news's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stats 100% again Sorry, the stats for gold members were registering and updating, but the "general" page wasn't, I have fixed this. Also the last entry in the news here was about why some diaries didn't have the latest entry show up, but THIS was one of the diaries affected, so if you clicked the "click this if your latest entry isn't showing up" and then came here and there was nothing to read, oops, wasn't that ironic, don't you think? Anyhow, yeah, sorry about those hassles! By Andrew Smales. 4:21 p.m. - Jun. 10, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- if your latest entry isn't showing up, read this I should have added this about the move: Entries added in the past day or so may not be showing up in all diaries right now, but they will be back in a few hours, they are just slowly updating from the old server. If your diary is showing an older entry than the latest, just go add or edit an entry, and it'll show up, all the entries are in our database, the pages for them just haven't finished updating. By Andrew Smales. 2:47 p.m. - Jun. 05, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server moved Okay, just moved the site to a new server, this should help out a ton in the near future with some stuff we'll be adding. If you see anything buggy going on, please email [email protected] right away and we'll fix it up! Sorry for the downtime during this move, this is actually a huge thing, it's our first server move in years and years. Wooo. By Andrew Smales. 2:14 p.m. - Jun. 05, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server prob Argh, sorry, we had a server problem this morning and the members area was down, and our monitoring system didn't catch it, super sorry about that, it really shouldn't happen again, because we are moving the site to new servers in the next few days. Super sorry for the inconvenience!! By Andrew Smales. 9:56 a.m. - Jun. 04, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- buddy list error Hey all, There is a minor problem with the buddy lists, and as of right now, some people on your lists may not show up as having updated as recently as they really have. We'll have this fixed soon, but in the meantime, all you have to do to make sure you're marked correctly is to update your diary, and that'll fix it for you. Sorry about this! By Andrew Smales. 7:16 a.m. - May. 26, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- outage this morning Sorry if you couldn't get to the site this morning, we had a server problem that our monitoring system did not pick up, so we weren't notified. The good news is, we are actually moving the site to some brand new servers in the very, very near future (the new servers are already set up, we just have to move the site over which has to be done at a quiet time). Anyhow, super sorry about this outage, it was a really fluky thing that actually caused it, super annoying, ugh. By Andrew Smales. 6:42 a.m. - May. 14, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- guesss what, new design AGAIN haha Okay, so I have gone through the many, many, many emails that came in about the new design, and I also looked into some server logs to see how people were using the new design and yadda yadda yadda, it does turn out that the design was causing trouble to a fair number of people. So, I have listened to the most numerous complaints about it, which were mostly the color, and changed the colors back to the old style, and also moved the navigation bar to the left hand side, because a number of people didn't notice it on the right hand side. I am pretty sure people should be happy with this new look, but I need you guys to do this: Please email help @ diaryland.com with "the new blue look" as the subject line and in the body just give me like 1 sentence on whether you like it or not, and please rate it from 1 to 10 and rate the previous black and white look from 1 to 10 also. I am pretty sure this design is a very good medium in between the old and new, but I want to really have a ton of confirmation from people on whether you guys agree! Now that the design is fixed (I think, please do email me with the above info!), I can move to the more exciting business of adding more stuff, weee. p.s. I also want to mention that when I first put up the black design it did say "what it be, (your username)" when you logged in. That was not supposed to be on the version that actually went up on the site, and I didn't notice it right away. A few people REALLLLLY hated that haha, so my apologies to them, I did change this a few days ago, and yeah, it just wasn't supposed to be there to begin with, oops! By Andrew Smales. 3:34 p.m. - Mar. 11, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- recently updated diaries list wasn't working quite right, is now! Sorry, the "recent public entries" list wasn't working correctly for the past few days, and some people were not being included who should have, so I have fixed that. Also I think some passworded diaries are getting in there - the system THINKS they are public because they have filled out their profiles, but of course they are not, so I am going to fix that now. In the meantime, yeah, anyone who updates will now be on that list. I am still going through the numerous replies to the design poll thing, and will have a solution on that shortly. I am pretty sure I'll be able to make everyone happy on that. Oh also gold members banners: Yes they are gone for now, I was going to re-integrate them, but then the whole issue of the design came up. Right now I am waiting to solve that, but if people who use the banners a lot want to let me know if they mind me just putting them at the bottom of pages for now, that'd be cool to know, I may just do that for now. In the longer term, basically we plan to switch from banners to boxes, which will be roughly the same size in pixels, but a different shape and will go on the side instead of the top. Feedback me on that yo! By Andrew Smales. 2:46 p.m. - Mar. 06, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quick poll on the redesign Hey just some notes on the redesign: So, getting really mixed reviews right now, a lot of people writing to say they love it and also definitely some who don't. I have a feeling that people will get used to it BUT I will be looking into this a lot in the next couple of days and possibly changing things around. One thing probably changing will be switching it so the navigation boxes are to the left of the "recent public entries" boxes. A few people have said they don't like the colors and it's tough to read white on black. Now, this is something I gave a TON of thought to early on in the redesign, believe me. I took a ton of print design courses at college and it was always said that white on black is harder to read, however my impression was that a large part of that was more in actual paper print, because the ink bleeds from the background into the letters a bit and it's not crisp and blah blah. When I first came up with this design, I showed it to a couple of people who are very, very good designers and checked it through with them. They both said it was fine and that on bright computer monitors it's really not an issue anymore. This jibes with what I feel after working on this design for many many hours, testing it, etc. Furthermore, really, in the members area the focus isn't really on reading that much, a lot of the time people spend in here is basically writing and editing entries, which is still of course black-on-white. So I didn't think it would be a huge issue. However, some people are still saying they don't like the colors, so I'm going to look into it, and maybe the best thing to do right now is just to ask everyone reading this to take part in a little poll: Just send an email to [email protected] with whether you like the new look or not. I don't mind a quick sentence in the body too to sum up your thoughts, but no need to write too much, just a quick "I like it, 8/10!" or "I don't like the new colors" or "change is bad, boo" are fine. If everyone who reads this actually emails me, it'll help me get a good idea more. I hope people who like it write too, I know in general people who dislike something when it's changed are more motivated to email, so that may bias things a bit, but oh well. Anyhow, there are obviously still a few bugs in the design also, like the buddy list isn't lighting up when it updates yet, I'll have those small things fixed by monday. So please do email either way. By Andrew Smales. 