SmugMug weekly maintenance window: Thursday night / Friday morning

Andy

BeachBill wrote:

Well, I know that virtual galleries recently changed to "planned" over on the user voice site, so I'm hopeful this longed awaited feature will finally be here.

http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/200474-let-us-have-virtual-galleries

after 'planned' comes 'started'

Cindy

'started'

Andy wrote:

after 'planned' comes 'started'

I just checked all the 'started' to try and guess what tonights rollout will be(if it's something listed as started)... lol... anyones guess is better than mine. There are some really great 'started' though...

Tim Kamppinen

I remember when they redid the slideshow that a filmstrip makeover was planned for a future release... I guess we'll know by tomorrow morning. But a useable stretchy filmstrip that isn't clunky and ugly would be great. Especially if it was a vertical strip...

DrDavid

I'm guessing it's either Stats or easy navigation (custom URL's)

David

photostuff

Also, if they redid the Advanced Customizer to make it more user friendly and with larger input boxes would be great. However I don't expect that will happen in this release. I'm sure there are several things that we all would love but can't happen all at once obviously.

DrDavid

photostuff wrote:

Also, if they redid the Advanced Customizer to make it more user friendly and with larger input boxes would be great. However I don't expect that will happen in this release. I'm sure there are several things that we all would love but can't happen all at once obviously.

I actually do most of the code editing in a real editor then paste it in. It's MUCH easier, I get code collapse, highlighting, etc.. and there's much less chance of messing something up

Notepad++ ( http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm ) is a great programmers editor. Free too!

David

jfriend

DrDavid wrote:

I actually do most of the code editing in a real editor then paste it in. It's MUCH easier, I get code collapse, highlighting, etc.. and there's much less chance of messing something up

Notepad++ ( http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm ) is a great programmers editor. Free too!

David

Same here. I never edit in the actual Smugmug boxes. Notepad++ for me.

DrDavid

Release notes were posted early by mistake. Google cache got a copy of them. I won't post a link, nor will I say what it is, (you'll find out shortly anyways), but, it's a cool release

Proving again that yes.. Google IS your friend

David

Sunnyvalejohn

I feel like a kid a Christmas time! I can't wait till morning to check it out! I want to open my presents now!
Keep up the great work.
John

Jackaroo

Too bad for the Australian users...

Friday evening (Australia EST time... our busiest time... the 'Smugmug Heroes' get to work - a weekly occurence)

Saturday evening (another busy time for us... "Smugmug Maintenance' - no 'winow shopping mode' as advertised - the site is 'closed')

Hope this is worth it.

Ayham

Andy wrote:

Hi Folks, new feature being added, but we're doing it Friday night late (10pm CA time). http://smugmug.wordpress.com for more info. We would have liked to finish during our window today, but there was a risk of going over time, which would impact folks on the east coast and Europe, who are in their daylight hours right now. So, we'll finish the job tonight while most of our customers are sleeping. Thanks as ever, for your patience and support. We're all really excited about this release, it's been a while in the baking and making.

Hey Andy
First of all, thanks to you and all your team for efforts making SmugMug and SmugMug served websites better everyday, God bless you all.
I wonder if the said features are kept as a surprise for us SmugMug users, I'm dying to see what they are.
Now, being a user from Dubai (UAE) +4 GMT means I'm one of the most affected users by being offline since the time that you consider most of the users would be sleeping, my visitors and I would be awake. I know that users from my time zone could be a minority among SmugMug users so I'd like to request from you and your team to generate an automated email notification sent to each respected user 12 or 24 hours before going offline, I hope it could be possible . Of course it's not convenient to keep on watching the blog at all times to see if there's maintenance or not. It happened several times to me that my website went offline right after that I sent online promotions to visit my website especially when upload new stuff.

Thanks and good luck

photostuff

DrDavid wrote:

I actually do most of the code editing in a real editor then paste it in. It's MUCH easier, I get code collapse, highlighting, etc.. and there's much less chance of messing something up

Notepad++ ( http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm ) is a great programmers editor. Free too!

David

Actually I do have Notepad++ and other html/css editors. :

Andy

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

I remember when they redid the slideshow that a filmstrip makeover was planned for a future release... I guess we'll know by tomorrow morning. But a useable stretchy filmstrip that isn't clunky and ugly would be great. Especially if it was a vertical strip...

I think slideshow style does what filmstrip did. We just need to make the thumbnails smarter (in both how they are made, and also how they appear/disappear.

Andy

photostuff wrote:

Also, if they redid the Advanced Customizer to make it more user friendly and with larger input boxes would be great.

Use Jfriend's suggestion.

But the other one is use a browser like Safari and make the boxes as big as you like

Andy

Jackaroo wrote:

Too bad for the Australian users...

Friday evening (Australia EST time... our busiest time... the 'Smugmug Heroes' get to work - a weekly occurence)

Saturday evening (another busy time for us... "Smugmug Maintenance' - no 'winow shopping mode' as advertised - the site is 'closed')

Hope this is worth it.

It's really unusual for us to do this, a 2nd night of maintenance. I'm very sorry to our Asian, Australian, and Europoean folks. We'll be back up soon.

