The Webmaster Zone

Update - Tuesday Feb 27

The web servers was down from 10:00pm to 1:30am for maintenance which took much longer than expected. Normal operation has resumed, sorry for the delay.

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KNOWN ISSUES

The following bugs are being worked on right now, no need to report them again:

Delivery to yahoo.com and verizon email addresses is slow - looks ok now
member and events map broken fixed
attaching images to forum posts error fixed
uploading images to registry/profile error fixed
Cannot post in the forums fixed
Forum smilies not showing fixed

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Hello,

On Wednesday Feb 22 at 2:20 PM Pacific Time, the main front-end web server for this website and all the websites in the AutoShrine Network went down. Technicians were dispatched, but the server would no longer power on, probably due to a motherboard or power supply failure.

This was just one of five servers that serve this website to millions of visitors. There have been intermittent problems with this particular machine for a while - I was planning on replacing it next month. No data was lost, as I had already moved the database to a new machine several months ago.

I've been working long days since it went down to restore service as quickly as possible. Since I had to build a new front-end web server from scratch anyway, I've taken this opportunity to upgrade the underlying technology to improve security and add features. The new server is also more fault tolerant.

One major improvement is the new web server supports encryption. No more warnings about insecure passwords when you sign in, and it allows me to add new payment technology to the website. Your web browser should now indicate "Secure" or show a lock icon to indicate this website is encrypted. All old, insecure links should be automatically redirected to the new secure pages.

Since many components of the web server have changed, there may be new bugs, broken features, or performance issues. It's going to take a few weeks to get everything back to normal.

If you paid for a Supporting Membership between Wednesday Feb 20 and Thursday Feb 22, please check your Home Page and Payment History to verify they were processed properly. (both can be found under the "My Account" menu in the black navigation bar across the top of the website)

If you find anything on the website is not working the way it was before, please open a support ticket by clicking "Website problem? Send us a message" at the bottom of any page.

Thanks for your patience,

Skye Nott
Webmaster