12:13 a.m. - Mar. 03, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- redesign So there's a new redesign for the members area, in advance of adding some new things, and there may be a few bits and bobs where something doesn't look quite right, or there is white text on a white background or something... if you see any of these, let us know at help @ diaryland.com and we'll fix them up! By Andrew Smales. 3:16 p.m. - Mar. 01, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no more spam in your comments! I have just added a CAPTCHA thing to prevent spammers from being able to add spam comments. It's one of those things where you see pictures of letters and you have to enter them. You now have to do this anytime you add a comment on DiaryLand, and it should pretty much squash the spam problem I think, because currently the spammers are using programs to just automatically add spam comments. The CAPTCHA system I ended up using also has an audio feature built in, because I know that there are a number of readers who are using screen-reading programs that can't do the images thing. You guys let me know how the audio thing works for you, I gave it a test and it seems solid I think. So that's it, no more spam in your comments! I am pretty sure this should pretty much solve the problem. Oh and some other news: I am almost done a redesign of the whole site and will be adding a bunch of new features, a few of which are ready to go, a few which aren't yet. Let me know if there is something you'd like at help @ diaryland.com I am hurrying to finish this news entry so I can go and monitor the server and make sure this is indeed blocking any and all spam. By Andrew Smales. 3:49 p.m. - Feb. 12, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- spam blocking Hi guys, just wanted to cover a few short things: Firstly, the spam blocking system for comments was not working 100% correctly for a short bit, but I have fixed it, and if you get spam, just hit the reply button on the email and send it to me, and I will block it pronto. Remember to quote the actual spam message and stuff. By Andrew Smales. 1:36 p.m. - Jul. 27, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- short scheduled for 2 A.M. tonight or so to speed things up Quick note, the site will be down for an hour or two very late thursday night/friday morning. Probably about 2 AM east coast time. This is to do a few improvements to speed things up. Some people may actually still be able to access most of the site okay too, but there may be a few spotty patches during that hour or two. Sorry about that, but we made sure to pick a time where most people are asleep. By Andrew Smales. 6:20 p.m. - Jun. 14, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- slight downtime just now for members area, sorry! Sorry about the members area being down for a few minutes just now, we have been doing a few fixes to speed up the site. It's been a bit slow lately, but should be much better soon! Andrew By Andrew Smales. 7:43 p.m. - Jun. 06, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server up for all p.s. the server is back up as of sunday afternoon to add entries for all members. There was a problem this morning where it was down for about 2 hours, but that is fixed up now and it's ready to go! By Andrew Smales. 11:27 a.m. - May. 07, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server thing Just wanted to add a quick note about non-gold members not being able to add entries: This *should* be over tonight (sunday). I cannot say for 100% sure, but it should be. I should have updated sooner, but since we had to take this down, it keeps looking like it's about to be fixed and then something goes wrong. Here is the situation: Basically, one of the database servers conked out last week, as explained here. Getting it back up and running with all the data has taken a long time, because it seemed like it was fixed and back up, but then had problems while being tested. We currently can't have everyone adding entries all at once, because it slows down the server to point where it's messing things up. Maybe if anything goes wrong with getting it back up today, I will set it so like half the people can add entries for 30 minutes then vice versa or something. I understand this is a big inconvenience for non-gold members, and believe me, I am not happy about this whatsoever. I started this site back in 1999 and since it has been running, there have been a few server problems here and there. They are annoying, but they happen. This is not a big corporate site with millions of dollars behind it. Diaryland is essentially run by one person, and believe me, I don't do it for the money. I want everything back up as much as you. I have received snide and rude emails about the situation, and while I appreciate your frustration, it's really dispiriting to run a site for people for years, and have them use it happily, and then when there is an interruption for a few days get pounded on. Anyone who thinks that I am not 1000% more annoyed at the situation than anyone else doesn't know me. The situation will be fixed soon, I just ask that people be patient in the meantime, thanks. By Andrew Smales. 11:59 a.m. - May. 06, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server update Hi all. I just wanted to put in a quick update, getting the second server back up has taken a little longer than I expected, partly because I'm going to have to take the whole members area down while I do it for a few hours, to sync it up. I plan to do this late tonight, so in the meantime, the members area is slow sometimes, and a few things are still acting a bit wonky. I'm really sorry about that, the slowness is a pain, but everything should be back to normal later, I just don't want to rush things and mess anything up, or take the site down for hours in the middle of the day or evening when it is the most busy. Sorry for the hassles! By Andrew Smales. 1:59 p.m. - Apr. 25, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server probs update Hi, just a little update, one of the database servers had a problem at about 9 pm eastern time, so it is being rebuilt and fixed as we speak. So right now, the members area is up (it was down for a while), basically running on half power. This doesn't mean a lot, and you probably won't notice it, but if you notice anything weird, feel free to let us know. As of this writing, the datacenter has been repairing the server for about 5 hours and they tell me they're about half done. That could easily change though, so I'll update this with any news, but basiclaly, the members area was down for a little while, but it's up again, and diaries have been up the entire time. By Andrew Smales. 2:27 a.m. - Apr. 21, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- domain problems earlier caused errors for some viewers, fixed now Sorry if you have seen any weird error messages in the past hour or two, there was a problem with the domain registrar we use, without going into specifics, the domain needed to be renewed and something went awry with the renewal, however it's all renewed now, and everything should be fine. Because of the way that DNS propogation works on the internet though, some people may see an error for longer than others. In fact, a lot of people (me included) didn't have any interruption at all, the site worked the whole way through, but if you did see an error message on Diaryland earlier, I apologize, and don't worry, it's all good now! By Andrew Smales. 3:01 a.m. - Mar. 15, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- giving gold membership as a gift Just a note, if you need a last minute gift for anyone, just go to their profile and look for the gift link near the bottom. Or you can just go to this address:
