Home › News › Site Problems Post-Mortem, Part 1

Site Problems Post-Mortem, Part 1

News 29

Aunt Lynn here, reporting from Berkeley, CA, with my faithful 9-month-old, 90-pound wonder puppy, Muggs (right) at my side drooling, looking for food and humping anything that comes along (including our boy cat, who doesn’t seem to mind…hmmmmm….). 😕

As many of you have been aware, we have had significant site issues over the last week and some, culminating in the entire site going down in flames Monday around 3 pm Eastern. These problems were a pain in the behind for all of us for numerous reasons.

You, the readers, couldn’t get your daily fix of reviews, author posts and hot menz, and were probably going through withdrawal from not getting a shot at the freebies!

You, the guest reviewers, have been wringing your hands over not being able to post your book critiques!

You, the authors, have been frustrated that the reviews you link and send your fans to have not been accessible!

Behind the scenes, Wave and I (and poor Christian with limited Internet access from Italy!  He’s NEVER allowed to take another vacation!) have been tearing our hair out trying to figure out what was going on. Hours-long early-morning, mid-day and late-night calls, as well as never-ending emails, to the host produced little else but accusations that we were the problem, not them. Our pics of beautiful, nearly-nekked menz are too big, our CSS is “bloated” (seriously, that’s what we were told), our parsing of JavaScript isn’t deferred. We’re like “dude, these things were issues long before this mess, so that ain’t it, plus, it ain’t nice to tell someone to their face that they’re bloated.” When the site went down completely on Monday, we deleted files and created problems, because certainly no one else could have.

Ultimately, the problem was two-fold.

First, our host has had server problems, causing lengthy delays and timeouts. This was our suspicion all along, and after days and days of pointing the finger at us, they finally admitted it Monday afternoon. They are in the process of moving us to another physical server.

Second, we learned Tuesday after research on our host’s part that for the second time in just about a year, we were hacked. Last time it created a different level of freaking out because it apparently was virus-related. This time, The Bad People™ went in and deleted key files that run the site. What we all saw when we tried to access either the front or back end was that “fatal error” message that there were missing files, yet neither Christian nor I had touched anything (and Wave self-admittedly couldn’t find her way out of a server paper bag, so to speak, so it wasn’t her 🙂 ).

While the site has seemed almost normal since Tuesday afternoon, it was kind of an illusion as our host worked on getting some behind-the-scenes issues dealt with that could only really be done in a live environment, but we’ve been given the go-ahead to go back to business as usual.  So the site is currently back up and safe to use.

Because The Bad People™ did get in — and not that we have illusions that if The Bad People™ want to get in, passwords will stop them — we recommend that you change the password associated with this site. To do this, log in, then in the upper right on the top gray bar when you are logged in, it should say “Howdy [username]” If you hover your mouse over that, it will display a pull down where “Edit My Profile” is an option, which you choose. It’s at the bottom of that next page.

Over the next several days, we’ll be doubling and even tripling up on reviews, as well as free books, that were set to post earlier in the week, so look for a deluge.

Thanks for your patience everyone, and we’re super sorry for any inconveniences this may have caused you all. Hopefully The Bad People™ will hold off a while before trying again…

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Aunt Lynn

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29 comments

    • I will not call you slow, Denni. 🙂 Go to the bottom of the site and above the disclaimer on the left there is a white box with some links. One of them is log in. When you are logged in, you can then follow the instructions above.

  • You’re baaaaaaack *group hug* thanks for all your hard work, much appreciated

    We’ve had a dog/cat like that too, they were mates for life, when the cat died the dog got a depression 🙁

    • Glad to be back.

      The boy cat and Muggs are bestest friends. They were the same size once — for the first week or two after we brought Muggs home. 🙂 Manny the cat is super good with the dog and let him poke him and slobber all over him. It’s very sweet. Manny did get very depressed when we lost our other dog last September.

      • Fortunately for our kitty they were the same size, since it was the dog doing the jumping, lots and lots of jumping, it was a very horny dog 🙂

  • Wow! Hackers are such horrible people. I feel bad for Christian being on vacation and for the terrible trouble it caused you and Wave. Thanks for the update.

    Muggs is so big at 90 lbs. I’m not big, so he probably could eat me. 😮

    • I despise The Bad People™ something fierce. And yes, poor Christian for sure.

      Muggs wouldn’t probably eat you, just drool a bit, and he has probably another 20-40 pounds and several inches in each direction to go before he’s done.

    • I wouldn’t say it was our pleasure, Jess, but I’m glad that chapter is over. 🙂 More to come with the server switch, and The Bad People™ are always going to be around, but hopefully we can take some steps to make it more difficult for them next time.

  • I am so sorry to hear of your woes…how frustrating for *all* of you. But I guess that’s part of the master plan 👿 of The Bad People™! :curse:

    You all were sorely missed. :loveyou2:

    I know I’ve asked before but what is the breed of your dog? He’s absolutely gorgeous!

    • And we missed being here, Sherry!

      Muggs is a Bernese Mountain Dog and is promising to be a fabulous specimen — very handsome and a perfect representation of the breed. Once he fills out in a year or two, he’ll be magnificent. He’s a superstar!

  • Thank you Wave, Lynn and Christian for the hard work. I’m sure it was very frustrating. You were sorely missed.

    And Lynn – Muggs is a beautiful boy!

    • You’re welcome, Teej. It was — still is in some ways — hard work indeed. And now we’re playing catch-up.

      And Muggs is definitely beautiful. We’re very lucky — all three Berners we’ve had have been good looking.

  • It’s good to see you’re back. Thanks for taking the time to fix the problem (especially Christian seeing as he’s on vacation) and letting us know what’s going on.
    As for the Bad People all I have to say is :grumble: and :grumble2:
    Also Muggs is cute but if he’s a 90 pound puppy how big will he be all grown up? Sounds like he’ll need a room, not just a dog house. But he is adorable with that tongue sticking out and the sad looking eyes. Sending him a virtual doggy treat 😀

    • The site and you all are really important to us, so we’re…glad isn’t the right word (because it was a pain in the arse), but it was necessary that we went through it to get back up.

      Muggs will probably get to be between 110 and 130 pounds — we think. He could stop growing any time now, but chances are 30 or so more pounds and several inches. He hasn’t filled out yet and gotten his chest, which they almost all do (especially the boys). And his tongue is the longest I’ve maybe ever seen on a dog; he can’t control it sometimes, and he unfurls it like a cartoon character. 🙂

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