A Quick post about some recent Hosting changes and updates:

PHP7 is now available

We are now supporting PHP7 for Jamroom Hosted servers. PHP7 is an impressive server upgrade for a Jamroom site and can really help speed things up. We can upgrade your Jamroom Hosted server to PHP7 at the click of a button, so if you would like to upgrade let us know and we’ll get your site updated for you. Jamroom is 100% compatible with PHP7, so everything will just be a bit FASTER after we upgrade your server. There’s no downtime involved, so it’s quick and easy.

Hosting Plan Changes

As some of you may have noticed, we’ve discontinued the 4G, 8G and 12G Hosted plans. We found (and heard) the 4G server was too small for almost all sites, while the 8G and 12G weren’t used much. It seems sites either needed almost NO space or more than 12 Gigs. These low end plans also had a tremendous amount of “churn” and were no longer financially viable for us to keep offering. We know that for some of you on the 4G/8G/12G plans making the jump to 24G may be a big jump - larger than you would like. The good news is that right now you can upgrade to the 24G hosted plan and save 10% off each month - for as long as you have the server:

Jamroom Hosted plans and features

If you are currently on a 4G plan and were planning to upgrade to 8G, or a 8G plan and were planning on upgrading to a 12G server, and DON’T want to upgrade to 24G please let us know - we hate leaving anyone “in the lurch” and will see what we can do to accommodate your needs.

If you are currently on the 4G, 8G or 12G plans are are happy with the size of you server, you don't need to do anything - you can continue to use your existing server plan for as long as you like.

New - Premium install options

Getting started with another domain on your server is easier than ever. We’ve rolled out new “Premium” install options that can pre-install different site packages on your server. This makes it really easy to get setup quickly. You’ll see the new Premium options when creating a new domain on your server.

New Hosting Partner - A2 Hosting

With the 12G and lower hosting plans being discontinued, we know that for some of you the cost of Jamroom Hosted is going to be too high. We’ve partnered with A2 Hosting who provide fully managed VPS servers as well as shared hosting:

Jamroom Hosting at A2 Hosting

For those of you on a budget I think you’ll find the performance for the price is exceptional.

We’re always looking for ways to improve Jamroom Hosting and make it the best it can be. Our goal is the easiest and highest performing solution you can get, so please let us know if you have any feedback or questions and we can help.

Thanks!

- The Jamroom Team

After 2 solid months of beta testing, we are excited to finally take the wraps off of the Jamroom 6 Beta!

As a team we've been working really hard since summer to make sure Jamroom 6 provides the foundation we need for the next several years of Jamroom.  There have been quite a few "ups and downs" along the way, but it feels great to finally get Jamroom 6 into everyone's hands.

We want to thank everyone for your patience while we worked through A LOT of issues during the beta - more than we anticipated to be 100% honest.  The Timeline updates alone ended up being much, much more work than we had planned when we were putting together our Jamroom 6 TODO list.  It's all been worth it however, as going forward we have a lot more flexibility in key areas of Jamroom that we will be able to take advantage of over the coming months.

To celebrate the release of Jamroom 6, we are running TWO Specials!

 - 10% Off All Hosting Packages Upgrades!  This is a great deal - upgrade now and save 10% off your monthly hosting payment, and get access to more CPU, RAM and disk space.  Remember with Jamroom Hosting you can run as MANY Jamroom sites as you want on your server - it’s all included in the monthly price:

https://www.jamroom.net/hosting

 - 20% Off Jamroom Premium and the NEW Jamroom Professional!   Jamroom Premium and Jamroom Professional are designed for users that want to run Jamroom on their own servers, yet have access to the UNLIMITED features found in the Jamroom Hosting packages.  Install as many Premium Jamroom items on up to 2 domains, and easily add more:

https://www.jamroom.net/products

Make sure and check out the Jamroom 6 Upgrade announcement in the Support Forum:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum/announcements/46096/jamroom-6-upgrade-guide

and let us know if you have any feedback or questions.

We hope you all enjoy using Jamroom 6!

Thanks!

- The Jamroom Team

I’m really excited to announce that after several months of development we are kicking off the open beta for Jamroom 6!

Jamroom 6 is our first MAJOR version change for Jamroom in 3 years - although there have been a ton of new features introduced since Jamroom 5 was initially released, we felt it was time to have some fun!

A LOT of work has gone into Jamroom 6 to make it the best version of Jamroom yet - we’ve been working like mad since Nate joined the team.

