Archive for the ‘News’ Category

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Done!

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Thank you for your patience - the job got done but, unfortunately, took longer than expected.

I am now reasonably happy with the load balance and you should see an improvement in performance.

We have one small problem - who is a client of Tiscali in the UK - and who launches regular Denial of Service attacks on us. Fortunately, he is not too bright and is very easy to spot. I will contact Tiscali and, if they cannot stop their client, the entire Tiscali IP range will be blocked. Sorry about that - but I need to get some sleep sometimes 8)

Coming Soon

  • My Requests - I cannot guarantee that emails get to the recipients. So - My Requests will display all requests that have been sent to you and give you the chance to repeat a request, etc.
  • My Profile - the start of Birthday Bonus Club social networking. My profile will allow you to tell other Members about you and will give you the chance to decide who can contact you, etc. I would like your ideas on what should go in here - thanks.
  • Live Support- this one is frightening! We will have some form of Live Support available in the next few days.

Thanks for your support.

Posted in News | 4 Comments »

Scheduled Maintenance

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Today’s Scheduled Maintenance (08:00 GMT) will be longer than usual and I will be :

  • Installing a completely new Sponsor handling routine
  • Replacing banner handling - banners will be generated once only and saved as a normal .JPG
  • Moving Welcome page handling to another server - this should assist in speeding up access to the main site

URL’s for your Welcome and splash pages will change - as will your banner HTML, as a result of this but the existing ones will continue to work for the next few weeks.

Please ensure that you change your links as soon as possible

I am very happy to announce that I have a new helper - Erika - who will be assisting with general support queries. Erika is a German speaker and very keen to get started. Hopefully, we will clear the email backlog in the next few days.

Sponsor Handling

From today, sponsor handling will be as follows :

  1. Sponsor cookies are set ONLY from your Welcome page. The cookie used will have a lifetime of 24 hours - during which time, the visitor will be able to view any other page without losing the original sponsor.
  2. The sponsor cookie is accessed ONLY by the Signup page. If a visitor arrives on the site without a sponsor, this script will assign a random one.
  3. The Signup page will show the random sponsor and allow the visitor to alter it to a new name. This is the absolute last chance to change sponsors!

Apologies for the inconvenience but I think you will like the resulta :-)

Posted in News | 3 Comments »

I Made a Monster!

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

In the course of migrating Birthday Bonus Club to its new server - I discovered the real reason for the earlier outages!

The same server was being used for the website itself and all of your banners and splash pages - and that added up to some BIG numbers. Since these are in traffic exchanges and social networks, there was a heavy load on the server that never showed on any of the stats!

Currently, the website is running on the new server and banners and splash pages from the old one. But - I have to do some work to keep the information on the old server in sync with the new one. This will take a little time and, once the changes are made, I will ask you to check your links - because they will change slightly.

I will update this post once the changes are done.

Posted in News | 6 Comments »

Server Outage

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Apologies to all concerned but we suffered a server outage for about 5 hours today. This was due to the database server being overloaded. It has now been re-configured and appears to be handling its load quite happily.

I will be setting up a new - bigger, faster - server later today and making plans for migration - which is likely to happen at our next scheduled maintenance - Monday 12 January 08:00 GMT. Otherwise, I will give everyone plenty of notice of date and time.

Thank you for your patience

UPDATE Sunday 11 January 15:30 GMT

Setup of the new server is complete and I will finish basic testing early tomorrow morning. We will shut down at 08:00 GMT and you can expect us to off line for 30 - 60 minutes. Please note that during the swap-over period (about twelve hours) you may find that you are redirected from the old server to the new one which may slow down access very slightly.

Thanks

Update 10 January 2009

Once again, the server went down again - and I believe that this was a DDOS attack. The new server is being set up and should be available for Monday.

Posted in News | 6 Comments »

Happy New Year (Belated)

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Firstly - a Very Happy New Year to all our Members and visitors.

Secondly - I must apologize for the delay in getting back to some of you

.. and, Finally - I have some really GOOD NEWS for all our Members (more…)

Posted in News | 15 Comments »

Welcome to Birthday Bonus Club

Monday, December 29th, 2008

We’ve been in Pre-Launch three weeks now and things are looking good for our “real” launch on 1 january 2009.