Yeah, we've gone from Temporary Difficulty to Temporary Service Interruption. That's a first for me.
It's definitely a loyalty stress test for sure. At least it's the middle of the night and no sane client will be ordering prints. And yeah, this is the first full outage I've seen.
It's definitely a loyalty stress test for sure. At least it's the middle of the night and no sane client will be ordering prints. And yeah, this is the first full outage I've seen.
I wouldn't be so sure. It's not the middle of the night on the West Coast... Prime time for a lot of people who get their internet relaxation time before bed.
Not to mention night owl photogs like me who are most productive at night who finally got the motivation to overhaul his portfolio on smugmug only to find sluggish service and then complete downtime!
Can't say I can be too angry though, the previous awesome service has created a buffer...but lets see how long it lasts
TheBrady: I've been on SM for over a year and this only the 2nd really big issue I've experienced and no site/service is available 100% of the time. The differentiator, and one of the huge selling points of SM to me was and is the incredible support team they have. You can rest easy knowing you invested in a great service.
It's definitely a loyalty stress test for sure. At least it's the middle of the night and no sane client will be ordering prints. And yeah, this is the first full outage I've seen.
i think this is the 4th or 5th time i've seen full service outage...but i've been a smugmugger for several years now. this is definately the LONGEST outtage...
i feel bad for all you guys that are so dependant on it... 99% of my biz is on my own site (4theriders) that i created myself and host elsewhere... smugmug (seppes.com) is pretty much just where i upload "highlight" shots and do all of my printing from. it's simply an annoyance for me for the most part.
i must say though, having tried flikr and all them other photo hosting sites, occassional downtime on smugmug is WELL worth it. when it's running slow like it has the last few days, it pisses me off, i won't lie...i'd MUCH rather see the site go down completely for an hour then be back up 100% than see it running at ~10% or normal speed...
but in the long run, i KNOW that the smugvelopers/smugwizards/smugsupport will be at FULL BOOGIE making sure their customers are satisfied and up and running again ASAP.
I almost forgot what I did before SmugMug haha. Luckily with it being so close to Mothers Day, people want to give some photos as gifts... so they will order them no matter how inconvenient it is. Hopefully it doesn't hurt sales.
"Just write down the file names of the photos you want, and in what size and finish." *sigh*
Can't say I can be too angry though, the previous awesome service has created a buffer...but lets see how long it lasts
Thanks for the kind words but it's been a rough several days in SmugMug land and we're embarrassed.
The growth of our site keeps defying me. In the months after Christmas when the economy was in such a shambles and so many photo sites were experiencing big declines in traffic, this is what happened to us:
Not complaining and no excuses, we just weren't prepared for a surge like that at a time like this.
(And what I didn't post is we're up to 37 page views per person per visit. Yeow. What are they doing? I hope buying photos from you. Shutterfly is slightly ahead of us in visitors but only 6.5 page views/visit.)
Call me a cup half full type guy. But with it generating so much traffic/revenue, that only means more money to hire better/more programmers, and better reliability in the future.
Call me a cup half full type guy. But with it generating so much traffic/revenue, that only means more money to hire better/more programmers, and better reliability in the future.
I want SmugMug's reliability to be redundant, repetitive, redundant, and reliable
OR..it's just now 8pm here in Hawaii...Prime time for photo viewin' and I have even more people calling me than I did a few hours ago...Wish everyone would go back to work
C'mon SUPER HEROES!!
and just my 2 cents for all those getting down on the super heroes...GIVE THEM A BREAK!
I wouldn't be so sure. It's not the middle of the night on the West Coast... Prime time for a lot of people who get their internet relaxation time before bed.
Not to mention night owl photogs like me who are most productive at night who finally got the motivation to overhaul his portfolio on smugmug only to find sluggish service and then complete downtime!
Can't say I can be too angry though, the previous awesome service has created a buffer...but lets see how long it lasts
Well, we are back to limited access. My site is now read-only. I can't log in, but at least I can view my site and the page loads are fast. No delays as I browse. It's a start. At least they are making progress.
