Not quite dead..
A coincidence of disasters
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
What is it with bad things happening in groups?
The "Foghorn" server died today. That's the main web manager for WinCustomize.com. When it's down, WinCustomize is quasi-down because the DNS has to be set to go to another manager. So we're up but not really fully up. The other servers are now taking more load and they're already stressed.
Meanwhile, back at Stardock HQ, the team was barely able to do much about this because its ISP went down (and still is down as I write this) so that no one at Stardock could actually get on from the office. Totally unrelated.
Next Wednesday the new mega server we've been talking about will finally go on line. Weeks and weeks of prep work has been going on to prepare the way for the monster to come on-line. It will be interesting to see how much difference it makes.
Anyway, stay tuned. Sorry about the flakeyness today.
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Reply #22 Thursday, June 1, 2006 9:45 AM
SDC has teh function built right in. It makes sense to use it.
Reply #23 Thursday, June 1, 2006 9:48 AM
| There's life in the old girl yet, she just needs the odd boot (size 11) every now and then. |
Dang it.....THERE'S the problem.....
If I told you once I told you a million times....
SIZE TWELVES.....
Reply #24 Thursday, June 1, 2006 9:50 AM
Reply #25 Thursday, June 1, 2006 12:15 PM
| Since I just had to reinstall several apps, |
"Reinstall" implies that you had teh opportunity to archive earlier.
One can archive at any time, not just when downloading a new version. [File | Archive Applicaton | Selected Application/Entire Application with skins]
I have a CD with all the apps archived from SDC. I update it twice a year or so. (I also have autoarchive turned on).
I know it doesn't help now while the servers are down . . but it might help next time.
Reply #26 Thursday, June 1, 2006 7:18 PM
| Using SDC to download has been broken since yesterday and is still down at this time. |
Yes, it did seem to be down....however if it's a current issue there's always IE or Opera or Firefox, etc. You can always revert back to SDC as/when the issue is resolved....
Reply #27 Thursday, June 1, 2006 9:44 PM
Reply #28 Thursday, June 1, 2006 10:53 PM
A big thank you to Brad, Tman and all the Stardock/WC staffers.
Reply #29 Friday, June 2, 2006 7:38 AM
Reply #30 Friday, June 2, 2006 8:12 AM
| was on a field trip yesterday with my daughter |
A much higher priority. Hope you had fun.
Thanks for putting everything to rights.
Reply #31 Friday, June 2, 2006 9:03 AM
Reply #32 Friday, June 2, 2006 10:04 AM
| This problem has been fairly longstanding. |
The same has been for me as well. I'm getting kinda fed up with the site the way things are now. Every morning I give it another shot and its always the same thing...error after error...or nothing loads at all and my uploads are practically non-existent right now. I submitted one dock on the 27th...got nothing but red X's after about 10 tries and just gave up and deleted it. Then after another attempt it got through somehow and it was entered about 6 pages back with the original date of attempt instead of what it should have been. So I deleted that as well out of frustration. Its very frustrating seeing all these other submissions getting through while mine either gets red X's or I get nothing but errors or they are stuck in moderation for days and hearing how everything is just zipping along fine for others while I'm stuck in pageloadhell.
Reply #33 Friday, June 2, 2006 10:09 AM
Reply #34 Friday, June 2, 2006 10:14 AM
Reply #35 Friday, June 2, 2006 1:03 PM
I share your frustration WebGizmos. My experience is similar to yours and I own the site. The site is slow, flakey, gives errors, etc.
And even though I know the causes of those errors, it is still frustrating. If we had more people like you WebGizmos, the site wouldn't have these issues. The reason we have these problems is that we lack the staff for a site of this size. It's really that simple.
WinCustomize.com has THREE full-time people working on its backend (and they get shared on other sites). A site of this size should have more like 10 people. If we had even two more people, we could implement changes much faster (such as have more redundancy, more mirroring, etc.).
A site that gets 20 million visitors per month should generate enough revenue to support more people. But so few people subscribe. And with the problems we're having these days, who can blame them?
The most significant backend change for the past year will be occurring next week. That mega server will come on-line. 4 duocore CPUs, 12 gigs of memory, 64-bit. If all goes well, the difference should be blatantly noticeable.
Reply #36 Friday, June 2, 2006 1:29 PM
| And even though I know the causes of those errors, it is still frustrating |
So what's the cause . . . I'm on the site for nine hours a day, M-F and I haven't got an error all week. I use SDC, IE, Firefox. I download skins, comment but don't upload much.
Reply #37 Friday, June 2, 2006 6:51 PM
The thing I don't quite understand is why for some people things zip right along and for others its down to a crawl. I used to never really have as many problems with the site as I have over these past few months. But I'm still hangin in there hopin things will get better. And in case it slipped your mind Brad...I offered to help out some time ago. And since I'm on here so often I could help things get through moderation a bit faster. Just a thought.
And I have a bunch of docks waiting to get uploaded...I just haven't been able to get them through.
Reply #38 Friday, June 2, 2006 7:35 PM
WebGizmos ....recent problems with the SD emailing, etc meant that moderation was next to impossible. Zubaz may not have been having 'problems' in his 'nine hours a day' but you can take it from me....40 minutes to get 4 uploads 'processed' classifies as a 'problem'.
I've even had new and interestingly refreshing error messages....[fotunately not quite "haha...you wanted to do WHAT?!!!!!" ....yet]....
When mods find their lives ticking away while a page refreshes they tend to tire of Spider Solitaire...and take a trip outside into the Real World [tm] and watch grass grow instead...
No-one is anticipating this new SuperThunderStingCar Server coming online more than me [except maybe Brad AND T-Man]...
Reply #39 Friday, June 2, 2006 7:43 PM
And I've seen some different error messages as well.
And I know what you mean about Spider Solitaire...I'm gettin pretty good at it now. Reply #40 Friday, June 2, 2006 11:10 PM
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Reply #21 Thursday, June 1, 2006 9:38 AM