User:Justin ZW/About the Servers

I feel everyone deserves an update, here, given all the recent troubles on the site. I'm going to explain everything that's going on (at least as much as I can) and do my best to instill confidence that we will fix this.

The Beginning
The issues began when our host performed routine maintenance on our servers. They shut them down and rebooted them, but our server never came back online. I discovered that it was bugged beyond repair, so I took quick action, spinning a new server into action and migrating as much data as I could recover while I worked on a full restoration. After a few days, I had managed to fully recover the data, and it seemed that we were in the clear.

Frustration
My joy was short lived, as a new problem arose. Our javascript was not loading properly, and actually had critical errors that caused it all to fail. With the aid of a newly hired tech admin, I spent the better part of a day investigating the issue and doing my best to trace it back to the source. We discovered that an extension was functioning improperly, and the only solution was to remove it (losing our ability to handle video and audio in the process). Frustrated and out of options, I made the call to remove the extension.

More Bad News
It seems that the issues with the extension weren't the only problem. Certain pages were rendered inaccessible, file uploads were hit or miss, and some actions like page deletion or even editing became impossible. With this massive array of problems, I felt I was left with only one choice. That choice was to start from square one.

Where that leaves us
I'm working with my new tech admin to rebuild the servers from the ground up. We're going to fix these problems by building a better system instead of rapidly attempting to fix all the problems present in our current environment. I would like to personally apologize for all of the recent issues, because while I understand that it is not directly my fault, I still feel as though I could have done more to prevent them. I will be giving 110% effort into this, and I promise that I will not rest until either the servers are in top condition or I am physically incapable of working on them. I just want to say thank you to all of you who continue to stick with us despite these issues. You guys really are the reason I work so hard on this wonderful site. I hope that you all stay with us as we move forward. 12:43, 12 August 2014 (UTC)