The Garden Community for Garden Lovers

Maintenance on GoY Site Tonight

peter

By peter

44 comments


Hi Folks,

We are doing some fairly major maintenance on the site tonight and wanted to let you know that there will be a period of about an hour when GoY will be unavailable.

We will start at midnight BST tonight (Monday 5th Sept) and expect to be finished within 2 hours.

There will be a few minor changes after the maintenance, but the site will be pretty much as it is. We’ve done a lot of testing but we may have missed things so please let us know if you spot something unusual. So that you know what to expect, here’s a list things that will be changing:

E-mails

For a few days we will not be able to send notifications hourly. Anyone who gets hourly notifications will get them daily for this period. They will automatically change back to hourly once we are able to.

E-mails will still come from contact@growsonyou.com but some people may notice they appear to come “via” amazonses.com – this is a permanent change.

Blogs

Some blogs have funny characters/pictures in the text or title. After the changes these won’t work as they used to. You will still be able to read the blogs but the unusual characters will not be displayed correctly. If this happens to one of your blogs you can edit it to delete the characters if you want.

Other than that the site should work as normal – and be a bit faster than it has been.

What is the maintenance for?

Firstly we need to update the version of software GoY runs on. This has meant a lot of changes to our code to accommodate the new version.

Secondly, our hosting provider was acquired last year and we have to move our servers. Rather than move to their new servers we are taking the opportunity to move to Amazon Web Services which we think will give us more flexibility in the future.

Let us know if you have any questions, and sorry for the outage.

More blog posts by peter

Previous post: Down Time Tomorrow, Tue 29th March

Next post: Down time Sat 30th June



Comments

 

Thanks for the warning.

And a thousand thanks for taking the trouble to set this site up and keep it going in the first place - I had a 150-page website once, and that was hard enough work (or course it would have helped if I'd known what I was doing!) - I can't even begin to imagine the strain and stress of having an interactive site as large and complex as GoY to keep.

People usually tend to complain more than compliment - when things go right we take them for granted as being normal, it's only when they stop going right that we notice.

But I'm sure we'd all want to hand you big bouquets for GoY.

5 Sep, 2011

 

Hear hear!

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for the information :o)

5 Sep, 2011

 

I agree...Its all for the greater good...:>)

5 Sep, 2011

 

I agree with Fran above. Its a fabulous site, and anything you can do to make it better is ok with me.

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thankyou Peter, everything you do is very much appreciated as always....

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thank you Peter for all your hard work. I am still fairly new to this site but I enjoy it very much. I also would like to thank your whole team as I have found them so helpful. Do please keep up the good work.It is much appreciated....

5 Sep, 2011

 

It's a fabulous site. Thank you.

5 Sep, 2011

 

thanks Peter x

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for the heads up Peter, as usual excellent work you all do to make this a good site thanks.....

5 Sep, 2011

 

Yes Peter I too agree. This is a fabulous site that has been put together wonderfully and is complimented by all of the amazing people who use it and help shape such a lovely online community. Thanks for all your hard work :O)

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks Peter x. :o))

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for the warning. And to echo what everyone else has said its an amazing site that is extremely well maintained, thank you so much for taking the time and the effort to keep it going. I've only been here a short time, but already love it.

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for letting us know. I really love this site.

5 Sep, 2011

 

The stoppage won't affect me as I'm in bed by 10.30 most nights as we get up at 5am most days! Nevertheless it will be good if it will speed things up as for some weeks the site often seems to crawl along at a snail's pace!

Hope the transition of servers goes smoothly for you I also have several websites with lots of pages & it's not always easy to keep on top of everything.

Like several others have commented above, I also like this site very much & I'm pleased for the way you guys keep it running so smoothly! :-))

Good luck with the changes tonight & I hope to enjoy posting on here for a long time to come as well as chatting with all the friends I've made on here. :-))

Thanks for letting us know about the changes. :-))

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for the info Peter, keep up the good work and thanks for setting up this brilliant site for us all here on GoY. All the members are such a lovely friendly bunch, and make it a pleasure to be a member.....Lovely site, thanks :o))

5 Sep, 2011

 

thanks for letting us know peter,much appreciated...

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks everyone :o)

We know the site's been slow recently and are expecting things to speed up a bit with the move.

5 Sep, 2011

 

thanks peter, hope tonight I shall be in bed whilst your doing your maintenance work.

5 Sep, 2011

 

I echo all of the above comments as well..The best gardening website,in my eyes..and so many lovely friends ,many of us have made through GoY..Thank you,and hope all goes smoothly for you,Peter....and us! Lol.I'm sure it will..:o)

5 Sep, 2011

 

Good to know! Thanks for the update.