Merry happy holidaytime! By Andrew Smales. 2:26 a.m. - Dec. 23, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- blank diaries problem again, oops Sorry, we had a small server problem last night which resulted in some diaries going blank when you updated them. If this happened to you, just update your diary and it'll fix itself (edit an entry, add an entry, etc.), or write to support and we can do it for you also. Oh actually, you can even just click here to regenerate your diary and that'll fix it also. Sorry about this, won't happen again! By Andrew Smales. 9:20 a.m. - Oct. 16, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stats problem Just a quick heads-up that stats are once again not working for the time being, because there has been a power outage at the new datacenter the stats server was moved to the other day, and they are taking forver to get it fixed (and apparently the backup generators have run out of batteries now), I really have no clue why it is taking so long, it's insane. Anyway, sorry again for the inconvenience. Oh a couple of other small things are also affected by this, like mail forwarding and the chat. Sorry again, this is so annoying! By Andrew Smales. 8:30 p.m. - Oct. 06, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stats and chat problem Just a quick note: the chat and the gold member stats are both not working this morning, but will be back shortly. They run on the Notifylist server, which was moved between datacenters this morning, and when the move was finally done, the server place hooked up the server incorrectly, so it didn't show up online. Now that I had them fix it, they have allocated some IPs incorrectly, and I am all over them trying to get them to fix it ASAP, but it's going super slow for some reason, it's very frustrating (I need to sleep!). It shouldn't be long though, sorry about that! By Andrew Smales. 2:45 p.m. - Oct. 02, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- some diary entries from this afternoon display incorrectly. Hi, There was a small server problem this afternoon, and certain diaries that were updated during this time may have part of the latest entry cut off, or all of it. The full entry is still in the database though. If you are affected, all you need to do is to go to "edit/delete entries", choose your most recent entry and click the "edit" button to edit it (you don't need to change the entry or anything). This will fix it. It will also automatically fix itself the next time anyone affected adds an entry or edits one or anything, and we'll be going through finding the affected ones and fixing them later for people who haven't done their own. But if you're affected, just edit the latest entry and that'll fix it, and if you happen to know someone affected who may not have noticed, you can just let them know to do that too. Sorry about that! By Andrew Smales. 6:55 p.m. - Sept. 20, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- adding entries is faster now for supergold members with tons of comments Happy long weekend! I just made an improvement to the system that affects Supergold members: If you had a lot of comments on your entries, the system was doing something a bit inefficient when you added a new entry, so when you hit the button to submit it, you'd have to wait a bit. For some people with a ton of entries, it was actually taking a fair while. I have fixed it, so now it should be super-quick, you will probably notice the difference right away. If you have any weirdness surrounding this, let me know, but I've tested it out a fair bit and it should just make things a lot faster! Everyone have a good long weekend if you have one! By Andrew Smales. 1:25 a.m. - Sept. 03, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- free shirts, comment spam thingy. Hello all! A few tidbits today on comment spam and t-shirts: First of all, comment spam has been getting worse lately, but we're catching thousands of pieces of it with the super-secret filtering system we have, SO many. I have even better news though: We're about to add a thing where when someone adds a comment, they have to type in a word that's in a picture.. you know the thing I mean? It's called a CAPTCHA technically, and it's something you've probably seen on a number of sites, it should basically eliminate comment spam. Secondly, I just realized that we still have some old DiaryLand t-shirts! We sold these quite a few years ago, and it turns out there were some leftover in a storage box still, wow! The front of them has a great multi-color picture of Constable Whiskers (the little cat DiaryLand mascot who isn't really around the site much now) drawn by Stephan Britt, and the back has the DiaryLand logo. They're actually very nice quality shirts, and the drawing is fantastic (I'll try to upload a photo later today). Since there aren't a ton left, we're actually just going to give them away to the next people who sign up for 2 years of supergold. So, if you have been thinking of getting supergold membership (with the comments system, extra image hosting space, etc., etc.), click here and sign up, and include your T-shirt size in the comments (if you forget, we'll ask), and you won't just get a great bunch of extra features, you'll get a free t-shirt! If you're already gold or supergold, you can use that page to extend your subscription by 2 years of supergold and get a shirt also. Let me know if you have any questions on that. Okay, back to work, apart from the comment-spam-blocking thing, there's another pretty cool new feature coming! By Andrew Smales. 1:23 p.m. - Jun. 19, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stats and comment spam notes Two little things: There was a problem this morning and part of yesterday where stats/referrers were being recorded, but didn't show up in the "last 1 hour" report, instead they would show up as being 2 hours ago. I have fixed this, sorry about that, and all stats were recorded, they just had the timestamp wrong by about 2 hours. Also there's been an uptick in comment spam lately, so if you're getting any, remember to just hit "reply" on the "you've got a new comment" email and send it back, you don't need to even write anything else, I'll see it and ban it. The amount of spam that the system is catching and preventing is quite large now, even though some still gets through! By Andrew Smales. 2:20 p.m. - May. 31, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- blank templates for some people were broken, fixed now! Hello hello! There were some diaries (less than 1% of members were affected by this) whose templates went blank for a short time yesterday if you tried to edit them at a certain time of day. I fixed this yesterday night, so if you were affected, you should be back to normal, but if not, let us know! I meant to update this last night about it but was busy working on some other server stuff. Okay, more news soon! By Andrew Smales. 12:06 p.m. - May. 29, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- downtime over Sorry about the short notice downtime just now, the members area is back now. There was a possible issue with one of the database servers and we had to take the members area down to check it out. It's almost fixed, we'll probably have some short downtime tomorrow that won't be as short notice. And don't be freaked when I mention server problems, as noted in a news posting a few entries down, we have backups of all the entries on multiple servers, so even if the one we are looking at had some catastrophic failure (but it hasn't, and won't), it wouldn't result in any data loss or anything like that. By Andrew Smales. 2:41 a.m. - May. 18, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- short maintenance window The members area will be offline for about 30-60 minutes for some maintenance, sorry for the inconvenience! By Andrew Smales. 