Oh boy, am I exhausted…
It’s been a rough few days. Not bad, but just tired… After the site launch on Friday, let me tell you we worked ALL weekend to get this thing in good shape. There’s a lot of content on this site. Seriously, it’s huge. Slowness, crashes, it happens when you launch something new, and you just got to roll with it, and improve it, and fix it. The imports were coming in like crazy so the queue was loooooong… We got through it (mostly) and the site is much faster now. There’s still a lot more to do, a lot more to optimize, but every day I see things improving, which is what you want. We have dedicated people.
The OD team is very happy with the number of members returning and writing new entries. Reading these great personal stories makes all the stress and exhaustion worth it. I’m really happy to be apart of this second coming of Open Diary. We started this over a year ago. When the DM approached me to take lead, it seemed pretty straightforward (at least on the surface), but then you distill what actually goes into a site like this (of this scale) and you realize it’s pretty complex. Every millisecond counts. Every request. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself rewriting code. Make it better. Make it more efficient. It ain’t easy.
I thank you for diligently working to make all of this happen. I’ve kind of wandered without OD. Facebook is awful. Easy Diary was where I landed, and it was a nice landing. But then, I slowly just stopped writing. Having access to Open Diary again is wonderful.
Thank you, once again.
@zhnee you bet! it’s wonderful when you like to USE the product you also work on! make’s it way more fun and rewarding! glad you are enjoying the new site 😀
@mauteri @zhnee Yeah, Easy Diary was great until it grew. The fix that allowed growth caused a huge performance hit if more than one person was active at a time. It was practically free for EWS to run that way so he ignored the complaints. Pretty soon he was down to one user, who probably thinks it’s fine. She writes about how she’s Albus Dumbledore’s granddaughter and she’s in love with the Dark Side. Sort of like how Luke or Leia’s sons named Ben always turn in the Star Wars novelizations. She also writes a diary for her Hogwartzian cousin who is also a Slytherin and knows of the events in the first diary. She can only write in one diary at a time so she’s probably getting great performance since Zhnee and I moved here.
@sleepygene I have a feeling that you helped me get here sooner than would have been expected. If so, I thank you for that.
@sleepygene Sounds too complicated for me. I just write what I think and respond what I feel.
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Thank you for your time and efforts. It is genuinely appreciated!
@petersshadow Thanks! I’m glad you are enjoying the new site!
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Thank you so much for your hard work! I can’t wait to see what new improvements will come as time goes by!
@alilunique Oh, we have like 120 tickets of things we want to do… 😂
@mauteri You can do it!!! 😀 Awesome job security….it’s always good to be busy!
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I am a self proclaimed website builder. I taught myself code to be able to do it. In just that alone I know that it takes a lot to build a site but I can hardly imagine how much it takes to build a site like this one. I am ever so grateful to you and your team for all that you do. Thank you is just not enough.
@sillysillysandee That is awesome that you are also building sites! I’ve been at if for over 10 years now and love it. I changed careers and got into this much like yourself, self taught. 😀
@mauteri I started teaching myself about 10 years ago when a search & rescue team was on needed a website. I tried using the silly drop and drag sites and software but I just couldn’t get them to do the things I wanted them to do. So I found a few places on the web that gave me code info and I started playing. It was long before I managed to make my very first working site. Of course it still needed work and I still needed to learn some things. Hell I STILL need to learn things. I just mainly do it for a hobby and when people that know me need something done. But I would love to learn more and more and do it for a living. It is so amazing to see what a few strokes on a keyboard can tun into.
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Regarding your image: Does anybody write in C any more? I thought it was just for old codgers who like their computers separate from their displays or at least too big to put in their pocket.
Regarding your entry: You’re happy and I’m happy but the old codger in me wants to say there were clues and hints the imports could lock up the system for minutes at a time in October when I started and users were complaining they could go have a picnic while their entries saved, but the response to support cases was usually either, “we don’t see it on our end” or “it’s just the imports–that won’t be a problem in the future.”
I’m not saying this because I’m a jerk. Well, the fact that I’m a jerk lets me say it, but the fact that I’m happy makes me regret it. It’s just that I don’t think this is your last rodeo, so I’m trying to contribute to the pre-mortem for the next one.
@sleepygene the thought was that some changes to architecture and improvements made to the importing script would allow it to run without issue in real time once the site went public. we ended up needing to add even more processing power than assumed due to demand. i plan on getting the import caught up (which it basically is now) and then having it run nightly, so at peak times people can use the site more comfortably. will probably start that tomorrow. but we will also consider running it regularly again if demand demands it.
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And you know how much I appreciate what you and the rest of the team has done in the last few days! Maybe we will all take a vacation (HA)!
@thediarymaster remember my last “vacation”? 😂
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Don’t take a vacation quite yet! I worked with engineers and programmers for 15 years and appreciate the challenges you must face.
@dlk082244 Hahah, I have no plan to take any time off in the very near future 😂
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Much appreciated! Even with the ups and downs, it’s been a fun ride so far. Thank you.
@kellzbellz Thanks! It’s been a wild ride!
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I’m sorry I’m so late in reading your entry. I meant to get here sooner, sorry that I didn’t. Thank you for working over the weekend like that. It was probably pretty crazy. Hopefully the foundation will be squared away now so you can add on the fun stuff at your leisure. You deserve a vacation first, that’s for sure. Thanks again to all!
@wildrose_2 Thanks! Vacation is eventually coming later this year (well, the big vacation, will probably take smaller ones here an there before then). Yes, there’s lots of things I want to get out the door soon like user search (currently in the works) and autosaving entries (even I have lost entries because of this missing feature). It’s going to get pretty exciting with the great things we have planned for OD 2.0 😀
@mauteri It is exciting! And I will be here to grow with OD 2.0. It’s going to be fun!
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