Websites down again

[Ali00001]

All the Express stores seems to be down again. I know this can happen from time to time but it seems to have been down for ages this evening. It is really annoying as I have had a customer emailing asking what is going on. And I need to print out orders for tomorrow! Ahhh!

[Ali00001]

We are now getting a page telling us that the Actinic Express "Solution" is down for maintenance. At least this is better than page not found. But still really frustrating. I don't know much about these things but surely the Actinic servers are big enough to keep us going?

[Ali00001]

Yeah, we're in!

(Sorry, just talking to myself here!)

[leehack]

Cut throat 18 minutes that was, thanks for the entertainment.

[Paul S]

Down again today since 13.15 (now 13.53) It's happening too often for my liking. I noticed it was down at 17.00 last Thursday and also 17.00 the previous Wednesday.

Anyone at Actinic care to explain?

Paul

[claire.ellis]

I've decided to leave- had enough! Haven't had one customer.

Actinic Express seem to take your money- and not provide enough customer service.

[leehack]

I've decided to leave- had enough! Haven't had one customer.
Surely you are not blaming actinic for that?

Why not download the 30 day trial of the real product and see what you think?

[Paul S]

Down again 15.55

Actinic -- Please sort this out it's happening too often.

Paul

[Paul S]

Back again at 15.59.

Look guys, if you need the power socket to plug in the kettle, please get an extension lead.

Paul

[Froogle]

Back again at 15.59.

Look guys, if you need the power socket to plug in the kettle, please get an extension lead.

Paul

quality that made me smile :D

[leehack]

I chuckled too, dry comedy always hits the mark with me. :D

[toykdesign]

Just received the email below from Actinic - hopefully this will sort out any problems

----------------------------
At 8.00 am this Thursday 3rd May, we will be carrying out essential maintenance to the Actinic Express system, and the system may be unavailable for up to an hour at that time. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any questions or queries regarding this work, please contact:
mailto:upgrade@actinicexpress.co.uk

Kind Regards

Actinic Software Limited
www.actinic.co.uk

[Ratty]

Its nice that we are given advance notice of server down (although other firms that host my other static sites do maintenance in the middle of the night) - its the unplanned server down times which are upsetting. Only 5 to 10 minutes at a time, but happens several times a week.

[Paul S]

Come on Actinic- You have been good now for weeks!

Down at 16.30 for a short period and now down again from about 18.40 - and it's now 19.07.

How come this site never seems to go down?

Please sort out the server or move Actinic Express to this one.
Paul

[pinbrook]

This forum is probably hosted on a unix server

Actinic Express is ASP and thus on a Windows Server.

Thus if express were moved to this server it wouldn't work at all, but this doesn't actually help you - Sorry!

[Paul S]

Jo,

I'm sure you're right. Any idea what might cause these outages? It's been down now for about an hour.

Paul

[cdicken]

Hi there

There were some intermittent problems yesterday afternoon with the company who manage all our DNS between 16.07 and 16.30. Unfortunately this was out of our control, but they got it sorted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

With regards to the longer outage you reported in the evening, we haven't got any record in any of our error logs about any interruption, and haven't had any other complaints. So all I can think is that it maybe an issue with your broadband provider. Sorry I can't be any more help, but there were no alerts or errors reported from our any of our servers.

Also, just for the record, Actinic Express is a PHP and MySQL system, and runs on Unix servers.

[cdicken]

Hello John

Long time no hear.

Express was written from scratch but converting Actinic Catalog/Business to PHP/MySQL is an upgrade job which will make the conversion from templates to layouts look like a walk in the park. So we really want to produce a version of Catalog/Business/Designer with online components and PHP, but we need to do it right - so we're not rushing it. Hope that satisfies some of your curiosity.

[Ratty]

Site down again at 14:10 today
Wonder how long it will be??

[pinbrook]

its up now...

[Ratty]

Just 15 minutes this time

[Ratty]

19th may 16:45
Down again!!

[gabrielcrowe]

Express was written from scratch but converting Actinic Catalog/Business to PHP/MySQL is an upgrade job which will make the conversion from templates to layouts look like a walk in the park. So we really want to produce a version of Catalog/Business/Designer with online components and PHP, but we need to do it right - so we're not rushing it. Hope that satisfies some of your curiosity.

want some help? I seem to have some... ahem... experience.

I'm serious.

[jont]

You on those Town Hall steps again Gabe :D

[gabrielcrowe]

Jont, We are the steps.

[leehack]

Who is the chewing gum on the steps?

[gabrielcrowe]

lol, that'd be the cgi-bin.

[gabrielcrowe]

re: express.

i like express, its a clever platform, but, why is it so limited?

template and functionality wise, its just not cricket. I know in the crand scheme of things, its not as important as your core product, but where do you stand with it? will it get better, or will it take many years for Actinic to reach the truly 'online' shop status? Will you ever at all even?

[TraceyG]

will it get better
We are currently researching ways to make Express more flexible and powerful. Any suggestions would be welcome.

[Ratty]

19th may 16:45
Down again!!

And again 27th may 13:02 :mad:

[Ratty]

And again 2:30 GMT 4/9/08 :mad:

[Ratty]

At least now 2:40 Actinic is giving an error message rather than a blank screen

There was an error initialising Actinic Express. Support have been notified, please check back soonther than just a blank screen

[parklifeclothes]

Seems to be working fine at 6:01 am

[Darren B]

OK get your point, no need to double post though

[Ratty]

Down at 16:30 :(

[leehack]

OMG, who created this monstrosity - http://www.ratsport.com/ - for heavens sake put this guy down and out of his SEO misery :D.

[guccij]

I bet he paid an SEo company a fortune for that little lot :D

[RuralWeb]

No he did it all himself


It is better (in my limited experience) to get your domain directed to a page on which you can say exactly what you want - and attract search engines by using a good script with all your keywords repeated several times in the page - and then a forward link to your catalogue site.

[leehack]

As they say, a little or no knowledge is very dangerous.

[Ratty]

at 9:20..:mad:

[Ratty]

9:29 back up

[Darren B]

Its not uncommon for a website to disappear for a few minutes and to be honest 99 % of people would never notice. There are hundreds of reasons for small outages, alot of the time it is not your webserver of the data server its caused by your isp routing

[pinbrook]

there was a notice here re scheduled mainenance - expect 15 mins disruption sometime between 8.30 and 9.30.

[Ben]

Yes, we posted a notice about the scheduled maintenance and also emailed everyone that would be affected.

Ratty, I've PM'd you with the email address we have for you. Let me know if it's incorrect.