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Robertk · March 22, 2010

This is getting old quick.

DrDavid · March 22, 2010

You can check the status of SmugMug here: http://status.blogs.smugmug.com/

There are a lot of moving parts on a website like SmugMug, and realistically, the downtime (as a percentage) is VERY low. It just seems worse than it is...

Sorry

David

Robertk · March 22, 2010

Problem is even if its only down for a minute my customers lose what they had in their shopping cart. This is the first week I have uploaded pictures that Im expecting sales from. Luckly most do not know they are up yet so they havent experienced the down time the past few days.

Please do not tell me it seems worse than it is. As a customer I want to hear how you are going to keep it from happening in the future.

On a positive note your customer service was great on print that need some work because I mistakenly did not have a delay to print set.

pilotdave · March 22, 2010

DrDavid wrote:

You can check the status of SmugMug here: http://status.blogs.smugmug.com/

There are a lot of moving parts on a website like SmugMug, and realistically, the downtime (as a percentage) is VERY low. It just seems worse than it is...

Sorry

David

I decided to see how bad it is. I just looked at the downtimes (offline or read only mode) listed in the blog for the month of march (until the blog says the site came back up today). I totalled the downtime and divided by the number of hours so far in the month and came up with an availability rate of around 98%.

When the site was down, it stayed down for an average of an hour and 23 minutes.

Dave

DrDavid · March 22, 2010

pilotdave wrote:

I decided to see how bad it is. I just looked at the downtimes (offline or read only mode) listed in the blog for the month of march (until the blog says the site came back up today). I totalled the downtime and divided by the number of hours so far in the month and came up with an availability rate of around 98%.

When the site was down, it stayed down for an average of an hour and 23 minutes.

Dave

There's been stats done in the past I've seen. This month though is a bit of an exception; there has been some HUGE things added to the site. Overall, I think SM is at about 99% or so. It can definitely improve, but, it isn't the horrible uptime that you'd think it was from some of the posts on here.. 1-2% downtime isn't the end of the world. But, it is getting better.. Some months I've seen uptimes in the 99.5% range. That's pretty darn good!

Make sure you're not including scheduled downtime. That doesn't count.

David

Robertk · March 22, 2010

Ill be sure to tell that to those who want to buy prints. Ill tell myself that when I want to upload or make changes.

Just because it is scheduled doesnt mean it isnt down.

Dont take my critisim the wrong way. The other alternative is to leave. I would prefer that uptime was improved.

DrDavid wrote:

Make sure you're not including scheduled downtime. That doesn't count.

David

pilotdave · March 22, 2010

DrDavid wrote:

There's been stats done in the past I've seen. This month though is a bit of an exception; there has been some HUGE things added to the site. Overall, I think SM is at about 99% or so. It can definitely improve, but, it isn't the horrible uptime that you'd think it was from some of the posts on here.. 1-2% downtime isn't the end of the world. But, it is getting better.. Some months I've seen uptimes in the 99.5% range. That's pretty darn good!

Make sure you're not including scheduled downtime. That doesn't count.

David

Down is down. I definitely included it.

Dave

zweiblumen · March 22, 2010

Robertk wrote:

This is getting old quick.

Robert,

We apologize for the unscheduled down time over the last few days. We take every moment of down time seriously. Just as the sorcerers are constantly upgrading the code, ops is always upgrading the infrastructure. We do everything we can to prevent unscheduled downtime, and to minimize our scheduled ones. We're really sorry about the inconvenience and it's our goal to make sure this happens as little as possible.

-Travis

zweiblumen · March 22, 2010

Robertk wrote:

Ill be sure to tell that to those who want to buy prints. Ill tell myself that when I want to upload or make changes.

Just because it is scheduled doesnt mean it isnt down.

Dont take my critisim the wrong way. The other alternative is to leave. I would prefer that uptime was improved.

Robert,

We count all of our downtime. Anytime you or your customers can't reach your photos is a problem for us to solve. That being said, we will always try to announce downtime before it happens to help you adjust accordingly. We appreciate your flexibility and understanding.

-Travis

GadgetRick · March 23, 2010

DrDavid wrote:

There's been stats done in the past I've seen. This month though is a bit of an exception; there has been some HUGE things added to the site. Overall, I think SM is at about 99% or so. It can definitely improve, but, it isn't the horrible uptime that you'd think it was from some of the posts on here.. 1-2% downtime isn't the end of the world. But, it is getting better.. Some months I've seen uptimes in the 99.5% range. That's pretty darn good!

Unfortunately, when you're providing a service like SM to people who are using it to sell their wares, any downtime is unacceptable. Although I understand what you're saying, for this type of site 2% downtime is just too much to be quite honest. The problem is, the downtime isn't in the middle of the night when people aren't hitting sites here in the US. It's been in the middle of the day when everyone is banging away at sites here in the US--the absolute worst time for downtime. Add to that it's coming into Spring--when photogs get a little busier with weddings and other things, and you can see why it's so concerning to us.

I don't know what improvements have been added yet. However, I'd rather not have the improvements and have better uptime if this is the way it's going to be every time they decide to, "upgrade," the servers. I'd rather have them fix things like the bugs with watermarking and other things than have them adding improvements if they're going to do anything.