OR..it's just now 8pm here in Hawaii...Prime time for photo viewin' and I have even more people calling me than I did a few hours ago...Wish everyone would go back to work
C'mon SUPER HEROES!!
and just my 2 cents for all those getting down on the super heroes...GIVE THEM A BREAK!
Call me a cup half full type guy. But with it generating so much traffic/revenue, that only means more money to hire better/more programmers, and better reliability in the future.
That's not really true. I can't speak for SM but I do watch the industry and, as a whole, it is suffering a decline in purchases and a few of the big boys, SM included, are also seeing increases in uploads and views.
If you are doing ad sales with views then you are stuck in a declining revenue model with an increase in costs. Not a good thing.
A subscription pay model will work if well designed and only the SM folks know about that. I would be interested to know if SM customers are more likely to buy stuff than users of Flickr and other sites.
SM appears to stay very lean and very pro-active, which will help it through the bad economic times if they are smart and a bit lucky in the company financial arena - which I think they are. I'm guessing (based upon large corporate experience with Akamai) that the Akamai move is a substantial strategic cost savings move for SM.
Overall, there will be more consolidation in this industry. Consolidation of labs have been going on for a few years, Kodak Paper and the Kodak processing biz is now under the Fuji corporate umbrella. Photo sharing sites are leaving and their customers are being taken over by others in the industry.
Everything I hear and read about SM makes me glad that I'm a customer.
I'm able to log in now, site is speedy. Looks promising. Everything I uploaded earlier just popped up. (it wasn't there minutes ago)
Also just uploaded a shot, went up in about a minute. Service restored!!!
I concur, mine is back too - Thanks SM team!
I uploaded some photos but due to a backlog I suppose they are taking some time to show up in the galleries, but when I go to see the upload log, I just get a blank white screen ? Oh well, I was able to upload and Im sure they will arrive at some point (soon I hope).
May have spoke too soon....seems to be slow now. <shrug> it'll work out.
I uploaded some photos but due to a backlog I suppose they are taking some time to show up in the galleries, but when I go to see the upload log, I just get a blank white screen ? Oh well, I was able to upload and Im sure they will arrive at some point (soon I hope).
May have spoke too soon....seems to be slow now. <shrug> it'll work out.
Yeah, looks like they are just now bringing it all back up. It was very snappy, then it became sluggish for me again. But now its running pretty well again.
I expect over the next few hours it will be up and running, but might have a few hiccups. Hopefully with all the growth SM has been seeing they get some new hardware ordered
That's not really true. I can't speak for SM but I do watch the industry and, as a whole, it is suffering a decline in purchases and a few of the big boys, SM included, are also seeing increases in uploads and views.
If you are doing ad sales with views then you are stuck in a declining revenue model with an increase in costs. Not a good thing.
A subscription pay model will work if well designed and only the SM folks know about that. I would be interested to know if SM customers are more likely to buy stuff than users of Flickr and other sites.
SM appears to stay very lean and very pro-active, which will help it through the bad economic times if they are smart and a bit lucky in the company financial arena - which I think they are. I'm guessing (based upon large corporate experience with Akamai) that the Akamai move is a substantial strategic cost savings move for SM.
Overall, there will be more consolidation in this industry. Consolidation of labs have been going on for a few years, Kodak Paper and the Kodak processing biz is now under the Fuji corporate umbrella. Photo sharing sites are leaving and their customers are being taken over by others in the industry.
Everything I hear and read about SM makes me glad that I'm a customer.
Hey David,
That's pretty insightful. We're so focused in our own little world I don't know a lot about our competitors, but we've said publicly that Amazon is a very crucial partner for us. We receive 40% of our images for the week on Sunday nights and huge traffic on Mondays. Without Amazon EC2 to process the images where we can spin up more instances of image processors without owning iron and steel that sits idle and draws power and data center space the rest of the week, we'd have to have very different pricing. I don't see how we'd do video at all.
