10 replies to this topic

[Whatsonstage.com]

Hi,

I wanted to answer a few of the questions that have been asked about the site going down last week and also about some features of the new site:

Q) What went wrong?
A) Two things. The hard drive in our main webserver crashed and, by pure fluke, the back-up drive also failed. This meant that recovering the data was that bit harder. For the geeky amongst us, the webserver and the database server are separate so none of the data was lost but how it is presented (the look and feel of Whatsonstage.com) was lost.

Q) Is this the new look for Whatsonstage.com?
A) With modifications yes. We have been planning a move to a new content management system and site design for a while but the events of last week just forced our hands a little so we got on with it.

Q) Where is my favourite feature X?
A) Most of what was on the old WOS will be restored over the next few days. We are working ridiculous hours at the moment to make this happen but the old Whatsonstage.com was the culmination of ten years of coding and thus it is a fairly major undertaking to move all of those functions over to the new system.

Q) What are you going to do to prevent this from happening again?
A) In fairness, we had a pretty rigorous back-up regime in place and it was a fluke that this happened. That said, the simple answer is spend more. We'll be putting in bigger better more secure hard drives and we'll be backing up even more vigilantly than we used to.

Q) We like the new discussion board but....
A) Registration - We are not going to make registration mandatory as some have requested but we have made it optional for those who want to protect their identity. We are aware of the debates for and against and have discussed it at length before making a decision. Having made that decision we would ask that you respect it. The only places where we have made exceptions are in the job posting area and the ticket posting area where there needs to be true accountability.

All the best,

David

[Haz]

i think this registration option is a good halfway house.. as you say, at least it cuts out people having their posting name hijacked (or claiming to!) and having deflammatory things posted.

thanks for all the hard work - looks like WoS is coming back even better!

[musicmancjay]

Thank you David for this Q&A post.

As has been pointed out in other threads, it's great to have the website back as the wealth of information is unmatchable by any other website.

We all know that technical problems occur in most sides of the internet at some point these days and for you to explain what went wrong, plus the decisions made, to the less-technical among us is very useful.

Here's to WOS getting back on its feet as soon as possible and growing back into the reputable website it used to be before the problems started.

    

[Blue]

i think this registration option is a good halfway house.. as you say, at least it cuts out people having their posting name hijacked (or claiming to!) and having deflammatory things posted.

That's a really good point.
There were some silly and stupid posts on the other board and this should help to protect the innocent.

[Lynette]

Thanks, Skylight - I've done it now. I'm still dipping around the site trying to find everyone! Like being at the wrong party. I liked the old site where you could see how many people had visited a topic and so you could see what was getting people excited. This site looks v cool to me, a bit distanced. But I'll get used to it.

[Marius]

The new boards gives a sense of community, and should hopefully stop the more offensive posters (assuming they get banned for bad behaviour etc). I didnt realise how much i used WOS until it vanished! No website can match it for news, gossip and information.

[Gavin]

I didnt realise how much i used WOS until it vanished!

Same!! I was like constantly checking back to see if it was back up.