What a world it would be without IT problems...
Those of you that are hard-core PetRescue followers will have noticed that we've been having some problems with the site lately. Random periods where the site is offline for a while, the odd error when trying to use various functions - not good.
Some of these problems are normal when managing a site this big - we average around 7.5 million hits to the site per month now, which is an enormous amount of traffic.
But one problem that came to light this morning is just heartbreaking. Emails from PetRescue haven't been sent for over a week - they we being queued on the server, and due to an issue where not sent until this morning. One of the emails waiting to be sent was a potential adopter enquiring about an animal which, tragically, was put to sleep yesterday. Had this email gone out when it was supposed to, this little girl may have found her new forever home.
Another puppy that is due to be put to sleep tomorrow looks like it may be saved in the nick of time - another email enquiry that had been delayed due to this problem arrived this morning, thankfully. No doubt there were other situations like these that we haven't learned about as yet.
These problems all stem from the fact that the server that PetRescue is hosted on (provided at no cost by Alternative IT, my company) is massively overloaded, and simply cannot cope with the amount of traffic that is generated by the site. It seems horribly ironic that our success may ultimately lead to our demise!
I'm working with the other PetRescue directors (Shel & Vickie) to try and work out a way for PetRescue to afford a dedicated, beefy server that will keep the site running and allow us to continue to grow and improve the services that PetRescue offer. But for now, there's not a lot we can do - so please, accept our apologies for these problems, and please be patient with us while we try and work through these problems.
Cheers,
JB // Web Monkey