Logging in problems

A few people have been reporting logging in problems, mainly to the new boards but also to their Wiblogs. We’re really sorry that things aren’t as smooth as butter for you, but there are some things you could try.

1. See if you can log into either the board or your Wiblog. Does neither work? They both use the same username and password, so if one works and one doesn’t there’s something very screwy.
2. If you think you might have your password wrong, use the “Forgot your password” link. It will reset your password and send you a new one by email.
3. If you can log into your Wiblog check the “Privacy” setting in “Options”. If you have it set to “Hide from search engines” this may cause problems (not sure if this is a bug or not).
4. Clear your cookies for wibsite.com. There are instructions on how to do that here: http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cookies

If you’re still having problems please get in touch using the comment form below, or email the address you got your new Wibsite username and password from.

Transfer started!

Hello everyone. A momentous thing has just occurred. I typed 6 words into two boxed and clicked “Save”. It might not sound as much, but it heralds the moving of Wibsite.com from it’s old home to the brand new shiny one.

Even as I type some people will already be able to see the new site at Wibsite.com, for others of you it may take a day or two to catch up. Don’t worry if it takes a little while, these things do sometimes go quite slowly. In fact I can’t (yet) see the new site but I live in hope.

As soon as I can get in I’ll set up your user accounts. In the meantime, those of you who can, take a look around the new site. What do you think?

To everyone who is offering to send chocolate: thanks very much. For obvious reasons we don’t want to put our addresses on t’internet for everyone to see, so I’ll have a discussion with Dave and we’ll be in touch.

[Update: 11:46pm]

I’ve started to create your new user accounts, so about half of you will (hopefully) have received an email with your new username and password and a link to log in. If you can see the new site (I still can’t, so don’t worry if you can’t either) then you can log in and start Wiblogging.

I fully expect a few people at least to have some problems. I’ve had to change one or two usernames after I created the user account due to various things. So if yours doesn’t work (after you’ve checked spelling etc) please don’t hesitate to put a note here as king for some assistance and I’ll be in touch.

Please DO NOT put your username, password or email address in your comment here as the Bad People will get it. But you knew that anyway, didn’t you?

Why the continued delay?

As you’ll have noticed we still have no Wibsite. Here’s the latest. The company with whom we’ve chosen to host the new site with have at last responded to our help e-mail sent on Sunday, but only after a lot of telephone calls from our end urging them to act and repeated broken promises on their part that they’d ‘call back in the morning’ and suchlike. All in all, really poor customer service.

We’re not sure whether the solution they’ve suggested will work in any case. If it doesn’t we’ll have to ditch them and go for plan b, which is to host the site somewhere else. We may in fact choose plan b anyway.

Hopefully we should, one way or another, be able to get the site up and running very soon, but I’m not going to make a definite promise on timescale just in case.

Thanks for your patience and the kind comments.

Dave

[Update by Chris, 11:15pm]

It looks like plan B is working better. The new² (that’s the new-new) hosts responded to my technical request in 4 minutes, which is MUCH better service. Just a bit more fettling with the site and we’ll be able to do what we’ve been trying to do since last Sunday.

So, fingers crossed, but it looks like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Or it may be an oncoming train…

Why the delay?

It’s been a few days and there is no sign of the new Wibsite. We’re really, really sorry it hasn’t gone live yet but we’re waiting to hear back from our new hosting providers about a technical issue (details below for geeky people). As soon as we get the all-clear we’ll be setting the new site live, we assure you.

OK, so what is this technical issue? Well, in a nutshell it’s about dynamic subdomains. Whereas in the old Wiblog system your Wiblog address was wibsite.com/wiblog/yourname in the new system your Wiblog address will be yourname.wibsite.com.

The “dynamic subdomains” are the “yourname” bit before “.wibsite.com”. If you ask for, say newsroom.wibsite.com and the Internet doesn’t know where to send you, that’s a bad thing. We want to make sure that all the new Wiblog addresses work before we move the main wibsite.com domain to the new server. And that requires our hosts to make a small change to their systems.

I’ll chase them up again and see if we can get this resolved.

[Update from Dave, Wednesday 5th November, 18.47pm. I’ve been on the phone to the people today and hopefully our problem can be sorted out by tomorrow morning. Really sorry again about this.]

The Old Wibsite is now Turned Off

The title says it all, to be honest. You now can’t add entries on your Wiblogs, add comments, or start or reply to board threads at wibsite.com. I have taken a complete backup of the site as it was at about 9pm this evening, I’ll make sure the archive at http://wibsite.stillbreathing.co.uk works OK.

Now for the fiddly bit: we’ll be trying to get the new Wibsite working this weekend. Hopefully this will only take a couple of days, but it’s a delicate and fiddly job so we appreciate your patience.

As ever, any questions can be asked here.

Importing completed!

