Are things functioning properly today?

Nothing major, and in isolation very trivial, but a number of things seem strange.

(1)I have had no notifications, although if I click on interactions I see that I have had a like on a story.

(2)I have apparently had no visits to my page on checking Activity. Not necessarily inaccurate but a bit surprising.

(3) One message that I have sent, and I can see by clicking on messages on the person's page, does not appear in my messages.

(4) None of my sent messages today are being shown as read, in itself not necessarily unusual but along with these other things, I am wondering if everything is running as it should be.

If there is a (5) or (6) I will get back to you!

Just as an addition to (3) I have just sent a message to someone else and I can see it on message on their page but it does not appear in my messages list.

Quote by Hmm45

you are correct for all issues…admin have been notified, several hours ago now, and advised that this was not there priority to rectify!

Thank you very much.

Glad that it is not just me, I think!

The tech team are aware, but bear in mind office hours are mon-fri, so things just might be a bit wonky until tomorrow.

Quote by Jen

The tech team are aware, but bear in mind office hours are mon-fri, so things just might be a bit wonky until tomorrow.

Thank you, Jen.

Is it hoped that things will catch up, please?

For instance, messages that I have sent but are not visible on my messages will become visible eventually?

(Oh and those 150 people that have no doubt visited my page today will eventually be shown via Activity?)

Yeah same thing here, I was in some messaging back and forth conversations about story ideas trying to get feedback then all of a sudden, very late Friday early Saturday I think it was, no sent history is showing up (new sends) I have to go to that member and see if it was read, some cases it was but then nothing comes back, so I initially thought I was banned or did something wrong because even the "bug" I reported was all of a sudden missing, meaning the job ticket and when I check for resolution it said it was not even existing. So really weird that you don't have a team everyday you have them on business hours Monday through Friday? very odd but I guess go to know for future mishaps, so should everyone when this gets cleared get a bonus few days on a membership since things are so confusing now?

Haven't noticed any issues with messages or notifications, but I couldn't get on late yesterday my time (c. 2-3am today in GMT). Just got a spinny for a while, then a Page Not Found with a Home button. Except it was the home page I was trying to get to so the Home button was kind of useless.

Quote by Hmm45

sorry…office hours? your kidding right? this is the World Wide Web and the site has nothing to do with office or any business function…how can such issues for a major function of the site be relegated to an “office hours” approach to rectify?

I wonder if google was to suffer a glitch, whether they’d be allowed to simply say sorry our office is closed come back on Monday and do your searching then!!!!

The site was effectively down in the early hours of Sunday morning and out of office hours emergency contact was established at 6am and the problems quickly rectified after all the key players in the development team rallied including the CEO. The subsequent issues were not reported until early afternoon and whilst inconvenient did not warrant, and still do not warrant, a second emergency call-out. Credit to the development team. Thank you.

Quote by PJH

Thank you, Jen.

Is it hoped that things will catch up, please?

For instance, messages that I have sent but are not visible on my messages will become visible eventually?

(Oh and those 150 people that have no doubt visited my page today will eventually be shown via Activity?)

Dont be modest... its more like 3k a day.

Quote by simplyjohn
Credit to the development team. Thank you.

Seconded.

A site like this probably doesn't need 24x7, though 8x7 (instead of 8x5) might be nice so you guys have support on weekends. However, 8x5 with an emergency contact really seems good enough. I manage IT in home care and that's how we operate. As long as actual outages or security breaches can be dealt with, other issues can wait until business hours.

Had to LOL that this thread with a dozen replies apparently has 0 views. I assume that's part of the problem.

Quote by Hmm45

you are correct for all issues…admin have been notified, several hours ago now, and advised that this was not there priority to rectify!

I have one Help Desk ticket from you (time stamped 4pm) which I have not yet even opened so quite who 'advised that this was not there priority to rectify' I have no idea.

Quote by Hmm45

sorry…office hours? your kidding right? this is the World Wide Web and the site has nothing to do with office or any business function…how can such issues for a major function of the site be relegated to an “office hours” approach to rectify?

I wonder if google was to suffer a glitch, whether they’d be allowed to simply say sorry our office is closed come back on Monday and do your searching then!!!!

Yeah, the major tech firms. Google, twitter, Facebook and Lush.

Be nice to have their budgets, lol.

It’s the weekend did not expect it to be fixed. Thank you to all whom are trying! Had to laugh at the 3k response to the 150 people lol!!!

I got 3 PMs, including mail notifications, over my lunch so I guess things are moving again?

EDIT: Though this thread still has 0 views. 🤣

Quote by Seeker4

I got 3 PMs, including mail notifications, over my lunch so I guess things are moving again?

EDIT: Though this thread still has 0 views. 🤣

Not for me (yet).

Everything is still the same as per my thread opening post.

Quote by thesexynun

It’s the weekend did not expect it to be fixed. Thank you to all whom are trying! Had to laugh at the 3k response to the 150 people lol!!!

I was serious! I think the members just love that beard.

Quote by simplyjohn

Credit to the development team.

This is like when religious people praise their god that nobody was killed by the fire that burned down their house instead of calling out god for setting fire to their house.

Quote by dlcalguy

This is like when religious people praise their god that nobody was killed by the fire that burned down their house instead of calling out god for setting fire to their house.

Thank you Thats very useful/helpful and informative feedback.

Quote by simplyjohn

Thank you Thats very useful/helpful and informative feedback.

