Hi everyone!

We'll be down for 15 to 20 minutes this Sunday for a code update and some database changes.  We'll be adding comment preview and edit functions, a blog import system (initially supporting Blogger and Movable Type, with more to be added later), a number of minor fixes, and several performance enhancements for large blogs.  (We don't have any large blogs yet, but that will change now that the import system is working.)

Next week will see the unveiling of our theme builder, an easy interface to create customised site layouts.

Update: The code update is in place; I'll be doing some checking, and then I'll enable the import function for you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:08 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 For several days, I've been trying to go to the Mee.nu site listings, but only the 1st three show up.  What's up?

Posted by: Bunny at July 24, 2007 10:59 PM (7lxqj)

2 Aha!  You're using Internet Explorer!  Stop this at once!

Just kidding.

It works fine in Firefox, which is my primary browser, so I didn't notice it was broken.  I'll take a look and get it fixed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 25, 2007 02:11 AM (PiXy!)

3 Ah, found the problem.  Fix fix...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 25, 2007 02:16 AM (PiXy!)

4 Fixed.  You can probably see why IE was choking on the 4th site.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 25, 2007 03:08 AM (PiXy!)

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Another bug has been hunted down and squished.  It turned out that certain malformed BBCode tags could throw the parser into a loop, producing 2GB - yes, two gigabyte - web pages and eventually making the software fall over and restart.

I've fixed the bug and added code to track the page size and stop it before it gets out of hand.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If you've been having trouble with your Atom feeds the last few days, the problem has now been fixed.  The new feature that allowed you to use custom feed templates per folder had the slight flaw of breaking the automatically generated feeds...

I also fixed a small bug that potentially could have caused problems with some readers, so mee.nu Atom feeds (and RSS feeds!) now validate cleanly at the Feed Validator.


more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hi everyone.  Just another mini-outage (less than 5 minutes) to update the forum module again.  After that, I'll be creating the mee.nu support forums, and then posting details on how you can create forums of your own.

Update: Successful.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Hi all.

We'll be having a brief outage (again, this should be no more than 5 minutes) for updates to the new forum module.  We have a beta tester for this, and after we shake the bugs out a bit I'll be rolling it out to everyone.  Give it a week or so.

This update will also enable multiple authors for your blog, something that I know a few people have been waiting for.  I'll post instructions on how to enable this (don't worry, it's easy!) once the code is in place.

Oh yes - if you're looking for past notices, they're moved to the Tech folder after 24 hours.

Update: Okay, the code update is in place, and doesn't seem to have broken everything.  Now I just need to upload the new templates to give access to the new features...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:03 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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We'll be having a brief outage today for a code and database update.  This should only last approximately 5 minutes.

Update: All done, and just inside the 5 minute mark. You shouldn't see anything untowards, but please let me know if you do.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:21 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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We're having a little difficulty with one of our servers.  I've dropped that server from rotation while I fix it, but some users might still get assigned to that server by their ISP's DNS cache.  That will resolve itself within four hours; I'm expecting to get the problem itself fixed sooner than that.

Update: Fixed now.  The server involved lost its NFS mount for some reason; it's been rebooted and put back into operation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:50 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Hey Pixy, you seem to be having server issues again, I'm getting 500'd, its been spotty.

Posted by: DoublePlusUndead at June 24, 2007 10:27 PM (HgpT8)

2 Yes, I just got one myself.  I'm looking into it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 25, 2007 12:03 AM (PiXy!)

3 I think I've found the problem.  We've been having network hiccups.  The software is supposed to handle this, but it isn't quite.

I should have a patch for this shortly.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 25, 2007 11:52 AM (PiXy!)

4 The patch for the intermittent database problems has been installed.  I ran it on the test system overnight, and it happily survives a complete reboot of the database server, so I think the problem is solved.

Of course, if the database server actually crashes, nothing will work, but momentary glitches should now be handled with rather more grace.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 26, 2007 07:53 AM (PiXy!)

5 There was another situation that the first patch didn't address, so I've applied a second patch.  All database queries now check the database connection and re-connect as required.  So this time we really shouldn't see any more of these errors.

Fingers crossed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 26, 2007 12:38 PM (PiXy!)

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The new server somehow got disconnected from the distributed cache; if you got an unexpected error while posting or commenting (or whatever), that's why. 

Your post or comment (or whatever) would be saved successfully, but you wouldn't see the result because the server was trying to update the cache with.

Restarting the local cache manager fixed this, but that shouldn't be required.

Update: And if you got an error logging in, that was due to the same problem.  I've fixed a bug in the code that I think was behind this.  (It was certainly a bug, and it's certainly fixed; I'm just not 100% sure it was the cause of the problem we experienced.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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After a certain amount of fiddling, we are now running on two, count them, two web servers.  Which web server you are directed to is essentially random, but you will get exactly the same pages regardless.

We don't (yet) have automatic failover, so if one server dies, 50% of people won't be able to access the site until I redirect the traffic.  We will be enabling additional servers in the coming weeks to balance the load further, and also working on the automatic failover stuff so that our technical guys can take a bathroom break now and then...

In the meantime, enjoy!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This outage should be fairly brief, probably less than ten minutes. I'll be switching us over to the production database cluster in preparation for our launch.

After that, we'll be activating additional web servers.  There shouldn't be any downtime involved in that at all, and I'll be monitoring for problems.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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