2:00 a.m. - May. 18, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- noontime downtime Sorry! The members area was just down for a bit over an hour due to a fix we had to make. Here is what happened: When we were doing the maintenance last night, a certain database file got corrupted, so it had to be fixed. This isn't a problem with most files of this type, but this one is HUGE, so while the repair operation was running, it became obvious that it was going to take a few hours to repair the large file. Once we realized that, I copied the file over from the other database server, and replaced it instead of repairing it, since we have 2 database servers that are essentially exact mirrors of each other. This also took a while because the file is big, but not as long as repairing it would take. So all is well now, but if you are one of the certain users whose template is stored in this file, and you updated your diary at a certain range of times this morning, there is a possibility that your diary may show up as being blank. If so, there is an easy fix, just add another entry, or edit your most recent entry, basically just update your diary in SOME way, and it'll fix itself. I am also going to go and try to update all the ones affected, but in case I miss any, this is what to do. If you have a friend whose diary is blank, IM or email them telling them to do this! I'm posting this, but I am going to add another paragraph about our backup procedures in a second, so refresh this page in a few minutes for info on that! Okay, I also wanted to write something here about our backup procedures, since a few people have asked lately: We do keep regular backups of all the entries and templates on a separate server which is just for backups. In addition to this, we have a couple of database servers which are mirrors of each other, so if one fails, the other still runs and has everything on it. Furthermore, all of the aforementioned servers are equipped with RAID arrays, which means they have multiple disks on each server, and if one disk breaks for some reason, the data is still intact and fine. And also don't forget we even have a backup feature where you can download your whole diary as one big text file located here (gold member feature), and it would never hurt to download your diary now and then in that way. If you have any other questions about this stuff, please ask! By Andrew Smales. 12:55 p.m. - Mar. 24, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- middle of the night server maintenance Hi, sorry for the members area being down for a few minutes just now (at about 2:30 in the morning eastern time), had a few server maintenance tasks that had to be taken care of. Back now though, sorry for any inconvenience! By Andrew Smales. 2:56 a.m. - Mar. 24, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- double banner weekend Okay, as of noon on friday, this is double banners weekend! Which just means, if you are a gold member and submit a banner to run in the members area, you will get double the views you request. So, if you use 500 of your views, we will actually set up the banner to run for 1000, but you'll only have 500 removed from your account. So start bannering y'all! By Andrew Smales. 12:37 p.m. - Mar. 17, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- old diaries Howdy do! I have had a number of people recently asking about old diaries they had with us, and whether we still have old entries. The answer in all cases is yes, we have never deleted old diaries, just moved them offline if they have been inactive for a long time. So if you have had a DiaryLand diary at any point back to when we opened in 1999, you can still get it back, yes! The easiest way is to log in, then go to your diary's address and click the "regenerate" link. If however you don't remember your password, you may have to use the "can't remember your password" link on the login screen. If you are still having trouble, you can email help AT diaryland.com and please put the subject line "NEED TO RETRIEVE OLD DIARY" (so I can sort them and do them all at once). If you have any friends who might want to know this info, let them know, and have a nice weekend. By Andrew Smales. 12:55 p.m. - Feb. 25, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- guestbook note Just a quick note about guestbooks: Many of us have guestbooks through SignMyGuestbook.com , which is a sister site to DiaryLand, and there have been a lot of spam messages in guestbooks lately - don't worry, we are taking care of it and taking a lot of steps to eliminate all that sort of garbage! Okay, that's all for now! By Andrew Smales. 3:39 p.m. - Feb. 23, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server problems just now, sorry! Sorry guys, just had a server problem and had to fix it up, so the site was down for about I think 25 minutes or so, and then the members area was still down for another 35 minutes or so after that. Seems to be fixed now, but I'll be spending tonight looking into what happened and making sure it doesn't again. Sorry about that!! By Andrew Smales. 12:03 a.m. - Jan. 27, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gold stats interruption this aft (updated) I forgot to post before, but the server which runs the gold stats had severe problems this afternoon and had to be taken down and replaced. The total downtime was about 2.5 hours I believe, during which time gold stats weren't tracked, but they are again now. Sorry about that. update: Also I just realized that the clock on the new replacement server was off by about 90 minutes, so if someone visited your diary, the visit WAS recorded in your stats, but the time was off, so that you didn't see it if you looked in "visitors in the last hour" (but did see it if you checked the last 3 hours). This is fixed now and people show up when they visit, and of course all the visits/referrers affected by this are still there in your stats, they're just off by 90 minutes. Incidentally, this server also runs NotifyList and SignMyGuestbook, so those sites were also down during this problem. This was a huge pain, but the new server is nicer than the old one, which will solve a few ongoing problems that were popping up now and then, the server was getting sort of old and I was actually in the process of moving everything on it to another server anyway. What actually happened this afternoon was that a power supply that was attached to the rack the server was on, got disconnected and then the cranky old machine wouldn't come back on, so some emergency work had to be done and a new machine hooked up. I apologize if this paragraph makes no sense, it has been a very long day with a bunch of dumb things popping up like this and I can hardly read the screen anymore hah! By Andrew Smales. 2:10 a.m. - Jan. 04, 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gifts gifts gifts Haven't had a ton of exciting news to post lately (a few things in the works, but most of the activity on the site has been behind the scenes server stuff you don't see), but a quick reminder that there's still plenty of time to get or give a DiaryLand gold or supergold membership for the holidays! Just go to: http://members.diaryland.com/edit/wishlist.phtml and type the person's username who you want to gift, or go their profile and click the "give (username) a gift" button at the bottom! Everyone loves DiaryLand gold and supergold memberships, get one for everyone on your (buddy) list! By Andrew Smales. 12:18 p.m. - Dec. 20, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- chat room A quick note to say, the chat room is down for a day or so, while the server it's on is being updated with some fixes, sorry about that! We will have it back as soon as possible, just need to get some stuff replaced first on that server. By Andrew Smales. 3:21 p.m. - Dec. 05, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- banners Just a quick note about the new banners running in the members area: We're trying these out to raise some extra revenue, they may or may not stay depending how they do. I have had mixed reaction on them so far (feel free to send your 2 cents), but they're necessary due to the ever-increasing costs of running the servers. Anyhow, a few people were confused as to why they were seeing them and if they were a mistake or some sort of adware or something on their computers since the members area hasn't had ads for a while, but nope, they are intentional! By Andrew Smales. 2:53 p.m. - Nov. 16, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- diaryring snippet creating/editing fixed Just a quick note about diaryring snippets - if you are a gold member and had trouble editing yours recently, or creating it, just go and edit it now and it'll work, sorry about that! Wow, that really was a quick note eh? Lemme think what else I can add, hmm. Uhh, DiaryLand users are the greatest, love you all? That was weak. Okay that's it then, diaryring snippet editing/creation is fixed up! By Andrew Smales. 