Website down for maintenance tonight (June 28) starting at 5 pm PT!

[Guest]

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[JohnAtKiva]

Wanted to make sure you guys saw last week's blog post about this:
http://www.kiva.org/blog/2010/06/24/site-downtime-tonight.html

There will be some maintenance tonight, so the engineers have asked for a seven hour window.  I am hopeful that it will take less time than that!  But wanted to make sure you guys saw the announcement, so thought I'd also post an alert here.

Best,
John


(EDITed by Diane R to include date of maintenance, so as not to startle future readers)

[Diane R]

Thanks for posting, John: somehow the maintenance outage had completely escaped my notice, and I suspect I'm not the only one!  I appreciate the heads-up.

--Diane.

[Skimmis]

Looking forward to see the new site.

[YowieFreak]

Wanted to make sure you guys saw last week's blog post about this:
http://www.kiva.org/blog/2010/06/24/site-downtime-tonight.html

There will be some maintenance tonight, so the engineers have asked for a seven hour window.  I am hopeful that it will take less time than that!  But wanted to make sure you guys saw the announcement, so thought I'd also post an alert here.

Best,
John

John,

I hadn't seen any notification about it - but, because I only ever look at the checkout pages, the My Portfolio pages, and the Stats pages, it doesn't surprise me that I hadn't seen any notification.  (I'm guessing most of the "core lenders" wouldn't have seen it, because they too would bypass the "home" page of the Kiva website - and I'm guessing that most of the non-core lenders wouldn't have seen it either, because the majority of them wouldn't have logged in since the notification was posted.)

So, for having notified us here - 

Now, a couple of questions re the downtime (hopefully you can find out answers for us [or "me" - I'm probably the only one anal enough to need/want to know]):
1) It says the website will be brought down sometime between 5pm and midnight, but doesn't indicate when it will be brought back up - any ideas how long the maintenance will last for?
2) Is it just the website that will be down (that's the only thing that is mentioned) or will the API and database also be down?
3) (OK - a "couple of questions" should only be "two" - but I'm on a roll) Do you have any idea whether there will be any impact to users following the maintenance?  I (and others) have repeatedly asked for advance notice of system changes so that we can make the necessary changes to our own apps prior to them dying in a screaming heap due to unexpected maintenance changes.

Regards,
  Ian

[alan]

John,

Let me join the parade of people thanking you for tipping us off here.

Just one point, though. This is not the first time we've had outages in the midst of a red loan campaign. 7 hours lost begins to make a big difference when we're approaching the final 48 hours for a number of loans. At least we're not in countdown mode on any loans yet, but that will come on Wednesday. Given that there are certain known periods when there tend to be large numbers of loans at risk of expiry, would it be possible in future to have scheduled shutdowns outside those periods? I'm not saying the shutdown will cause any expiries, but it will make the job of raising red loans that much harder to finish.

[alan]

I note the temporary front page says in part:

Help Us Reach More Entrepreneurs
We're working overtime to make the site better than ever. In the meantime, your tax-deductible donation to Kiva's operating costs will help us expand our reach and purchase better technology, giving more entrepreneurs across the globe access to a loan.

(italics added)

Of course, any donation would only be tax-deductible in the USA. Perhaps this page should be updated to reflect that fact.

[YowieFreak]

Of course, any donation would only be tax-deductible in the USA. Perhaps this page should be updated to reflect that fact.

Or maybe any donations received from people who can't claim a tax deduction aren't used to expand their reach or to purchase better technology - maybe those non-deductible donations are only used to buy pizza!   

[alan]

Or maybe any donations received from people who can't claim a tax deduction aren't used to expand their reach or to purchase better technology - maybe those non-deductible donations are only used to buy pizza!   

Quite probably. Of course, the pizza would then be used to fuel the effort of improving the website, so it would be to the indirect benefit of Kiva. 

Along similar lines, recall that a programmer is a device that converts coffee into software. 

[Jan & John]

I am another that didn't see any notice, so thanks John, perhaps they could also tell you a little sooner

and I think "temporarily unavailable" and "come back in a bit" are only good for really temporary issues...

I think if Kiva knows how long it will be down, the warning could say so.

I have an email at 3:19 my time...

Ramona has left the following message for the Team Tia - Loan Around The Globe Lending Team:

Found a perfect loan to dedicate to your team, Tia! Popcorn in Spongebob shape.
http://www.kiva.org/lend/211382

Guess where my first stop was
If I check back every hour between now and bed, I could get very annoyed wondering when "a bit" will be

thanks, jan

[Patricia SF]

The website is back up!