We view Akamai as an investment and we take a deep breath when we see the bill each month.
We see a lot of really clever companies like Flickr dazzle us technically, but getting it financially squared away is a much bigger challenge. Shutterfly seems to have it figured out, whcc, Bay Photo, Mpix, us, but beyond that I'm not sure if any others really do.
We see a lot of really clever companies like Flickr dazzle us technically, but getting it financially squared away is a much bigger challenge.
Hi Baldy -- long time no see. :}
Psh. How is Flickr technically dazzling?
Everytime I look at that site I get really angry, because it is *SO FREAKING HARD TO JUST VIEW PHOTOS* on it. Their awful layout drives me mad, and it's a damn shame because there are so many great photos there, including the awesome and new White House photostream.
But technically? What do they have that SmugMug doesn't? Mapping? I guess it's a touch friendlier. Better tagging? Yes, oh god yes. (Yes yes, apparently Dev is working on this. Hooray. :-)
But API-wise, I don't think they've got much on you.
The biggest thing they've got is community and eyeballs. Their userbase is huge, and likes to comment. So I guess that's good for ad revenue, but yeah, I don't really think people looking at photos really want to click on ads. Especially if they're looking at personal photos.
Call me a cup half full type guy. But with it generating so much traffic/revenue, that only means more money to hire better/more programmers, and better reliability in the future.
Exactly - which we've been doing. Do you know we have 46 employees now? That we went up to 10 Sorcerers (which is more than double in the last 12 months)?
It's definitely a loyalty stress test for sure. At least it's the middle of the night and no sane client will be ordering prints. And yeah, this is the first full outage I've seen.
Middle of the night?
SMugmug is used by more than just US based people!
(Sorry, touched a nerve there - it seems even Smugmug themselves often forget about the rest of the world)
Comments
Sure. Many of us can confirm.
Don't worry. They expect full service to resume shortly. Sorry!
Yeah, we've gone from Temporary Difficulty to Temporary Service Interruption. That's a first for me.
It's definitely a loyalty stress test for sure. At least it's the middle of the night and no sane client will be ordering prints. And yeah, this is the first full outage I've seen.
I wouldn't be so sure. It's not the middle of the night on the West Coast... Prime time for a lot of people who get their internet relaxation time before bed.
Not to mention night owl photogs like me who are most productive at night who finally got the motivation to overhaul his portfolio on smugmug only to find sluggish service and then complete downtime!
Can't say I can be too angry though, the previous awesome service has created a buffer...but lets see how long it lasts
I think tomorrow, at work, when my boss asks me why I am so slow I'm gonna say, "Sorry Boss, I had some dependencies that cascaded."
I have no idea what it means, but neither will he. He won't be able to argue with me.
That's a line I'm going to use for sure.
http://smugmug.wordpress.com/
a BIG plus one to that!
i think this is the 4th or 5th time i've seen full service outage...but i've been a smugmugger for several years now. this is definately the LONGEST outtage...
i feel bad for all you guys that are so dependant on it... 99% of my biz is on my own site (4theriders) that i created myself and host elsewhere... smugmug (seppes.com) is pretty much just where i upload "highlight" shots and do all of my printing from. it's simply an annoyance for me for the most part.
i must say though, having tried flikr and all them other photo hosting sites, occassional downtime on smugmug is WELL worth it. when it's running slow like it has the last few days, it pisses me off, i won't lie...i'd MUCH rather see the site go down completely for an hour then be back up 100% than see it running at ~10% or normal speed...
but in the long run, i KNOW that the smugvelopers/smugwizards/smugsupport will be at FULL BOOGIE making sure their customers are satisfied and up and running again ASAP.
thanks guys, for all your hard work!
Don and the Op's Team are working on the issue.
http://smugmug.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/5409-site-offline/
haha, yup that is what I am doing tonight..
The growth of our site keeps defying me. In the months after Christmas when the economy was in such a shambles and so many photo sites were experiencing big declines in traffic, this is what happened to us:
Not complaining and no excuses, we just weren't prepared for a surge like that at a time like this.