As to our Thursday planned maintenance windows, we don't normally use them week after week like we the past few weeks. Sorry!

Andy

Ayham wrote:

Hey Andy
First of all, thanks to you and all your team for efforts making SmugMug and SmugMug served websites better everyday, God bless you all.
I wonder if the said features are kept as a surprise for us SmugMug users, I'm dying to see what they are.
Now, being a user from Dubai (UAE) +4 GMT means I'm one of the most affected users by being offline since the time that you consider most of the users would be sleeping, my visitors and I would be awake. I know that users from my time zone could be a minority among SmugMug users so I'd like to request from you and your team to generate an automated email notification sent to each respected user 12 or 24 hours before going offline, I hope it could be possible . Of course it's not convenient to keep on watching the blog at all times to see if there's maintenance or not. It happened several times to me that my website went offline right after that I sent online promotions to visit my website especially when upload new stuff.

Thanks and good luck

I just hope we don't have to do this again - the 2nd night of maintenance. I'm so sorry it affects you in the UAE. We'll be done soon, I'm sorry.

LPC

I really hope this is worth it because all these delays are infuriating :smo

tfboy

LPC wrote:

I really hope this is worth it because all these delays are infuriating :smo

Well, it should be only a maximum of another 15 minutes wait But having found the new features which should be available, it'll be worth it

Andy

tfboy wrote:

Well, it should be only a maximum of another 15 minutes wait But having found the new features which should be available, it'll be worth it

Surprise surprise, it's taking longer than we hoped. But we're gaining on it!

Sorry !

AFBlue

tfboy wrote:

Well, it should be only a maximum of another 15 minutes wait But having found the new features which should be available, it'll be worth it

I love an optimist. Remember, the post said: Currently estimating another two hours or so until we’re back to normal.

It happens when it happens and usually later than earlier.

Andy

AFBlue wrote:

I love an optimist. Remember, the post said: Currently estimating another two hours or so until we’re back to normal.

It happens when it happens and usually later than earlier.

Hey guys, the site's in good hands. Remember, our CEO is also our Chief Geek. He's the one driving this release. It's a very gnarly one, lots of moving parts, lots of stuff that had to be updated and such. Hang in there, thanks.

tfboy

Andy wrote:

Surprise surprise, it's taking longer than we hoped. But we're gaining on it!

Sorry !

Groooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn.

Now there's a surprise.

tfboy

AFBlue wrote:

I love an optimist. Remember, the post said: Currently estimating another two hours or so until we’re back to normal.

It happens when it happens and usually later than earlier.

Hey, I'm not the optimist, Don is! You missed quoting the last bit " but we’ll likely go back to read-only mode before then."

JMW-Photo

Andy wrote:

Hey guys, the site's in good hands. Remember, our CEO is also our Chief Geek. He's the one driving this release. It's a very gnarly one, lots of moving parts, lots of stuff that had to be updated and such. Hang in there, thanks.

ETA? Anything more specific that "hang in there" or "soon"? ...please? Been up all night and have images to load for a client.

Andy

JMW-Photo wrote:

ETA? Anything more specific that "hang in there" or "soon"? ...please? Been up all night and have images to load for a client.

SmugMug Status Blog wrote:

04:55 PDT: The upgrade is complete, we’re just waiting for all of our systems to get fully caught up and in sync. We should start turning the site back on in the next 30 minutes, barring any problems.

Thanks. http://smugmug.wordpress.com

Betz

*sips some chai and fiddles with Lightroom while she waits*

"Good things come to those who wait."

I'm not a SmugMug vet... in fact I'm just coming up on 1 year with SM but the quoted saying has always been true with these guys. I'd send you guys some Chai and danish but eh, you know the drill... they haven't come up with a Holodeck ...

yet.

chloepapa

as I have sent complaint letter to Smugmug a few days ago on the connection speed issue, the server is down again

totally lost my faith in smugmug and looking for another web for photo storage

any other suggestion ?

Betz

chloepapa wrote:

as I have sent complaint letter to Smugmug a few days ago on the connection speed issue, the server is down again

totally lost my faith in smugmug and looking for another web for photo storage

any other suggestion ?

They're upgrading. Sorry that you've had speed issues. I've never encountered that with SmugMug. I can tell you this... I've tried others and came home to SM. Can't beat the customer service, can't beat the willingness to work their arses off to give us new and fabulous things.

Andy

chloepapa wrote:

as I have sent complaint letter to Smugmug a few days ago on the connection speed issue, the server is down again

totally lost my faith in smugmug and looking for another web for photo storage

any other suggestion ?

Hi chloepapa -I see your emails right now to the help desk. On Aug 18th, Hero Seth asked you for some diagnostic tests, we're still waiting on a reply to that. Can you please write us with the results so we can help diagnose your speed issue? We care about speed, in fact we spend a $$$fortune on infrastructure to make SmugMug faster than any other site like ours. We'll help!

As to the maintenance, well, we don't normally use our maintenance window so much, just in the past few weeks. And we rarely, if ever, take the site down two nights in a row. I'm sorry. Hope you'll be happy with the release!

timnosenzo

chloepapa wrote:

any other suggestion ?

pay attention to the schedule for planned outages?