The Quizlet Blog

Archive for the 'Downtime & Availability' Category

Learn mode restored (part 2)

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

Hi.

There was a bug in learn mode this morning that was causing it to fail terrifically . Sorry, it was completely my fault.

Not that it matters to anyone, but the problem was one character in my 30,000 lines of code. I found the right character to fix though :)

It’s fixed now. Thank you to the 17 people who reported it. Sorry again!
-Andrew

Update: it appears I had it programmed right on my local copy, but there was a bug in the code that synced the files from local copies of Quizlet to Quizlet.com. So um, I just reuploaded EVERYTHING in case the problem happened to more than just the Learn page. If you’re still having problems, you can email me at andrew at the domain that this website is, or AIM me (sn: Harc Serf).

Sorry again.

Learn mode restored

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

This afternoon, the file for Learn mode get mysteriously wiped. I’ve restored it from my code repository and it should function fine now. I’m looking into the cause of this problem, and if you notice any other issues, post them here. I was making some small updates to Quizlet today, and some saving problem must have arisen. Thank you to the people who reported this problem.

While I’m here, I might as well give a quick update on Scatter. I’ve built it to work outside of Quizlet (as well as inside it), so you will be able to embed it in your own site as a sort of widget. I’ve been testing it on some other sites, and it works beautifully. I’m really looking forward to releasing it! Today I also completed the automatic saving of “Ignore” and “Prompt” preferences. These features will be released in the next major upgrade of Quizlet.

Even more tangential, I upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.1 today. It’s a great update, I highly recommend it if you use WP for your blog.

Server move complete

Friday, January 12th, 2007

The move to the new server seemed to have gone smoothly. If you notice any issues or errors, let me know through the contact page.

Warning: Quizlet may have downtime soon

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

Hey everyone.

I’m getting super excited to launch. After 450 days of work, Quizlet will launch on January 17th. It’s been a long ride, and I’d like to thank all of you testers who helped it get where it is now.

Now, on to business. Quizlet may be having some outages in the next few days. I’m going to be transferring the Quizlet.com domain name to a new, stronger server. This server will make Quizlet much faster and will be capable of handling the load when thousands of people start pouring into the site :). It may also cause problems for up to two days, starting sometime tomorrow (will be announced).

Let me explain the process a little more thoroughly. Quizlet has to switch its DNS records from one location on the internet to another. This process is not instant - it can take as long as 2 days to finish. The reason is that ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, etc) save Quizlet’s server location on their own computers in order to speed up access for their users. The thing is, they only update this data every few days, so it can take a variable amount of time for the process to complete depending on who provides your Internet services.

Now, this probably won’t cause any immediate problems. Quizlet.com will always show up with the Quizlet website during this whole process. The problem is, there are two possible locations of Quizlet that it will show you, each one an identical copy of the other. Now, this would be all dandy if you work with any data for the next few days. I’m copying the database from one server to the other - so if you enter any data after I copy the data to the new server, your data will be lost.

During this whole process, I will clearly mark which server you’re on. If you’re on the newer one, you can feel free to use Quizlet freely and not worry about anything. If you’re on the old one, I will put a big warning on the site saying your new data will be lost. Note, if you do enter data into the old server, Quizlet will still function, just your data may disappear when you randomly arrive at the new server. All of your data from before the switch will be available. If you enter new data on the old server and you really really really need it restored, I can manually restore it for you, so send a note in the feedback box on the top right corner.

So, until I make an update to this post, go ahead and keep using Quizlet normally. When the switch commences, I’ll make another announcement and have all sorts of banners telling you what to do. Relax.