Honestly, the only reason I decided to stay with SM after my trial period is because I couldn't find an alternative quickly enough. Don't mean to bash the service but I have experienced lots of little problems/bugs/downtime. Luckily, the SM Heros are very good and quick to respond. Unfortunately, they need to be.

DrDavid · March 23, 2010

GadgetRick wrote:

I'd rather have them fix things like the bugs with watermarking and other things than have them adding improvements if they're going to do anything.

First off, let me clarify: I don't work for SmugMug. I work ON SmugMug sites (to customize them), but, I'm not on SM's payroll.

I have to ask: what watermarking bugs? Watermarking is an old and stable feature. I haven't seen bugs; I suspect you might be doing something wrong? So, tell me.. What's happening, and how would one replicate the bug you're seeing? I'll try to help.

As for downtime. the 2% figure INCLUDES stuff in the middle of the night. And, you're right.. SM should strive for a better uptime, but, the reality is that downtime isn't always something that can be avoided.

You also asked about what the new features are: have you seen the Release Notes blog?
http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/ Make sure you're reading the blog as they show off all the new features there (like Packages, Smart Galleries, Coupons, Event Marketing, etc..)

Frankly, with all the new features SM has released, you can make FAR more money with 98% uptime than with 99.9% and no new features. So, while I too want both uptime and features, in MY opinion, features like what SM has released are worth the downtime.

Here's an example. Keep track of events with event marketing. Create a coupon to use for the first 14 days after the event is posted. This will stimulate sales. Email everyone the coupon code. Then, no coupons/discounts for about 30 days after their last order. THEN, send another coupon and/or package with a nice coupon code to get a few extra sales. Wash-rinse-repeat. You'll be amazed on how well that works

But, you couldn't have done that just a few weeks ago--the features didn't exist!

Anyways, not making excuses, just telling you my opinion.

David

GadgetRick · March 23, 2010

All fair enough. I hadn't seen the release notes. I'll be reading them. Thanks.

I've been working with the SM Heros on the watermarking problems. Things like it not watermarking when it's supposed to--after the gallery was set up correctly. Seems like I always have to go check to make sure the watermarks are there. My friend has been having similar problems and the Heros have confirmed these problems. Unfortunately, no fixes for them yet. It's one of those things you can learn how to work around but it's a PITB.

As I mentioned, I didn't go elsewhere because I couldn't find a better alternative. So, all things considered, this still seems to be the best value. I'd just like them to tighten up the ship a bit if ya know what I mean.

I may be interested in chatting with you about some customizations down the road.

DrDavid · March 23, 2010

GadgetRick wrote:

I may be interested in chatting with you about some customizations down the road.

Great! I'd love to chat with you about that..

Check out the sample gallery here: http://www.wolfsnap.com/samples

But, as for SM; there's ALWAYS room for improvement. You're 100% right.

The watermarking issue: I haven't seen those issues. Odd.. But, make sure the photo is > 800px.. That would cause the photo to not be watermarked.. Just a thought...

David

WinsomeWorks · March 23, 2010

DrDavid wrote:

Great! I'd love to chat with you about that.. Check out the sample gallery here: http://www.wolfsnap.com/samples

But, as for SM; there's ALWAYS room for improvement. You're 100% right.

The watermarking issue: I haven't seen those issues. Odd.. But, make sure the photo is > 800px.. That would cause the photo to not be watermarked.. Just a thought...

David

DrDavid, actually there is an interesting & strange watermarking issue, and I don't know if one would call it a "bug", but it is a sort of odd glitch. It's going to be time-consuming for me to fix, but I just have to work at it a gallery at a time. I asked questions about it on another thread a few days ago & ended up spending quite awhile talking to Sean about it by phone (someone on the help-desk, at his initiative). He was very helpful and informative. Even if you use watermarking a lot, you could go awhile without noticing the problem, but I do think it needs to get more widely explained around here as people are noticing it now & then.

It's hard to explain all of it; Sean did a much better job of it than I can. But basically the problem stems from the various options we now have to watermark, un-watermark, watermark existing photos or not, and display various sizes of photos with these. It can be accomplished through "gallery settings" or through tools>many photos. One glitch is that it's possible and also simple-looking to just change a gallery's watermarks through "tools>many" just by clicking "add" & choosing the new watermark you want through the drop-down menu. It appears to work. However, it's not fool-proof, unfortunately. It can be buggy or glitchy or whatever you want to call it. Random anomalies can happen, and that's how I noticed it.

Sean told me it's much better to make sure to click "remove" first on the old watermarks. He even recommended to do this 2 or 3 times-- it doesn't always remove the old one on all sizes. (I had discovered the glitch by clicking on one of my photos to view it large & saw it had one of my old watermarks on it). And then, later, you should go back in and click "add" for the new watermark you want to add. And also change it in "settings". It's going to be a long slow process for me with my hundreds of galleries, but he says for now it's really the only fool-proof way to do it in my case. My case is made a bit tougher by the fact that I sometimes have a different watermark on individual photos (one is centered, one is at the bottom, and one is at the top, depending on the image). I use the bottom watermark 95% of the time, but not always. I hope this makes sense. If anyone else sees this & I've confused you worse, I'd say Sean's your man! (sorry, I don't remember his last name)

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