12:48 p.m. - Nov. 08, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- remove yourself from your stats I just added a little feature to the stats section: There is a small link at the top of each stats report now that lets you remove your current ip address from your stats, so you won't show up. This is useful just to let yourself see your stats without your visits included. You can click here to try it out! By Andrew Smales. 4:24 p.m. - Oct. 27, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stats speedup fix For those of you using the built-in stats (gold feature), you might have noticed today and yesterday that the stats page has sped up and loads a lot faster. You might not have noticed it as much if you're new to gold, but if you have a lot of old stats, the page should be loading miles faster than before after the changes I've made to it. This change sort of messed up the part of the stats report that tells you how many pageviews you have had in the whole history of your diary, so that it was only reporting the last few months, but I've fixed that now, and it goes back as far as it did previously. This is not an exactly precise number though, because last time I sped up the stats, it altered that number, but I am restoring all the old views, so basically, right now when it says "total pageviews:", that number goes back a long ways, but by tomorrow or so will go back even further, to when the stats system first started. I have a feeling this is a really boringly written news item, my bad! Oh also, we are testing doing support via IM (msn right now, may change), which may be handy for little things, like if you just want to ask really fast "hey how do I make a word bold in my diary" or something. This is very experimental though, but for now, the info is on the help/faq page inside the members area. By Andrew Smales. 3:43 p.m. - Oct. 26, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- survey contest results Okay, the survey contest is complete, and it was wet and wild! It wasn't really wet or wild actually, but I wanted to jazz up this entry. Anyhow, the random drawing winner was krissallae with her heckwhynot survey, so she gets a 3 month extension of her gold membership. Then, in a shocking development, the winner for most survey responses was ... a tie! Incredibly, both unclebob with his sevenlayers survey and theswordsman with his iwannaknow survey both got 69 replies. Are you kidding me? Nope, it's true, a tie! So of course in the event of a tie, the two tied members have to answer a skill-testing question, and the one who is closest to the numerical answer without going over wins. The question is: JUST KIDDING, both guys get the prize. (And they're both supergold members, so this contest ended up having a way bigger prize pool than expected, yoinks!) The whole excitement of the tie and the extra winner got me so riled up that I decided that everyone should be a winner, so I went ahead and gave everyone who entered 1000 extra banner views. I thought that would be more useful than mailing everyone a PARTICIPANT ribbon. Next time we have a contest, maybe I will be more prepared and even have certificates of participation for everyone. With little gold seals! Okay, so that's that, go check out those surveys. (Or, as always, buy a gold membership). By Andrew Smales. 2:19 p.m. - Oct. 25, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- survey contest A few friday notes, since it's been a few days since I updated the news: 1. Oh man is the comment spam-blocking system working well! I have logs of the spam that's been blocked which I check all the time, and a ton is getting caught that wasn't before. I also added a whole new layer to the system the other day which is already blocking a lot of the spam but also actually will become more effective the more spam gets added. It's exciting to me, because I am lame. 2. I love surveys! I really do, they're a favourite thing of mine, just reading through them all and finding new diaries through them. So I'm going to have a wee contest this weekend: Out of everyone who creates a new survey and then mentions and links it in their diary, one winner will be randomly drawn and will get a 3 month extension of their gold or supergold membership. Also, whichever new survey gets the most people filling it out will also get a 3 month extension of their membership, so make sure to link and mention the survey prominently when you create it! Tell your readers, tell your IM buddies, tell your notify list, tell your dog, tell your mama! (Yes, both your dog and mama can fill out your survey as long as they're DiaryLand members, and if they're not, they can sign up for a free account in about 30 seconds! Tell 'em!) So, the way this will work is, on tuesday morning, we will go through all the surveys created from friday morning until 8 a.m. EST tuesday and assign them numbers, then draw one randomly for one prize, and then also determine which one had the most people fill it out for the other prize. We will then go to the diaries of each winner and make sure that when they created the survey, they did mention it in an entry and link to it, so make sure to do that, it's a rule (and also, you won't get as many people filling it out if you don't tell them to!) Winners will be notified and announced on tuesday here in the news. So just click here to create an awesome survey, and link it from your diary. Creating surveys is a gold/supergold feature, but if you don't have a gold membership, you can get one cheap by clicking here and then join in the contest (not to mention enjoying all the other great features you get). If you want any info on the contest or clarification on creating a survey, etc., just contact us through the support form and we'll help you out! Okay, get cracking, survey-style! By Andrew Smales. 1:49 p.m. - Oct. 21, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- various newsy things Two things to mention: Number one is that I added a signup box for the DiaryLand newsletter to this page, which used to be here but hasn't been for a while. If you aren't on the list, sign up! If you aren't sure if you're on the list, just try to signup and it'll tell you if you're already on. Although we haven't sent anything to this list in a while, we'll be starting up again soon, just sending interesting stuff about DiaryLand now and then, stuff like news, tips on using the site, design hints, etc. You will not receive any spam whatsoever if you sign up of course. Secondly, we have revamped the surveys area a bit: There were some problems with surveys we fixed, but also the directory now lists surveys in random order, so that the same surveys aren't always listed at the top, so if you have created a survey, you have an equal shot at having people fill it out now. There is also a great little sidebar that lists the most recently created surveys, and the most recent answers to surveys, so you can sit and spend hours keeping up with what everyone is getting up to on the surveys! Click here to check it out, and fill out some surveys yourself! Creating one is even more fun, it's very fun getting the emails saying that someone has filled your survey out and then going to check what they've written. Thirdamundo: I sent out a mailing to the diaryland gold members newsletter list the other day and then afterwards I thought, I wonder if anyone is on that under an old email address and didn't get the mail. So, if you're a gold member who didn't get that, sign up again and you'll get future ones and I'll forward you the one I just sent out, which covers some recent news that was listed here, but also explains a way you can change your gold membership into a supergold membership for free (by changing the amount of time you have left on it, so you could trade 240 days of gold for 120 days of supergold for instance). This is something people asked for, and if you'd like it, just put in a support request and we'll switch you up. Anyhow so yeah, the gold (and supergold) newsletter, sign up here: By Andrew Smales. 