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| Server Joyride | February 18, 2006, 12:12PM |
 by: eon |
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Sorry for all of the unpredictable behavior the past few days. I'm talking about the servers, of course, not myself. ;) There are some problems with getting everything moved over to the new host and so for the time being, we're sort of stuck "in between" two networks. It might be a few days before this will be resolved. This simply means that for the next few days, new registrations and picture uploads will not be available. You may also experience intermittent loss of your profile and/or comments. It shouldn't be often at all, please do not panic when this happens, anything like that will only be temporary and usually just for a matter of minutes. This simply happens when I am making changes to the database server and restarting it, etc. I know... *plugs ears in anticipation of collective site-wide moan* Doing the best I can, sorry for the turbulence. Andromeda members experienced a disruption in the DS email service. All is operating as it should now, though you'll need to actually type in this address to check your mail: http://mail.darkstarlings.com Your regular control panel link might be broken. Other than that, email is working as it should. Thanks again, guys. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [8 comments] |
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| Phase One Migration Is Complete | February 16, 2006, 11:48PM |
by: eon |
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As mentioned in my previous news post, we're migrating to a new server on a new network. The first phase of that migration is complete. Our site's databases have been moved over to the new server and brought online. The next phase will begin shortly. During this time, picture uploads will be disabled, but everything else should work fine. I cannot tell you for how long the picture uploads will be down, because it will be different for every member of the site. Each individual will actually be waiting on their ISP to do a DNS cache refresh. Some ISPs do this every few hours. Others only do it once or twice a week. As soon as your ISP refreshes, you'll be fully moved over to the new server and you'll notice that picture uploads are again available. Now that the database is running on a remote server, there may be a slight lag on loading pages of the site, as we'll be waiting on data to stream across the network. This delay should be fairly uniform, however, and not so bad that it will make it difficult to use the site. Thanks in advance for your understanding and patience as we move forward with this process. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [2 comments] |
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| Well Wishes and A Few Updates | February 14, 2006, 10:09PM |
by: eon |
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First, for those of you who care to hear it, happy V-Day. No, this isn't really an important holiday for me. In fact, as most males do, I see this as a shameless staged shake down of the vulnerable love-starved masses by the corporate mind-control machine. But no, really. Happy V-Day. I hope you enjoyed the soft smiles, the kind and fragrant rose petals to hide the thorns of the everyday. I hope you cherished the thoughtful, stolen kisses and sickly sweet confections. --- A new update is on the way. I hope to have it completed either tonight or sometime tomorrow. It addresses what I feel to be one of the worst plagues upon our community; fake accounts. Soon, we'll all have the chance to upload verification pictures according to a very specific set of standards. A given member's verification pics will be screened and once validated, a status message will be added to their profile showing that we can all trust in their identity (at least in so much as the pictures they are using really belong to them and not someone else). I'm divising a system that will be very strict and demanding as far as validation, so I'll need everyone to be patient. If we all work together though, I believe we can eventually have the effect of squeezing out the fakes. I don't believe that anyone who is not who they claim to be will be able to fake the validation. This will only involve taking a couple of pictures of yourself in very specific ways, showing your hands, face and a sign with your profile name on it. My thinking is that since fakes won't be able to pass, hopefully the legitimate members will be eager to validate. Then when we see someone who has been here for a week or so but hasn't validated yet (it will be obvious on their profile), we'll know to be cautious. I may even add extra features such as the ability only to accept messages from validated members or to run profile searches excluding any members who haven't validated--so on and so forth. A way to make sure we only contact people who can be trusted to some measurable extent. Of course, options such as those above won't come into play until most of the site has gone through the validation process, which might take a while. Just trying to give you guys a hint of things to come. --- In other news, we'll be doing a server move, probably sometime this week. Since I'm planning a move to a new host entirely, there will be some lag during the switch over as everyone's DNS updates. Depending upon your host, this may take as shortly as a few hours or as long as a few days. During the transition, there will be a period of time that registration will be closed to new members and photo uploads will not be allowed. These limitations would only apply to people for as long as it takes their ISP to update their DNS. Hopefully, these will be the only limitations during the switch over, I will advise if there are more. My hope is that the new host will provide us with a more reliable, stable server and network. Although, I have to say, short of a few rough patches in recent history, I think that the past couple of months or so have been okay overall. I ironed out most of the major quirks that were constantly bringing the site down in the latter part of 2005. --- Thanks to all just for being here and making this a rewarding project for me to work on. Here's to never looking back... | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [12 comments] |
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| New Feature: Picture Comments | December 27, 2005, 10:19AM |
by: eon |
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It is now possible to leave comments on gallery pictures. This feature has long been requested so I'm glad to finally have had a chance to add it. It should be pretty straight forward to use. While browsing any member's picture gallery, you'll see a link below each picture that says 'Comment On This Picture'. Click it and you can do precisely that. As you browse the galleries, any comments that have already been left will also show up below the pictures. That's it... Enjoy. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [12 comments] |
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| Happy Holidays | December 24, 2005, 8:59AM |
by: eon |