OK, try this. Every release seems to bring new problems. If a change brings problems, it is clearly from insufficient regression testing.

For any new release or version of software, there ought - at the very least - to be a back-out plan. Something that will quickly revert to a stable prior version. The development team needs to make someone available to implement the back-out plan until such time as it has been demonstrated that the new code is working.

An outsource company has no interest in making things perfect. They only want the client's signature of approval.

While it is the responsibility of the IT company to which Lush was outsourced to code and test, it is the responsibility of the owners/admins of Lush to ensure that it has been done.

Someone needs to address the failings. Either in the development team, the testing team or the user acceptance sign-off.

What Lush needs to stop doing is praising the very people that fucked them all day yesterday.

Well, the views on this thread incremented to 1, so that's an improvement?

Quote by simplyjohn

I was serious! I think the members just love that beard.

I will let you know if this quote increases the number of visitors to my page, if we are ever again able to see who is visiting.

Quote by dlcalguy

OK, try this. Every release seems to bring new problems. If a change brings problems, it is clearly from insufficient regression testing.

For any new release or version of software, there ought - at the very least - to be a back-out plan. Something that will quickly revert to a stable prior version. The development team needs to make someone available to implement the back-out plan until such time as it has been demonstrated that the new code is working.

An outsource company has no interest in making things perfect. They only want the client's signature of approval.

While it is the responsibility of the IT company to which Lush was outsourced to code and test, it is the responsibility of the owners/admins of Lush to ensure that it has been done.

Someone needs to address the failings. Either in the development team, the testing team or the user acceptance sign-off.

What Lush needs to stop doing is praising the very people that fucked them all day yesterday.

No one has outsourced anything.

The company who bought Lush last year have their own in house team. It's a small outfit and they keep UK office hours generally. The site went down in the middle of the night UK time. Service was restored when they were informed in the morning and any remaining notification issues or viewing figure issues can wait until Monday.

As I've said before, it's a small company with limited employees so the easiest thing to do once initial testing is out the way is to go live with updates and let the members advise if anything else needs fixed or is buggy.

Quote by Jen
The company who bought Lush last year have their own in house team.

I suspect this is the piece dical is missing. He may be thinking Nic still owns the site and hired a company to do the development in place of Gav.

And thanks for the explanation. Clarifies some things for me, too.

Another function I just noticed not working: An Author I follow published a poem within the last 16 hours, so after the team fixed the urgent problem. What I have noticed is 1. I did not receive a notification (which I see the notifications problem has been brought to the attention of team) & 2. The Poem was not added to my Reading List. Not sure if #2 has been reported or brought to the attention of the team.

Quote by Seeker4

I suspect this is the piece dical is missing. He may be thinking Nic still owns the site and hired a company to do the development in place of Gav.

And thanks for the explanation. Clarifies some things for me, too.

This is news to me too. To be fair, I was out of the loop quite a bit in 2022, so it's not surprising I missed the announcement about Lush being sold. Could some kind person please post a link to the thread where this was announced? I had a quick look and couldn't find it, but I may have been looking in the wrong place. Ta!

Ha…there is no announcement of it being sold nor any email to those members who have been supportive of the site from early on and including when the paid membership levels where first introduced… Its seems the cat was just let out of the bag…which I presume was not something for public knowledge…based on this information I wonder why the terms of use and the privacy policy have not been noted accordingly of the new ownership…hate to think the site is brought to its knees for breaching British privacy laws…!

BYE for now!!!

Quote by Hmm45
Its seems the cat was just let out of the bag…which I presume was not something for public knowledge

Conspiracy theory much, lol?

It was bought as a going concern. The t&cs and legal stuff can all be accessed from the site footer.

The new owners had already been involved with Lush for years prior and many admins and mods have been here for even longer than that, so it was business as usual.

Quote by naughtyannie

This is news to me too. To be fair, I was out of the loop quite a bit in 2022, so it's not surprising I missed the announcement about Lush being sold. Could some kind person please post a link to the thread where this was announced? I had a quick look and couldn't find it, but I may have been looking in the wrong place. Ta!

I suspect it was because you were out of the loop, hun; it was widely known (well at least I knew,) but not part of a forum post. Which I felt was a shame as it would have been good to acknowledge Nic's contribution. As far as I'm aware admins don't have an ownership interest in the business - not that it matters to me, but it means ultimate control isn't theirs.

The outage happened I think at about midnight London time, and lasted about 7 hours; lol maybe only I noticed but it was after all Sunday afternoon in Australia. It happened on Storiesspace too, so I had an inkling as to the likely reason and indeed while for me it seemed like a long time to get back, it was actually fixed in a couple of hours of a Sunday morning in the UK. Not bad all things considered.

Plans for the 23rd, naughty one?

Nice to see a thread that I started getting so much interest and comment.

I look forward to all the currently non-working aspects of the site working in the near future.

Some things just happen. Disks run out of space. Processes that handle things like notifications die. Queues get flooded. Network traffic spikes cause delays. With the best of intentions, sometimes processes that monitor all this stuff stop working or don't work reliably when hardware is swapped out, and nobody knows about it until members mention an outage. Sod's law, of course, means something like the above will occur at the most unsociable hour, like 1:30am on a Sunday.

The UK dev team were on it the moment they were notified by an admin, and got the site running. The peripheral bits that are lagging should come back online today as the server chews through nearly three-quarters of a million backed-up notifications.