2:15 p.m. - Oct. 17, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- an old email virus resurfaces and confuses members An old email virus seems to be spreading a bit more lately and a bunch of DiaryLand members have written about it, so I thought I would try to ease the confusion: There is a virus which goes into your address book and sends an email to all your contacts. The mail they get is customized so if they have a @hotmail.com address, the email reads something like "Dear Hotmail member, you have been sending spam and we have closed your account. Signed, the Hotmail member services team", or something similar. There is then a zip file attached, which if you open and run gives you the virus. This virus adapts itself to whatever email address it is sending to so if your @diaryland.com address is in someone's address book it will send to you saying "Dear Diaryland member"... etc. The important thing to know is that if you get an email that says that DiaryLand has shut down your service or anything like that, it isn't from us, and do not open the zipfile attached to it. I wanted to clear this up since it has confused a few people lately. By Andrew Smales. 12:21 p.m. - Oct. 12, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- new members look Some observant folks might have noticed a new design go up in the members area for a short time yesterday afternoon. I took it down because although it looked good beforehand, when it was actually up on the site, it just lacked something, and looked especially bad when looked at on certain monitors. What I'm very surprised at is that several of the people who wrote to comment about the new look before it was removed called the normal members area design "purple", which is weird, I may be insane, but is it purple? Everyone seems to think so, weird! Anyhow, this gave me an idea: Anyone who wants to suggest a new design for the members area, please do, and I'll give the best one a prize, and possibly use it. The best thing to do would be to just design and send me a mockup, but don't worry about the html or anything, I'd be more than happy with a .gif or .bmp (or psd, jpg, etc.) mock-up, the html can all be worked out later. send 'em to help at diaryland (attachments are okay but uploading them to your diary image space and then sending me the link is even better). Okay, so that's all for now, go update your diary, or read the item below about the new guest posters feature, or buy a gold membership! By Andrew Smales. 11:32 a.m. - Oct. 04, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- new feature - guest posters. A way to create group diaries or weblogs. Okay, I just added a new feature, it's pretty useful and neat, it's called the guest posters feature (or you can think of it as a group diary or group weblog feature). This feature lets you give other DiaryLand users permission to post on your diary. Let me explain.. you see at the bottom of this entry where it says "posted by Andrew" ? That is because I am actually logged in as andrew instead of news right now, but I am still adding an entry to the news diary, because news gave andrew permission to add entries to the news diary. You might be wondering why you would want to let other people post to your diary: you probably don't! However, maybe you want to start a group diary or group weblog where multiple people post, but only one person has the power to actually alter the diary (change the template, delete stuff, etc.), and that's where this feature comes in. You just create a diary and then by using this feature, you can give permission to your friends to post to it, but they can't actually change anything else about the diary. This is great for creating group weblogs about a certain topic, or for running other collaborative sites ("review sites" for instance). And combine it with a supergold membership, images, comments and a swanky design and you have yourself a ready-made little community for you and your friends to discuss stuff. Neat-o! Another good use for it that applies to everyone, not just people who want to run group diaries, is just to stop you having to log in and out every time you want to post to another diary, if you have more than one username on DiaryLand. The documentation on it explains this a bit more. In fact, I could write on and on and on about this feature, but I'm just going to link the documentation page about it instead, as well as the admin page for it. If you have any questions or problems with this new feature, let us know through the support system! Comments on it are also welcome - what you like, don't like about it, whether it's a useful feature, etc. By Andrew Smales. 11:57 a.m. - Oct. 03, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oops! I made a goof the other day on this diary... I changed the template to one of the new built-in templates, and I forgot that if you are a supergold member, those templates put in a link to comments pages. So, the template changed and for a couple of days, people were adding comments here, but I somehow just didn't notice that I had done that, because I am very dumb. Anyhow, I have turned off the comments again, because I just don't have the ability to keep up to date with what everyone is posting here... I used to have comments turned on for the news, but people would use it to post questions, instead of the support system, and I wouldn't see their problems, and yeah, it was a bit of a mess. While people were leaving comments here, a few people posted about support requests that hadn't been answered. I have to admit, I haven't gotten to 100% of support requests, and I'm sincerely sorry for that. This summer has been insane with other site issues and for a while I was not able to reply to every request. The good news is, I am currently answering a zillion support requests per day that are posted through the support system, so if you have an unresolved issue, please send it to me there again and I will get back to you, and I'm sorry to anyone who has written up till now and not received a prompt reply. The support system is one of the things I am overhauling soon to be super-awesome too, look for that. By Andrew Smales. 10:57 p.m. - Oct. 02, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BIG-5 text encoding Hey, anyone who was having problems with Chinese BIG-5 text encoding on their diary, let me know if it's okay again now, I think it should be! By Andrew Smales. 2:54 p.m. - Sept. 29, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- comments spam and templates I wanted to mention here that I've beefed up the anti-spam measures in the comments a bit, as well as clearing out a ton of old spam posts that people had written me about but hadn't actually deleted from their diaries (the actual comments pages won't update until you get another comment). If you get any spam in your comments, continue to forward me the "someone added a comment to your diary" emails (there are directions in that email), I'm going to get rid of this problem once and for all I hope. Oh also I put a few new pre-made templates into the system last week, the white one you see here and a similar black one. That's the tip of the iceberg, I've been overhauling the template system and there are going to be some very neat additions to how it works, apart from just new templates (but there will be many of those too). By Andrew Smales. 11:23 a.m. - Sept. 27, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 small change to the new email entries feature I just made one little change to the format for adding entries via email, in order to make it more compatible with certain webmail programs like gmail: From here on in, you need to put endentry after your entry. So a sample entry would now be: entry: blah blah I like raccoons. endentry instead of the previous way. So in summary, just remember to put endentry after your entry and all will be well! I also changed the documentation to reflect this. Oh also, I sent an email to everyone who has added an entry by email so far explaining this and a few other things, if you are one of these people and didn't get my email, please write me (help at diaryland.com) By Andrew Smales. 