My hope is that it's faster too, far toooo slow lately and has put me off many a time. I also hope that it takes care of the keep me logged in, or it remember me button. As it doesn't work. I'm finding I'm not commenting on blogs or anything as much as I use to as I can't be bothered logging in yet again!!! Sorry folks! I've just too much to do and logging in all the time is annoying. I don't see the need for it.

Although I have to say I still miss the old GOY it was far easier to use and far more enjoyable for me, I haven't enjoyed the new GOY even half as much. I find I don't look at people pics much since the change as the constant dragging of the pic to see them properly and get away for the annoying adds puts me off. It's very irritating after awhile. Too many adds now getting in the way of things I suppose. I understand u have to make some money, but could it not be don't in a way that doesn't disrupt the enjoyment of the site? Loved the old green too. Miss that.
So I find I mostly read blogs now as the signing in thing every time gets to me and the dragging of the pics plus the the over finger use to find different things puts me off.

I use to really enjoy ever aspect of GOY before all the changes last year was it? However now it's mostly blogs I stick to, as they are easier to see without irritation.

GOY is a wonderful concept though with I enjoy in it's limited form now. It's lovely connecting with fellow gardeners and seeing there projects, their trials and tribulations. I love all the pictures and things I learn on here.
Sorry I use to LOVEEEEE GOY but I like it now.

So my fingers are crossed for a better GOY.

All the best to all.

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for the info Peter! I'm a late night Goyer, and me dropping offline at midnight would have been a bit of a shock! And thank you for a wonderful site which has led to a wonderful community!!

5 Sep, 2011

 

thankyou peter hope all goes as expected.

5 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks for the information let's hope we don't have to wear sunglasses again! :-))

5 Sep, 2011

 

Guess I`ll get an early night as well, lol..

5 Sep, 2011

 

lol Balcony and Lincslass, that's a habit I've been trying to acquire for years now ...

5 Sep, 2011

 

2am and it's all working well and fast! Thank you.

6 Sep, 2011

 

It took me an hour searching to find Geraniumdad again to look at his wonderful photographs of Scotland. Is there an index of contributors ? It would be most helpful.

6 Sep, 2011

 

I agree an index of members would be very useful.

6 Sep, 2011

 

It usually work's if you just put the G.o.Y er's name in the search box at the top of the page :-)

6 Sep, 2011

 

If I want to look at a particular member for some reason I use my own favs page and go from there, of course that only works if I have added them, sometimes I miss things because I`ve omitted to add them, lol, can`t blame Goy for that, only my dippy self.
Mavis its never occurred to me to do it your way, DUH...

6 Sep, 2011

 

I've tried to find a member by Search - but if the member in question happens to have a plant name as their nick, you have to wade through pages of hits ... lol, guess how I know that?

6 Sep, 2011

 

I usually put the members name followed by "profile" when I do a search Fran, that avoids the plant problem.

6 Sep, 2011

 

lol thanks Lily!

*s* tried it on "lily" - found a few members with that as part of their nicks, but no plants, so double-thanks!

6 Sep, 2011

 

love this site .............. and every one too , thanks peter for setting it up . best thing ever !!!

7 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks, Peter, the site does seem to be faster than it was up to a few days ago! Hope it continues this way! :-))

8 Sep, 2011

 

just out of curiousity, do you know roughly how many registered GoYers there are?

9 Sep, 2011

 

that would be interesting to know Fran

9 Sep, 2011

 

Hi Folks, I think we're all done now - with a few hiccups on the way. As well as the move, we made some additional changes yesterday that should make everyone's news page quite a lot quicker.

If you notice any further issues, please let us know using the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page.

BTW - I think we have just over 30,000 registered users in total but not all of those are active.

9 Sep, 2011

 

wow, so many? and presumably at least half of them "live". that's a heck of a lot of traffic, given that I should imagine that few people do a "fly past" - when I come on, I'm in for some time, browsing blogs, photos and generally meandering.

kudos to you and your team for handling the traffic with as few glitches as have shown up - and have [fingers crossed] now all been sorted

9 Sep, 2011

 

Thanks Peter. I have learned a lot on this site. I come and go, and not an entirely regular user, but it is a boon to have such a source of informal gardening friends, and such clever gardeners exchanging views and ideas.

9 Sep, 2011

 

Hi David just to let you know I am having difficulty with GOY cant reply to comments on my photos as when I click on comment it takes me to account details , then when I look at fellow members photos and want to comment it takes me to beginning again lots more its vwery frustrating and erractic, hope you can point me n the right direction ;0)

30 Sep, 2011

 

This is a bit off-topic, but not sure where else to post it - is there, or could there be, a way that we can add questions to a favourites list? I've seen some interesting questions, and some informative answers, but no way to save them except by saving the url to PC "favorites" - and then excavate them from all the others!

21 Oct, 2011

 

good point Fran!

21 Oct, 2011

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