FictionDB is Up! Woohoo!!!!!!

My nightmare is finally over!!

FictionDB is again available for subscriber login. When the login worked this morning, I really couldn't beleive my eyes. After the last week of one failure after another, I really didn't dare hope that things were finally resolved.

Okay, so what do you need to know?

1) Subscriber data on the site is from February 6. The site didn't actually go down until the 12th and I know many of you may have made changes when the site was going up and down. However, we found instances of questionable data with backups after February 6. We made the decision to go with the backup from the day before the server was damaged in the data center move. We need to ensure that the data on FictionDB going forward is stable. We apologize to anyone who is greatly impacted by this, but I hope you see our point of view.

2) Anyone who made a payment after February 6 has already had their account updated with their new expiration date. However, you will need to pick your free book again. We will also send out e-mail reminders to those impacted.

3) If you registered for a free trial after February 6, your login information is no longer in the system. Please go ahead and try another 3-day trial. We're really not as bad as you've been led to believe over the last week :)

4) Obviously we were in a great hurry to get the site back up and running, so we haven't tested everything as thoroughly as we would like. If you notice any errors or inconsistencies with the data, please don't hesitate to let us know.

I swear I must be jinxed!

I've always thought of myself as being a lucky person. Everything tends to go my way most of the time. Well, I can now tell you I am paying for all those other times.

So where are we? The login procedure isn't working. Nothing has been changed from the old server, it just doesn't work. ??? So, I'm having the developer who created the software look into it. I don't have an uptime yet. Sorry!

Temporary E-mail Address

I have set up a temporary e-mail for communication -- FictionDB@gmail.com -- during the site move. We will probably lose regular fictiondb e-mail for 6-12 hours. If you need to contact us, please use the temporary address.

On the topic of e-mail, many of you have e-mailed us asking about the site. We appreciate your support and concern. If you haven't received a reply from us, it's not becuase we didn't send one. Many of you have your e-mail security settings set very high and you bounce our e-mail right back to us. Each mail program is different, but if you are one of these people, try making FictionDB.com a trusted site.

If I Wasn't Laughing, I'd Be Crying...

Yep, you guessed it. Do I even have to say it?

When my database administrator called to tell me that my new server had crashed, I started laughing. I mean, really! What more could possibly go wrong?

After a week of really terrible customer support, I threw in the towel and am leaving my current hosting company. I've ordered a server with a new company with glowing customer service reviews and the people I've spoken to this morning have been great.

Ah, yes. We've been here before, haven't we? Me telling you that the site will be up very soon. I have done my best, but fate has conspired against me.

So, what is the estimated uptime now? Well, my new host says the server will be ready sometime tomorrow. Assuming no roadblocks, the site could be up tomorrow night. But you know what? I'm not even going to think that. It will be up when it's up -- can you tell I haven't slept in a week?

The only positive about this week is that I have lost a lot of weight from the stress. I knew there had to be a silver lining here somewhere...

FictionDB Status

Everything is almost ready. Everything except the data -- what you really want, of course. The database piece is not quite finished.

I'm hopeful that the site will be fully operational soon -- We've hired an expert database administrator to speed things up. He's working on it now. Unfortunately he's running into problems as well.

I'll post here again when the site is fully operational.

I cannot begin to tell you how hard this has been on us knowing that our customers are being so thoroughly disappointed. When the site does come back up, all of our subscribers will be given an extra month's subscription. I know this can't possibly begin to make up for the outage, but we would at least like to try to make amends.

As for this happening in the future -- we will do our best to prevent it. It was unforeseeable that our server would be damaged in routine data center maintenance, but that's no excuse. Our new server is state-of-the-art and comes with a backup server, so that in the case of one of the hard drives going down, the other will still be available.

Hopefully we've had enough bad luck with this to last a lifetime. We appreciate your patience.

FictionDB Still Down -- Status

The last 48 hours have been incredibly frustrating. The tech people are still trying to figure out what is wrong with the server. We call them 4 or 5 times a day and constantly hear -- "It's almost done." Well, we're not going to wait anymore.

As of this morning we have ordered a new server. Best case scenario, the old server comes up soon and access is restored. Worst case scenario, we get the new server up and running in a couple of days.

While we are incredibly disappointed with the situation, we feel like we are controlling the outcome now.

Rest assured that we are doing all we can to minimize the downtime.

Site is down again

Unfortunately, the site is down again.

Since the server move that happened on February 7, the server has been unstable. We are working with the data center personnel to get a resolution, but don't have one yet.

What this means is that you may experience infrequent outages until we can resolve the issue.

We apologize for the inconvenience and want you to know that we are doing everything possible to get this fixed.

Site Outage -- Scheduled Maintenance

FictionDB will be down on February 7th from 12:00 a.m. to 7:00 EST. Our host is performing some routine maintenance.

Sorry for the inconvenience!