2:35 p.m. - Sept. 23, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- new feature for gold members: add entries by email Guess how I am adding this entry? Okay it's not a big mystery if you just read the title of this post. But it's true, I am writing this entry and posting it via email. This new feature is for gold and supergold members, and is something people have asked for so that they can post entries through their cellphone or other mobile devices that can send email but whose web capabilities aren't great. Info on how to actually use this feature is available here and if you just have to use this feature and want to upgrade to gold membership to use it, click here! Also please note that we have tested this by sending mail using a variety of email programs, however that doesn't guarantee there won't be bugs with some, so if you send a test email using this system and it doesn't work, please contact us with the details and we'll see what's up! By Andrew Smales. 18:02 - 2005-09-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stats problem earlier Oops, there was a bug in the stats system today, where if you added a new entry today (or changed your template), your stats tracker wouldn't load properly, and so it wouldn't record stats properly. It's fixed now, and if you were affected, you still won't be recording stats until either you add a new entry or change your template, or just click here to have your diary regenerated. And actually I am going to go and see if I can figure out which ones exactly are still affected and switch them up. Sorry about that, I caused this by making a teeny tiny bug fix that wasn't actually related to stats, and it caused this, ugh. By Andrew Smales. 2:25 p.m. - Sept. 22, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quick monday updatey There was a problem this weekend where the queues that regenerate diaries were running very slow. So, if you are a supergold member and the commentscount thing didn't correctly show how many people had added a comment to your entry, or if you changed your template and all the older pages didn't change to reflect the new look, sorry about that, the bug that caused this is now fixed and I am running the queues right now and all should be updated soon! Also, there was a bug happening where if you entered quotes in one of the 3 optional fields, it was displaying on your diary with slashes preceding the quotes. This also is now fixed. By Andrew Smales. 2:00 p.m. - Sept. 19, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- diary-username small bug fixed Quick quick note: the %%dia ry-username%% feature mentioned below, remember it? Well it turns out that for the past few days if you used it to link more than one diary on the same page, only the first worked. I don't think many people did this, since noone pointed it out until just now, but anyhow, it's fixed now. By Andrew Smales. 11:10 p.m. - Sept. 16, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RSS feeds for all Hey quick note, I meant to mention, RSS feeds are also a feature for everyone now, gold or not (this is probably the last thing that was gold-only that switches to being for everyone). Everyone has a feed at http://USERNAME.diaryland.com/index.rss (with USERNAME of course being your username), or at least you will as soon as you add a new entry (if you haven't added one in the past day or two). By Andrew Smales. 7:35 p.m. - Sept. 15, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- random entry feature works for non-gold users now! I just made a tiny change, the random entry feature now works for people who aren't gold or supergold users. When I first added the feature ages ago, I wanted to make sure it wouldn't add too much load to the servers if everyone used it or whatever, but it's fine, so everyone can use it now. The feature makes it so when people click on it, they get taken to a random page on your diary. To use it, just make a link in your diary that points to http://members.diaryland.com/edit/random.phtml?user=USERNAME, except switch USERNAME to your username of course. (here are instructions on how to make a link) By Andrew Smales. 3:07 p.m. - Sept. 13, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quick fix for commentscount for weblog-style diaries I just realized there was a bug where if you used the weblog-style diary and you had the commentscount code enabled (the thing that says "x comments for this entry so far"), it was showing the same number for each entry on a given page. I have fixed that and if your diary was affected it should auto-fix itself the next time you add an entry or someone adds a comment. By Andrew Smales. 1:48 p.m. - Sept. 13, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- %%diary -username%% link mention I would like to mention, if you have any links in your diary that use the %%dia ry-username%% (ignore the space I put there), and they are not working, click here to regenerate your diary, at which point they will work. For those who don't know what this is, it is a code to link someone else's diary easily. For instance, if you wanted to write "me Diaryland news diary" and have the word "news" link to http://news.diaryland.com , you could just put "me read %%dia ry-news%% diary" (but don't put a space in the word diary, that's just so that example shows up here) and it would look like this: "me read news diary". By Andrew Smales. 12:49 p.m. - Sept. 12, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ip banning feature added - also a comments fix We just added a new feature, IP banning. This is basically a way of stopping people from viewing your diary by blocking the IP address they use. You can learn more about it by clicking here, or you can click here to start using it right away. This feature is just for gold and supergold users. Oh also, the first time I wrote this entry, I forgot to add, the % %entrypage% % feature in the comments section is working properly now if you had a problem with that. By Andrew Smales. 11:45 a.m. - Sept. 09, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- some small probs with the 'prev' and 'next' links fixed Quickie: There were some problems with the "previous" and "next" links that I just fixed. Some of them were related to private entries, but basically if you had any problems with yours, just edit the entry in question or whatnot and that'll fix it. Some of the things that were going wrong were things like: - occasionally a link in the private folder would point to the next non-private entry instead of private. You know what, just typing all this out, I am even confusing myself, but basically, sometimes if you clicked "previous" or "next" in your private folder, you would win up in your non-private directory because your previous entry wasn't private. This didn't really make sense, so now the links are all fixed so that anytime you click a previous or next link in your provate folder it goes to your previous or next private entry. Likewise, when you click on a previous or next link in your normal public diary, it goes to the next or previous public entry. Is anyone still reading this? I know I'm not. By Andrew Smales. 12:11 p.m. - Sept. 08, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- another quick change Oh also, there was a problem for a little while where if you edited an older entry (not one of your 50 most recent entries), it sometimes would not change right away on your diary (although your change would show up when you went to edit it again). I have fixed this, so if you are having any troubles like this, try editing the entry again, or let me know if that doesn't help and I'll see what's up. By Andrew Smales. 2:24 p.m. - Sept. 07, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quick note Just a quickie entry for any gold (or supergold of course) member having trouble with their private folder, they should be all fixed now, let me know if not (you may have to add a new private entry in order for it to autofix itself). More info later on the new tech support methods and whatnot. By Andrew Smales. 1:49 p.m. - Sept. 07, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- some pre-weekend news A few quick notes: If you're a gold member set to expire soon and got 2 emails today, sorry, I goofed while changing a server thing to do with email sending, my bad. Secondly, the situation in New Orleans is obviously incredibly horrible and we all hope it gets better soon. This long weekend, DiaryLand is donating all money from banner sales to relief organizations involved in helping people out (it looks like Red Cross is the accepted one, but any suggestions?), so if you want to get any banners, click here. Thirdly, there seems to have been a rash of spam comments that made it past the anti-spam filter overnight, thanks to everyone who forwarded them to us, we have adjusted the filters and stopped those comments from appearing again. Fourth, starting on the tuesday after the long weekend, DiaryLand is moving to a new office and will be offering phone and instant messenger tech support, as well as some other neat additions coming. This should be pretty great, more news on it to follow. Have a nice long weekend everyone, Andrew By Andrew Smales. 