Recent Server Issues

ryank: 12. Jun 2012, 22:29

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I will happily tell you how to clear your browser cache if you are not sure how to do this. Just tell me which browser you are using. 

Sometimes just pressing F5 while on the page will work just fine.

Well I'll give you credit for perseverance - you are far to nice. But I still don't like you, so kindly keep your nose out of my business. You are a jolly nice chap, and it's people like you who spoil my unhappiness!

I'm in full support of Wizzley and the staff - most sites I've been active on don't even acknowledge issues or problems, much less apologize. 

Just as a note, pressing F5 didn't work for me on either Firefox or Chrome. I actually had to go to the settings and empty the cache before I stopped getting the German pagewizz site coming up instead of wizzley. Not a problem but just in case anyone else is having issues logging in.

@Kinworm, did you hit and hold ctrl then hit F5? Just F5 won't do it, that's usually an assigned button to something else :)

My take on this is also from a reader and search engine viewpoint. 

Having a server error for a long period of time was bad. I did see a maintenance message sometimes which was better. 

But in future if we have a long outage I'd like to see an apology page to readers. It would look more professional. 

I know that when you're in the midst of an outage like that you always think it's just about to be fixed or that it's better to spend time fixing. Having something prepared would be a good idea. (Yes, we'd all like to think there won't be any more major outages ...) 

Even better would be a read-only mirror with reduced capability that gets brought up in such cases. Even if it doesn't have all the dynamic features this would be very much better than nothing. 

But I'm sure the guys are thinking about this stuff already. I trust the Wizzley team to keep improving things. 

I don't really worry about Wizzley keeping the writers informed - I didn't think for a minute that you hadn't noticed or didn't think it was important! (And I saw the update on Twitter.)

And I appreciate the honesty and really feel for you guys - I know what it's like to be on the other side!

For those having trouble with clearing their cache, can I just say CCleaner for the win?  One of my favourite programs:

CCleaner: A Safe and Free Way to Speed Up Your PC

Though F5 usually does the job too.

I can't see Nancy's page either actually. Nothing to do with the server, as I've worked on Wizzley for the past hour or so and it did fine. Probably a bug of some sort. The 404 returned is in English though. 

However, I have been online for a LONG long time and there isn't a site I've been on that hasn't had it's server issues at times. 

Nancy Wake is working just fine for me.   Oh!  I share a birthday with her!  Happy days!

Hi everyone, being new to Wizzley, I am still learning the ropes.  I am also grateful that the Wizzley team was honest in letting everyone know that their server was down and they were working full steam to fix the problem. 

I also understand Prospero's point of a reader finding an error that the page is no longer found.  Is there a way to make the error message state that the server is temporarily down rather than the page is no longer there?  That would help with traffic coming back and reduce the amount of frustration people have when they can't find what they are looking for.

It is so much more informative to know the server is temporarily down and not that the page has been removed.  Just a thought.

Cheryl - normally, during a server crash, our page shows up with exactly that info: We're down for maintenance and we'll be back asap. An error page would be a part of the crash/bug that is out of our control.

Jerrico_Usher: 13. Jun 2012, 05:11

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@Kinworm, did you hit and hold ctrl then hit F5? Just F5 won't do it, that's usually an assigned button to something else :)

 

 

Er oops I just pressed F5! Oh dear well I discovered something new, thanks Jerrico!

TerriRexson: 13. Jun 2012, 05:19

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But I'm sure the guys are thinking about this stuff already. I trust the Wizzley team to keep improving things. 

 

Thanks for your comments, Terri. We've discussed these ideas, indeed, and our to-do list is overflowing. Wizzley's been growing by leaps and bounds but our team has not. So everything takes a bit longer than at other businesses with lots of funding and staff. 

I'll make sure to bring up your points again at our team conference tomorrow.   

I wrote to the email address that was on the message telling me that there was a maintenance problem ([email protected]) and was wondering why I didn't receive a reply, especially after the website was back up and people on the forum wrote that they got emails in response to their inquiries about the problem.

Finally just now, I got a mail that said that my mail was not delivered and that it expired. I wonder if that is part of the problem that the website had.

Glad everything is running smoothly now.

Sheri - there are different stages and scenarios during a server crash. Some of the mails went through, some of them didn't. We're about to set up an external support site for such cases.

Awww...just give us your personal phone numbers...that would be just fine if it should happen again in the future! 

(512) 442-6083

You are somethin' else...

This latest outage could not have come at a worse time for me.  After the state of Wizzley this last week, I thought it was all over by last night.  So much talk of shiny, new servers and suddenly everything seems stable.

So I went on a massive promotion of my articles to make up for lost time.  It worked even better than I could have hoped.  Let me show you:

One of my articles made it to top place in a sub-Reddit.  People were reading, commenting and it was getting a lot of buzz.   I've worked so hard on the basis of jam tomorrow, that this was just the tonic.

Then Wizzley went down for THE WHOLE DAY.  I got down-votes and comments about the dead link.  My article is now starting to sink there.

Moreover, this was a day which I'd set aside to focus on Wizzley.  I had two Wizzles planned, one of which was half-written last night. 

It's been so incredibly frustrating sitting here refreshing the page and not finding it back, especially since I checked Pagewizz.com and found that working perfectly!  (Though the French site was down too.)

Could no-one have warned us yesterday that there was a chance this could happen again?  I would have held off on my round of promotion and today wouldn't have felt quite so much like a slap in the face.

I understand your frustration, Jo, and we're very sorry for your promo fall-out. Hopefully, you will catch more traffic as the day goes on. I've posted another warning HERE.

According to my email notifications about new articles etc., Wizzley was down for about 6 hours, from 2 Am until about 8 AM. 

Unfortunately, we can't always predict these things. For instance, Simon and Hans work on a certain feature that requires a 30-second update, when suddenly something else goes wrong. Now they have to do some research, possibly in the code (tens of thousands of lines), in order to fix an additional bug, or something.

Yes, we will get our Wizzley back, much more stabil and smoother and faster. But until Simon and Hans give an explicit "mission accomplished" notice, we might encounter a few more bumps in the road.

Please accept our apologies for all your inconveniences.

Thank you for posting the warning.   My problem was that I thought last night was the all clear.

I'll get over it.   In fact, I now have a cup of tea, so I'm already over it.

Thanks for all of your hard work, Simon and Hans, and sorry that I'm kicking off. <3

My ISP has been down for the last six hours.  Telephone and broadband mostly dead, though if I waited long enough, I could sometimes force a response to a comment or message through.

After a while, you do have to ask yourself if this is the Goddess's way of telling you to get off the internet for a bit.  LOL