Pixel2life Upgrade (aka Hammertime) was bumpy, but a huge hit!

Pixel2life Upgrade (aka Hammertime) was bumpy, but a huge hit!

Well, things are just starting to settle down now in terms of the insane amount of emails, PMs and IMs I’ve received from people all over the world offering their congratulations, comments and well wishes. Sprinkle in the always-expected hate mail, and it was a blast!

Last night was just nuts, and to top it off, just as we’re about to launch, NG and I both lose power (we both live in the same city)! Mine was just a flicker that shut me down for a second, but NG stayed gone. We waited a bit and eventually decided to launch at 10PM. NG joined us JUST as we opened up the site and within 2 minutes, the flood of 1800 people at once killed the machine and crashed the whole thing lol! So we eventually regained control and locked things down to figure out what was happening… Serverseed hopped on and we tweaked things until we got a handle on the situation, and we’re continuing to tweak the caching system for optimum performance.

We’re also going to start going through the bug reports, suggestions and just the massive work list we all have to plow through and get done. There’s lots to do, but so far it’s turned out quite well all things considered and I’m pretty happy about it.

So thanks again to everyone for your encouragement and I’m really happy that so many people dig the new site. Now I have to get my ass back to work!

Dan

Hammertime Status – Here’s the latest on the Hammertime Release!

Hammertime Status – Here’s the latest on the Hammertime Release!

Entry 9 (08-01-2006 9:38PM Eastern):Ok folks here’s the deal… NG is still not back and we feel like crap launching without him here. So, it’s currently 9:38PM here, so we’re going to give him till 10PM to get here, otherwise we launch. So, if he shows up in 5 minutes, we go live in 5, otherwise, 10 PM max. So 22 more minutes tops!

Dan

Entry 8 (08-01-2006 8:37PM Eastern): Ok guys, Ehren is nowhere to be found yet, so we’re going to finish up these last few items and then we’re going live! Stay tuned cuz we’re very close now 🙂

Entry 7 (08-01-2006 3:57PM Eastern): Things are going pretty well and we’re just adding some additional items and sorting out some last minute bugs we found when not logged in. We’re also waiting for Ghost to get online (He’s in Australia and it’s currently like 6AM over there) so he can fix stuff he’s in charge of. We’re getting there! At least we know we’ll be able to deploy at some point today lol!

Entry 6 (08-01-2006 1:23PM Eastern): Database and everything else has been imported and running well! So now we’re just going through everything and correcting any weird errors and optimizing things, and double-checking admin processes. For those asking about time limits, I’d say you have at least 5 hours of play time till it’s live.

Entry 5 (08-01-2006 11:54AM Eastern): We’ve finished pruning files that were no longer needed and we did a general cleanup of the live folder.. we’re now copying over the dev files to the live domain and preparing the converters and all that stuff. So far, so good *knocks on wood*

Entry 4 (08-01-2006 11:18AM Eastern): Ok, the update has begun… we’ve taken the site down and start moving stuff around. Hope everyone likes the splash page lol!

Entry 3 (08-01-2006 11:07AM Eastern): We’re now running backups, so it’s almost time 🙂

Entry 2 (08-01-2006 10:11AM Eastern): Good morning everyone! We are in the process of adding some finishing touches to the site, and we expect the update to begin in the next hour or so! Once the update has started, you will no longer be able to access the site’s internal pages so don’t panic if you get some weird error messages at first. Once the update is complete (assuming all goes well with the live update) we’ll spend a little bit doing some final checks and then we’re good to go! So stay tuned and I’ll do my best to update everyone on our progress.

Entry 1 (08-01-2006 12:07AM Eastern): We’re currently still coding some final aspects of this project and we’re hoping to be able to start the transfer tonight before we go to bed. This means the site will go down tonight instead of during the day tomorrow. Then tomorrow we all get up and basically optimize and tweak until the evening or until we see nothing else that needs tweaking and we open the gates 🙂

There definitely will be a few items that we won’t have ready for tomorrow, but they are some minor functionality items and shouldn’t really be a big deal not to have right away. There should be enough to keep everyone happy until we finish everything completely.

So, I’ll get back to working with Chaos and NG and I’ll update everyone when I have something new to report!

MSN Cleanup!

MSN Cleanup!

Just a quick note that due to the CRAZY amount of IMs I get on MSN no matter what my status or personal message is, I’m restricting it to P2L Staff and business related contacts only. I try to tell people that when I’m at my PC, it’s because I’m working in one form or another and don’t really have 2 hours a night to shoot the breeze on MSN when I log on. So, I’ve cleaned up, so don’t be offended if you’ve been removed… you can still contact me via email or PM on P2L (My profile) and you’ll at least know that when I respond, you’ll have my full attention instead of me doing 20 things at once while trying to look at why your HTML layout stretches weird!

Thanks in advance for your understanding!
Dan

How to Stop SPAM on Your WordPress Blog Using the Akismet Spam Plugin

How to Stop SPAM on Your WordPress Blog Using the Akismet Spam Plugin

There is a Digg for this article HERE.

Now that I have installed the Akismet Spam plugin to help control the ridiculous amounts of Spam that was being thrown at my blog, the queries are pouring in about what Akismet is and how do they install it too! Turns out that Spam is just an insane issue right now on WordPress blogs, and it seems like Spam bots are out of control. The only real way I found right at first to control this was to force people to register in order to post comments and this cut down the spam quite a bit. Unfortunately I know that I lost a lost of feedback because most people don’t want to register just to post a hello or a one sentence comment.

Akismet

So how do you solve this Spam issue without forcing people to register? Well, you install the most popular and effective Span control plugin currently available online called Akismet! Did I also mention it’s 100% free for personal use? If you want to learn more about what Akismet actually does and how it works, check out their FAQ.

This tutorial will show you step by step how to install the plugin and get your free WordPress API key in order for it to work for your personally hosted blog. If you host your blog at WordPress, then you don’t need this because your blog is automatically protected by Akismet. If you host your own blog(s) like I do, you need to install the plugin manually. Click below to continue!

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Finally Installed Akismet so Registration is Now Off!

Finally Installed Akismet so Registration is Now Off!

For those of you that were too lazy to register to post because I was too lazy to get Akismet up and running, you are no longer a victim! You no longer have to register an account on here to post comments, so go ahead and speak up and enjoy the new found freedom. Just don’t be an ass 😉

Dan