Arctic Reservations

Development Blog

Read the thoughts and ideas of the developers and contibuters to Arctic Reservations, an online reservation management tool.

 
by Nathan Perkins

SSL Installation

I am happy to announce that Arctic Reservations is once again offering SSL encrypted access. This feature was offered a short while ago, but due to complications that prevented some users from accessing the software, we rolled back the SSL option until the larger problems could be fixed. After many tweaks and hours calling others for input, SSL is now available again!

All users can access their primary Arctic Reservations installation via a 256bit SSL certificate. This means that all data sent between your computer and our server is encrypted using todays leading encryption technique. Although the risk of such communications being intercepted is extremely low, it is becoming increasingly important to protect client data.

The need for security is especially important for an upcoming feature that I can only hint at now: "credit card processing." When handling client credit card information, it is vital to implement such leading encryption tools to prevent fraud and ensure the security of your customer's personal information. More details about credit card processing will be coming soon, as our first beta testing will begin shortly.

Note that SSL certificate installation required some big changes: we had to rewrite a core set of files and completely reconfigure the server (this is why it took so long to offer this feature). During the upgrade, all installations had to be moved to a new IP address. Although this should not adversely effect software performance, your computer may still try to access the old IP address for 24-48 hours. As a result, you will not be able to access your installation. If this happens to you, please call your support representative and he/she will provide instructions for clearing cached DNS information. During such a large overhaul, other problems may have arisen. If this is the case, please contact support right away... we will be standing by to make any needed corrections.

By default, all accounts allow users to select whether or not to use SSL certificates when they first access the website. Administrators can change settings to either always require an SSL access or never allow SSL access. I strongly encourage administrators to always require SSL certificates.

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March 6, 2007 9:34PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

System Upgrades

We have recently been running upgrades and maintenance on the server. We are getting ready to role out new security features, but in the process of performing the installation, server access may have been interrupted for a few minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience. So far though, we have upgraded to the latest version of PHP and will soon be announcing new modules and security settings.... stay tuned!

In the future we will try our best to schedule maintenance during weekends or night time hours to prevent changes from effecting our users. Remember that you can always access your secondary server during maintenance (refer to your welcome letter for details regarding your secondary server).

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March 6, 2007 4:34PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Downtime for Upgrade

There was intermittent downtime this afternoon between 3 and 4 PM (PST) as the server received a big upgrade. For those of you who follow web development, we moved the server from PHP4 to PHP5. This is a rather big change to underlying core of Arctic Reservations and will require continued tweaks. As a result, you may see error messages throughout the site. It is vital that you send them to use exactly as they appear (copy and paste).

Thanks for your patience!

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March 5, 2006 4:34PM • permalink • 0 comments