I’ve just imported the final 6 Wiblogs into the new system, so ANY changes to the old Wibsite system (that includes new entries, comments, changes of title etc) WON’T be automatically copied to the new system.

(As I’ve said before, there is a way to get all of these things if you really want them.)

This means that phase two, which is getting the new site live, can start. As soon as I can I’ll be locking the old site so no new entries, comments or bulletin board messages can be added ready for the changeover of the wibsite.com domain name. Once that is done I will create new user accounts for everyone so you can log in – you’ll get an email with your new usernames and passwords.

Exciting stuff, I’m sure you will agree.

Update on transfer progress

The transfer of the Wiblogs is going very well, in fact we only have 7 more Wiblogs to do. I have to thank Rhys for his excellent work (wow! he’s fast!) without which this would have taken much, much longer.

So the vast majority of you will see the big red warning at the top of your control panel saying that any new posts will not be automatically put into the new system. But don’t worry, as we’ll have a complete archive of the old site you’ll be able to manually copy and paste anything new that you want. We’ll give full details of that once the transfer is complete.

The next stage once the rest of the Wiblogs are imported is to get the new site live, then you can all get your new login details and start playing.

Transferring the Wibsite

Hello all Wibloggers. You will shortly receive an email explaining exactly what’s going to happen with the Wibsite over the next few days. In short: everything is changing. But in a good way, I assure you.

As I said in the last post about this, the first stage of moving all Wiblogs to the new system is well under way. Over the next few days Rhys and myself will be doing a lot more of that, so hopefully we’ll have it finished soon. The first and most important thing to note is that your Wiblogs are safe, you won’t lose any comments or posts, and we even have a backup system where you can take a look around the old Wibsite. See that backup here: http://wibsite.stillbreathing.co.uk

The second thing to note is that any posts (or indeed comments) made on your old Wiblog while the transfer is happening may not make it automatically into the new system. But don’t worry, there are ways to fix that.

Right, if anyone has any questions please ask them here and we’ll do our best to answer.

Update on the transfer plan

It’s been a long time coming, but finally things are happening. The
transfer of the Wibsite and all Wiblogs to a new system powered by
Wordpress (the very system which runs this blog) is currently in
progress, and all Wibloggers should have received an email explaining
the process. Here’s how the plan looks (currently):

1) We (the Wibsite technical monkeys) transfer everybody’s entries and
comments over to the new system. This is currently about 30% done.
Once your Wiblog is transferred you’ll see a red warning message in
your Wiblog control panel which tells you that while you can still
write on your Wiblog, any new entries and comments won’t be put on the
new system automatically.

This process will take a few days, so don’t be alarmed if it seems
that it’s taking a while. Basically we have to do each Wiblog by hand,
and it’s not a hugely quick process.

2) We set the new system live, which means the old Wibsite will be no
more. We’re currently looking at ways to archive it, so you can get
all nostalgic if you want.

3) We send everyone their new usernames and passwords, and a link to
your new Dashboard – which is the posh new system for writing posts
and much more. We’ll also make sure there is some help available as
most of you will be new to the system – but don’t worry, it’s really
quite simple.

4) You all log in, choose your new theme, and start Wiblogging again.

So that’s the plan. Hopefully things will go smoothly and you’ll not
be inconvenienced too much. Keep checking back here for the latest
news.

The Wiblog upgrade

As you may know we’ve been hard at work in the back room screwing together a new version of Wibsite.com. The time has come to push the boat out and see if it flies, so to speak. Because we’ve got to transfer all of the Wiblogs from their current home to a plush new penthouse, digitally speaking, we’ve got to have a cut-off point for entries and comments in the old Wibsite system.

That means from a date to be announced shortly you won’t be able to add an entry to your Wiblog, and people won’t be able to comment on it, for at least 4 days. We’re not exactly sure how long the transfer will take, but we have our best team of trained monkeys on the job. You’ll still be able to visit your Wiblog the same as normal, you just won’t be able to update it. Support staff are on call in case you’re affected by anything you experience during this transition period.

What will happen is you’ll get an email from someone called “WordPress”. You need to meet them by the fountain, and wear a red carnation. No, not really. You’ll receive an email from “WordPress” when we create your new Wiblog and transfer your entries, comments etc which will contain your username, password, and where you can log into your all-new Wiblog. You get the email, but it *won’t work yet*. Keep the email safe, though, as you’ll need it.

Once everyone’s Wiblogs have been transferred we’ll twiddle some knobs and pull some levers and we’ll be running on a brand-new system. At that point we’ll email you all to tell you the doors are open, and you can log into your new Wiblogs and try out the fixtures and fittings.

That’s what we’re planning, anyway. The lords of the Internet may have other plans, we’ll see what happens when we start.

Obviously there will be more things we need to tell you, but we’ll be in touch about those shortly.