MDN Back Online – One of “Those” Kind of Weeks

Thank you for your patience while we navigated through web server hell this week. The MDN website was finally reactivated yesterday on its new server (computer). But then, as soon as that happened, MDN’s email account went offline due to some technical explanation we don’t fully understand, having to do with domain name servers and such. So if you sent MDN (or editor Jim Willis) an email yesterday afternoon/evening, he may not have received it. Feel free to re-send any messages you sent yesterday.

Where do things stand now?…

The new MDN web server/computer is up and running with the full MDN website. And Jim’s email is back online–he’s both sending and receiving.

The new server is faster and has more capacity to handle more people visiting the MDN site. The previous issue, which began this crisis, was that the existing server had maxxed out. When we send the daily email it’s not uncommon for hundreds of people to click and access the site at the same time, and that was causing an issue. Plus, we are closing in on 20,000 articles on MDN! A real milestone. Along with all those articles comes a lot of embedded resources–PDF files, images, etc. The space on the old server was almost at maximum, with no extra space to spare. We had hit a point where we *had* to move the site.

If you’ve ever managed a website, you may know of the pain and suffering that comes with moving one to a new server. We’ve been through that pain and suffering all this week. Plus we were on the road to State College to attend the MidstreamPA 2019 conference for part of the week (articles coming next week on the conference).

Here’s the icing on the cake: When we returned home from the conference, Jim found he could no longer print to his speedy Brother laser printer. Something about Google changing up the printer driver. (Insult added to injury.)

We ask: Does anyone else ever have one of “those” kind of weeks? When it seems like everything goes wrong? Yeah, that’s what it was for Jim. He was pulling what little hair he has left completely out.

Now it’s back to work. We’d like to promise there won’t be any more bumps along the way–but we’re not that foolish. We can’t promise. The system seems to be stable and everything working properly. Fingers crossed.

Jim has a LOT of news to catch you up on, so keep an eye out for more stories coming. And again, thank you for your patience as we worked through the problems this week in moving the website to a new server. You’re a great audience!