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Happy Holidays to all, be safe and enjoy. A few new updates for you: Back / Next in Picture Galleries You can now navigate through picture galleries by clicking back and next links under the pictures. A lot of people requested this as it's kind of annoying having to click and close each individual picture when going through someone's gallery. As a part of this, another field has been added to your picture management page: order. You can now number all of your pictures so you can decide in what order they will appear in your gallery (and consequently what order they will appear in when people back/next through them. Colorful Color Picking You'll notice now on the Look and Feel page that when you select colors for the various elements of your layout, you'll actually see little colored squares appear next to each selection, showing you what color has been selected. I found that it was much easier to pick out colors for my profile this way as I can now see at a glance how the colors coordinate (instead of just seeing color codes and having to guess). Style expansion You'll notice now that the style selections and any CSS you enter for your profile on the Look and Feel page will be applied to your blog as well as individual pages of your picture gallery, creating a more unified feel for your profile. I've done my best to adjust the classes on blog and picture gallery pages so that the styles will apply well and look as they should though you may need to have a look at everything and make adjustments. I may add some more options in the future to give more control over how things are applied to blogs / galleries / etc. Recent Posts in Forums In the forums there is now a 'Your Recent Posts' link. This will show you two different sections: 1. A list of the ten topics you most recently posted to. 2. A list of the ten topics you most recently started. People had been requesting some easier way to keep track of the threads they are involved in and this seemed most practical to me. I may add some additional options to help keep track of threads but for now this seems like it will be a big help. Now when you click any member's 'Posts' link in the forums, you will be taken to their recent posts page so you can see what posts others have made recently as well. I hope you find these updates to be jolly. Again, seasons greatings and keep it safe even if not sane. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [7 comments] |
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| A Breakdown of the Recent Server Trouble | December 16, 2005, 3:34AM |
by: eon |
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We've had some rough patches with the server on DS over the past week or so and I wanted a chance to address the various issues being reported. Taking time to read this will give you a bit of insight into what's going on and also help you to know what events should and shouldn't be reported to me. --- "Cannot connect to MC" error: This error will potentially come up for a few seconds and only once every 6 hours. This happens as a certain server process is automatically reset. If you get it, please wait for approximately 10 seconds and then try again. You should then have no trouble. This is normal, there is no need to report it. Server Slowdown: Depending upon the time of day, this may be normal. Between 4-5am and 6-7am CST, automatic maintenance processes run which significantly slow the server down. This is normal, there is no need to report this. Other times, slow downs are due to a server reboot. If during regular hours of operation, you notice that the site suddenly goes offline for a few solid minutes (giving you timeouts and 404 errors) and then comes back online but runs very slowly, this is normal behavior for a reboot. On reboot, the web server and other software goes through a "warm up" period where caches are being loaded up, extra processes are being launched, etc. This can take up to 30 minutes but usually shouldn't take any more than 10 or 15. You'll eventually notice when everything "clicks" into place and suddenly the site becomes very fast and responsive again. During a reboot, if you're in the DS chat room, you will be disconnected. If you suspect a reboot, there is no reason to report it. Recent Intermittent 404 Errors: I received reports from some people who were getting random 404 errors while surfing the site. Often they would experience sudden 404s for anywhere from 5 - 30 seconds and then suddenly everything would be fine again. This behavior would repeat unpredictably and was characterized by the fact that it didn't affect DS chat (during the 404s if you happened to be in the chat room, you wouldn't have been disconnected, unlike with a server reboot). I believe I successfully addressed the cause of these errors as of yesterday (12/15). These errors should now either stop completely or at least be greatly reduced in their frequency and duration. If you continue to see intermittent 404 errors as described above please update this thread with the date and time of the outage, approximately how many people were online at the time it began and for how long the 404s lasted. If by reading the descriptions above, you feel the 404s are the result of a server reboot or regular maintenance, do not bother to report. Much of this is happening because of DarkStarling's continued growth and things having to be changed on the server to help handle the increased demand. Thanks to everyone for your patience as I work on these things and thanks also for your valuable feedback. Hopefully things are running more smoothly now and will continue to improve even more in time. --- Note, this was also posted in the forums in the Town Hall section. For the sake of organization, if you have any technical reports to make, post them on that thread: http://www.darkstarlings.com/bbs/topic.php?id=9990 If you have other general comments feel free to leave them on this article. --- | |
topic: Site News | |
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| You Have New Comments! | November 6, 2005, 12:44AM |
by: eon |
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I'm sure you've all noticed this newest feature, that being a notification at the top of the screen when you have new comments. I waited to report this addition until I was sure I had all (or most!) of the bugs worked out. This way if you're browsing articles, forums or polls and someone leaves you a comment on your profile, you'll get a notice (as soon as you refresh whatever page you happen to be on). Hopefully, this will reduce the amount of time you spend clicking back to your profile to see if you have new comments and make the site a little easier to use. At this point, it seems to be working as it should be. If you notice anything out of the ordinary with it (not being notified or receiving false notifications) try to document as much as you can about what led up to it and leave me a comment. Thanks... | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [6 comments] |
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| Happy Halloween | October 31, 2005, 5:18PM |
by: eon |
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Here's hoping you all have an awesome night. Please, be safe. And be on the lookout for the freaks... They say we all come out tonight. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [6 comments] |
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| Make Public, Make Private | October 28, 2005, 5:02AM |
by: eon |
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It's been requested for a while now and so I've added it: You may now make any of your comments private. To do so, click the new 'make private' link that will appear under your comments. For the sake of coherency, the old 'de-private' link has been changed to 'make public'. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [5 comments] |
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| Re: Decrease in New Signups and Registration Trouble | October 19, 2005, 4:53PM |
by: eon |
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There seems to be a problem on hotmail.com right now. Since yesterday I've tried sending messages to an address I have there and the emails aren't showing up. It seems that a good deal of the new registrations here are made with hotmail accounts and that those new registrations are bouncing. If you or someone you know can't create a new account here, this is probably why. The solution is simple. Use Yahoo or something else instead. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [7 comments] |
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