11:22 a.m. - Sept. 02, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- more anti-spam measures added to comments Laltely more and more people are reporting that they're getting ads for random stuff (usually mortgages, loans, online casinos, etc.) in their comments section, so I've added some more anti-spam measures to the supergold comments system that I think should work pretty well (there were some measures previously that worked fine when there were just a few ads now and then). A few of the annoying ads may get through, but if you get one, just follow the directions in the "You have a new comment" email (assuming you have email notification turned on, most people do) to report it. I have a few more ideas I will probably implement soon to reduce it, but we'll see how this goes first. By Andrew Smales. 2:06 p.m. - Jul. 21, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 minute problem with updated diaries Hey, there was just a problem for about 10 minutes where if you updated your diary, it may have gone blank. If this happened to you, don't worry, either just update it again, or click here, and it will be back to normal pronto. Sorry about that! By Andrew Smales. 10:09 p.m. - Jul. 10, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- network probs Sorry, the server was just unavailable for a little while. There was a problem with the internal network at the server place and that messed things up, but it's all fixed now. By Andrew Smales. 1:40 p.m. - Jun. 29, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- update Hi guys, Sorry I haven't updated this news section in ages, I have been busy with other site-specific things. I should apologize, tech support has been slow lately, and I really wish I could have answered more requests lately, but Sammy hasn't been able to do much and I'm doing as much as I can. Having said that, a lot of the site infrastructure things I have been working on are done now and I'm going to basically spend all my time from now on getting back to support requests and fixing whatever little problems are still up. So anyhow, sorry for any problems you've experienced, but look for them to all be fixed soon, and if you have an support question that needs answering, feel free to re-submit it so it's closer to the top of the queue, I will be plowing through those now. Anyhow yeah, basically sorry, running this site is sort of a crazy amount of work and I've had to make a lot of really fundamental changes to it which have just drained my focus away, along with some ongoing problems with the server place I have had to work on. I know some people are annoyed that their support requests haven't been answered very quickly lately, but the real time suck stuff is over and I really hope to get them all replied to now. thanks, Andrew By Andrew Smales. 1:37 a.m. - Jun. 29, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- database syncing slowness problem Howdy! There was a database problem I've just fixed (the fix is currently running actually, it may take a short while to fully complete), and basically, if you added an entry or edited an entry recently and the change didn't show up correctly, or noticed any sort of weird wonkiness in your diary where you changed something but the change wasn't reflected on your actual diary right away, that was this problem. As I say, the fix is running currently and will be done soon, and super sorry about this inconvenience! By Andrew Smales. 11:57 a.m. - May. 10, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server troubles, back now Sorry, bit of downtime earlier due to a server glitch, but all fixed now, my apologies to all affected there! By Andrew Smales. 4:36 a.m. - Apr. 23, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sunday update Just wanted to update since I haven't put anything in the news lately: Most things are back to normal, but there are still a few things that need little fixes. I should have most of these done by sometime monday it looks like. The last week or so has been crazy as far as weird emergency after weird emergency happening, it has to be the worst week in the history of Diaryland, normally things are so smooth, and then boom, problem after problem all at the same time, ugh. By Andrew Smales. 12:27 p.m. - Mar. 27, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- wednesday morning update Just a quick update: A lot of the little things that were broken yesterday still are fixed now. For instance sticking % % buddylist % % or % % username % % in templates works again (without the spaces I put in there), some other stuff like that. Also I guess some people couldn't read the replies when we answered a support request, that's fixed now, and also wins the "most ironic bug" award. The hardware issue mentioned in the last news item is ongoing, which blows my mind. I am at the mercy of the networking place on this one and they are being frustratingly slow fixing it, I cannot understand it. Thanks to everyone who sent nice wishes about Ralph, unfortunately he did not make it. By Andrew Smales. 10:45 a.m. - Mar. 23, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- members area was down, is up, hardware thing Quick update: A piece of networking hardware has gone down, so the members area was just offline for about 30 minutes. The hardware isn't fixed yet, but I've got the members area up using other methods, but have had to turn updating off for non-gold members until the hardware is fixed (shouldn't be long touch wood), to ease server load. What an insane week. Ralph, Diaryland's dog (ie. me and Sammy's), also collapsed sunday night and is going to have to have emergency surgery today. I'm not a religious person, but if you are, throw in a prayer for Ralph. And if you have a pet, stop whatever you're doing right now and go order pet insurance. Okay anyhow, enough of that, I'll update when the hardware thing is fixed. By Andrew Smales. 11:57 a.m. - Mar. 22, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server problems update, sunday evening Okay, I have put the main www.diayrland.com page back up after the big server crash, but if you want to read about it, click here. Essentially the upshot right now is this: - Some diaries have not been regenerated yet. Log in and click here to speed yours up if it's not up yet. - No entries were lost. - Some gold (and supergold) members' images are not back yet. The backups of those were not completely recent, but we are working to recover the most recent ones from the broken drives. If you have copies of any recent images on your computers, re-upload them, that's the easiest thing. - There are a few things that were broken earlier which now work, but in some cases you may have to add an entry or click that regenerate link to make sure your diary shows the changes. For instance, gold members who have , etc. stuff showing on their diaries - once you add your next entry, that'll be fixed. - There are a number of other little bugs I am still catching and fixing, and feel free to let me know about any you find through the support system or emailing andrew at diaryland dot com. I am sincerely sorry about the downtime and problems we've had while fixing this. This whole weekend has really been one of the most stressful and depressing of my life. If you email me and I don't write back super-fast, it's because I am still busy fixing various things, there are just so many teeny things popping up, weird little things. By Andrew Smales. 6:36 p.m. - Mar. 20, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Ok, there was obviously a big problem today/yesterday, more updates in here soon, updates currently at www.diaryland.com main page though. By Andrew Smales. 10:14 p.m. - Mar. 19, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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