(And what I didn't post is we're up to 37 page views per person per visit. Yeow. What are they doing? I hope buying photos from you. Shutterfly is slightly ahead of us in visitors but only 6.5 page views/visit.)
I want SmugMug's reliability to be redundant, repetitive, redundant, and reliable
C'mon SUPER HEROES!!
and just my 2 cents for all those getting down on the super heroes...GIVE THEM A BREAK!
I'm just wanting to be able to edit prices before the client wakes up and gets my email haha.
That's not really true. I can't speak for SM but I do watch the industry and, as a whole, it is suffering a decline in purchases and a few of the big boys, SM included, are also seeing increases in uploads and views.
If you are doing ad sales with views then you are stuck in a declining revenue model with an increase in costs. Not a good thing.
A subscription pay model will work if well designed and only the SM folks know about that. I would be interested to know if SM customers are more likely to buy stuff than users of Flickr and other sites.
SM appears to stay very lean and very pro-active, which will help it through the bad economic times if they are smart and a bit lucky in the company financial arena - which I think they are. I'm guessing (based upon large corporate experience with Akamai) that the Akamai move is a substantial strategic cost savings move for SM.
Overall, there will be more consolidation in this industry. Consolidation of labs have been going on for a few years, Kodak Paper and the Kodak processing biz is now under the Fuji corporate umbrella. Photo sharing sites are leaving and their customers are being taken over by others in the industry.
Everything I hear and read about SM makes me glad that I'm a customer.
Also just uploaded a shot, went up in about a minute. Service restored!!!
I concur, mine is back too - Thanks SM team!
I uploaded some photos but due to a backlog I suppose they are taking some time to show up in the galleries, but when I go to see the upload log, I just get a blank white screen ? Oh well, I was able to upload and Im sure they will arrive at some point (soon I hope).
May have spoke too soon....seems to be slow now. <shrug> it'll work out.
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
Yeah, looks like they are just now bringing it all back up. It was very snappy, then it became sluggish for me again. But now its running pretty well again.
I expect over the next few hours it will be up and running, but might have a few hiccups. Hopefully with all the growth SM has been seeing they get some new hardware ordered
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
That's pretty insightful. We're so focused in our own little world I don't know a lot about our competitors, but we've said publicly that Amazon is a very crucial partner for us. We receive 40% of our images for the week on Sunday nights and huge traffic on Mondays. Without Amazon EC2 to process the images where we can spin up more instances of image processors without owning iron and steel that sits idle and draws power and data center space the rest of the week, we'd have to have very different pricing. I don't see how we'd do video at all.
We view Akamai as an investment and we take a deep breath when we see the bill each month.
We see a lot of really clever companies like Flickr dazzle us technically, but getting it financially squared away is a much bigger challenge. Shutterfly seems to have it figured out, whcc, Bay Photo, Mpix, us, but beyond that I'm not sure if any others really do.
Hi Baldy -- long time no see. :}
Psh. How is Flickr technically dazzling?
Everytime I look at that site I get really angry, because it is *SO FREAKING HARD TO JUST VIEW PHOTOS* on it. Their awful layout drives me mad, and it's a damn shame because there are so many great photos there, including the awesome and new White House photostream.
But technically? What do they have that SmugMug doesn't? Mapping? I guess it's a touch friendlier. Better tagging? Yes, oh god yes. (Yes yes, apparently Dev is working on this. Hooray. :-)
But API-wise, I don't think they've got much on you.
The biggest thing they've got is community and eyeballs. Their userbase is huge, and likes to comment. So I guess that's good for ad revenue, but yeah, I don't really think people looking at photos really want to click on ads. Especially if they're looking at personal photos.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Middle of the night?
SMugmug is used by more than just US based people!
(Sorry, touched a nerve there - it seems even Smugmug themselves often forget about the rest of the world)
Cheers - N
http://www.nzsnaps.com (talkiet.smugmug.com)