SteveThePirate115 Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 As I write this, the GC server is down. Now while I appreciate that planned outages are essential for maintenance, and server crashes just can't be helped, wouldn't it be prudent to at least give us an idea of when we can expect it to be back online? At the moment all we get is a 'Server down at the moment' message and a picture of a sick looking signal. I'm sure a few of you will read this and feel that I'm just having a moan, but GC isn't just someone's hobby. It is a service that many of us pay for and that gathers funds through advertising revenue. Should we expect more? Quote Link to comment
+third-degree-witch Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Here Here ! And yes we should. Quote Link to comment
+Matrix Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 I think I broke it while extending my premium membership Quote Link to comment
+caldini Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Should we expect more? A Premium Member who has paid for the service should definitely expect more. Quote Link to comment
sberlyn Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Glad I didn't process my PM last night - was thinking about it. Will have to wait until it's back online - annoying as I was planning a caching trip today.... S Quote Link to comment
+goldpot Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Oh no! I can't find a cache for today to maintain my consecutive day cache find streak Quote Link to comment
+Happy Humphrey Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Normally there's at least a posting on the forum to give us an idea: but today there's nothing, even though I pointed the problem out 2.5 hours ago. Quote Link to comment
Deceangi Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Sorry folks but I'm guessing that this is not a planned down time [which is usually scheduled for periods of low server usage]. As it's around 06:30 Sunday Morning at Groundspeak's office, this will mean that someone will have been dragged out of bed to try and get it fixed. Please be patient they have not done it on purpose. The site has been extremly stable compared to earlier periods [when down periods were a regular feature of the site], and a reminder that the advertising revenue and PM fee's goes not only to the running of the site but to the future development of the site. Which as Jeremy has indicated is involving specialist outside contractors, who have to be paid for their services. as for wouldn't it be prudent to at least give us an idea of when we can expect it to be back online? As this appears to be a unplanned downtime, giving any sort of time line will be the last thing on anyone at Groundspeaks minds, who will solely be concentrating on resolving the issues which have brought the site down. Plus from previous experience even if they did and were unable to get the site back up with in that period, this would generate even more vocal comments off people who believed that the time was set in stone. Quote Link to comment
Deceangi Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Oh no! I can't find a cache for today to maintain my consecutive day cache find streak This might help you G:UK is back up and running Quote Link to comment
lakeuk Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 It's been working for me ok, it's mine all mine !!! Quote Link to comment
+Gavin4077 Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Please be patient they have not done it on purpose. The site has been extremly stable compared to earlier periods [when down periods were a regular feature of the site], and a reminder that the advertising revenue and PM fee's goes not only to the running of the site but to the future development of the site. Which as Jeremy has indicated is involving specialist outside contractors, who have to be paid for their services. I agree, the site has vastly improved in speed and at least from my personal experieces has had a very good uptime over the last few months. Due to the nature of geocaching, it's understandable that some members will become quite frustrated with downtime though expecially if they wanted to use the site before going out for the day. It might be nice for GC.com admin to tell us what actually caused the outage though, just so we know Just my 2p Quote Link to comment
+SidAndBob Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Another great advert for GSAK. Quote Link to comment
+sTeamTraen Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 (edited) Normally there's at least a posting on the forum to give us an idea: but today there's nothing, even though I pointed the problem out 2.5 hours ago. Yep, at 3:47am Seattle time on a Sunday morning, the hamsters were having a well-earned nap. I was out caching at the time using the WAP site. I looked up a cache and got "this is a Premium Member Only cache, you'll need to log in" (it wasn't a PMOC). When I tried to log in, I got "SQL server does not exist". I suspect the back-end database server had locked up for some trivial reason like the transaction log segment getting full... I'm sure a few of you will read this and feel that I'm just having a moan, but GC isn't just someone's hobby. It is a service that many of us pay for and that gathers funds through advertising revenue. Should we expect more? Well, if it's down, Groundspeak aren't generating any advertising revenue, so they would seem to have an incentive to get it back working again. As for paying for it, well, as a Premium Member, you don't really pay for uptime; you pay for more features when the site is up, which I estimate it is around 99% of the time (which is to say, I don't think there are more than 86 hours of downtime per year). As an exercise, try giving a computer services company like Hewlett-Packard or Fujitsu or SCC or LogicaCMG a call, and ask them how much they charge to guarantee better than 99% uptime for a year on a 24/7 web site. Edited November 26, 2007 by sTeamTraen Quote Link to comment
+goldpot Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Oh no! I can't find a cache for today to maintain my consecutive day cache find streak Got my find, thanks for a piece of scrap paper with some coordinates of unfound caches in Chelmsford Quote Link to comment
+Stuey Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Oh no! I can't find a cache for today to maintain my consecutive day cache find streak Got my find, thanks for a piece of scrap paper with some coordinates of unfound caches in Chelmsford Phew! I'm expecting you to make it the full 365 days Quote Link to comment
+Us 4 and Jess Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 We did not get the series of 6 caches we had planned to do today Ok we should have updated the Tom and Palm last night but by the time the website came back up today we would not have had enough light to complete what we wanted to do. There would be friggan hell on if the US forums were down at 12 lunch time on a Sunday M Quote Link to comment
+jerryo Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 We did not get the series of 6 caches we had planned to do today Ok we should have updated the Tom and Palm last night but by the time the website came back up today we would not have had enough light to complete what we wanted to do. There would be friggan hell on if the US forums were down at 12 lunch time on a Sunday M But you did get to, er, do a 5/5 cache instead. Quote Link to comment
+BlueDeuce Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 There would be friggan hell on if the US forums were down at 12 lunch time on a Sunday All in all I think it's been worse in the past. More than just a 5 hour outage for one day in....how long has it been? We're just now heading into ice storm season. Power outages, phone outages, Satellite TV outages, DSL outages. All of which I pay closer to $300 a year. $1700+ for some of it. Gas and electric separate. Quote Link to comment
+Us 4 and Jess Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 (edited) But you did get to, er, do a 5/5 cache instead. ooo er was that cache I did today a 5/5 I've not logged it yet M Edited November 26, 2007 by Us 4 and Jess Quote Link to comment
nobby.nobbs Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 As has been said, it's been much worse. Become a premium member, get regular PQ's , save them and you'll always be only a couple of days out of date. Quote Link to comment
+Delta68 Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 (edited) As has been said, it's been much worse. Become a premium member, get regular PQ's , save them and you'll always be only a couple of days out of date. Yup! This is exaclty what we do. We have a daily PQ for our 500 closest. This would keep us going for quite a while if need be. Edited November 26, 2007 by Delta68 Quote Link to comment
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