What’s New in Jamroom 6

There are dozens and dozens of updates and new features throughout many of the modules - some of the big ones:

- All new “Follow Me” social skin - our most ambitious social skin ever
- Enhanced Timeline with “Quick Share” and all new sharing options
- New “Simple Chat” module makes chat on your site totally seamless
- New HTML Transactional Email support makes all your system notification email look awesome
- New “Profile Pulse” for profile notification counts
- Beefed up Media URL Scanner module now creates “cards” for shared URLs
- New User Birthday module - say happy birthday to your users
- Core DataStore enhancements to make Jamroom fly on larger sites

We have a ton of other smaller updates, tweaks and fixes that are getting rolled out with the Jamroom 6 open beta as well.  Jamroom 6 is a FREE upgrade for everyone - if you are already a Jamroom Hosted or Premium user you'll see upgrades available for your Premium modules as well.

Follow Me - the new super-social skin

Jamroom 6 includes a brand new skin for Jamroom - “Follow Me” - which is the most ambitious skin we’ve ever developed for Jamroom.  Not only does it have an awesome look and design, it showcases the many updates to the Timeline and Media URL Scanner modules.  Think of “Follow Me” as a beefed up Twitter - you can share just about anything, as well as comment, rate and like almost everything as well.  If you run a socially centered site make sure and check it out.

New “Simple Chat” module

We’re also releasing the first beta of the new Simple Chat module.  Simple Chat has been designed to be very light weight and integrate into an existing Jamroom 6 site without ANY changes to templates or code - just turn it on   The design of Simple Chat was inspired by Skype and is super easy to use.  We’ve been using it as our primary team communication channel for over 2 months now, and it’s awesome.

HTML Transaction Email support

The Jamroom 6 Email Support module has been updated with HTML support for transactional emails (i.e. Notifications) - it’s as easy as turning it on in the Mail Support global config.  You can customize the look of your HTML emails by editing a single template - “email_html_notification.tpl” in the User Account module.

Core DataStore enhancements

The Core provided DataStore functions have been enhanced and beefed up.  There is a new database design that should make listings and DataStore searches significantly faster on larger sites.  We’re managing some very large Hosted customers now who are beginning to push the limit on the existing DataStore performance (with 20 million+ rows in some tables) and these new enhancements have been added in to help out.  They also help smaller sites be even snappier as well

How to get your hands on Jamroom 6

We’re not releasing Jamroom 6 into the “normal” Jamroom beta channel - we know there are a ton of sites that are subscribing to our regular beta channel, and we need to make sure at this time that only sites that WANT to be on Jamroom 6 will be on Jamroom 6.  By putting the Jamroom 6 beta in it’s own channel we can be sure no one installs it “by accident”.  While the new 6.0 Core is very stable (as it’s built on the 5.4 Core), we’re hoping to get feedback and more testing done before it goes “live” for everyone.

To check out Jamroom 6, you need to subscribe to the Jamroom 6 Beta Channel:

1) Log in to your Jamroom site as a master admin
2) Go to ACP -> Core -> Marketplace and click on the “Tools” tab
3) Click the “Release Channels” button
4) In the “Channel Invite Code” enter the following Channel Code:

JAMROOM6BETATIME

And save - that will add the new “Jamroom 6 Beta” channel to your marketplace.  Click on “System Updates” and you’ll see the new updates that are available.  After upgrading, make sure and run an integrity check so the new database changes will be applied.

Our goal is to have Jamroom 6 out of beta by the end of October, so if you can help us with testing or feedback it would be super appreciated.

We hope everyone enjoys what they see with Jamroom 6 - as a team it has been a lot of fun finally getting some of these ideas in place.  We’re excited about the direction Jamroom is heading and can’t wait to show you what we have in store for the future.

Have a great one!

I'm excited to announce that the Jamroom team is getting bigger!

Nate Riggins, who most of you know as "N8Flex", is now part of the Jamroom Team.  Nate has been a Jamroom third party designer and developer for close to 10 years and has always been known for his fantastic Jamroom skin design. 

We're super excited to have him on board - Nate's in depth knowledge of marketing, design and user experience is going to be instrumental in helping us take Jamroom to the next level.  We also believe this is a big win for Nate's existing customers, as it now expands the level of support offered to those already running a N8Flex design.

All of Nate's existing skin designs are now part of the Jamroom Network - this means if you are currently a Jamroom Hosted or Premium user these skins are now FREE for you to install in your Jamroom!

We have some really exciting plans in store for Jamroom 5 and beyond, and having Nate on the team is going to help us get there in style

Welcome aboard Nate!