trusted Partners, Brett Stockley and Brent Weaver, who will teach you how to grow your business into the future. Registrations are now open for those instances as well, and we will be sending out a reminder as we move closer to the presentation dates.

Wed, June 12th: Online Marketing with Brett Stockley from Pretty Pollution

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

Wed, July 10th: Learn how BC Gurus leverages Web Apps to power their popular Business Catalyst community website with Brent Weaver from BC Gurus

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

If you could not join us live, you can click the links below to access recordings of our past webinars:

• Dreamweaver & Business Catalyst integration - with Adam Broadway (Download presentation deck)
• Business Catalyst integration with Muse -  with Daniele Beaumont and Chris Kellet

If you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to send them over to BCPartner-Team@adobe.com. We will be happy to answer all your inquiries.

*15% discount coupon applies for new site upgrades on any yearly/biyearly desired plan. Coupon validity: 31-Jul-2013, only available for the webinars’ attendees.