There are good news coming too: to keep up with the work we are expanding our Wikidot team. The bugs/wishes pipeline should see a significant improvement in the near future. Our other projects are approaching the finish line — it means we are getting back on the track after several really exhausting weeks!

Thank you for all your support and your help!

Michal Frackowiak, CEO of Wikidot

PS. Regular blog posts will be back too!

by michal frackowiak

Now this is possible.

It was a surprise for me: I have detected on a long community forum thread (Autocomplete in Wikidot) a complete new possibility to get some missing functions working on standard Wikidot pages with (unofficial) "Extension" :

• "Autocomplete" is a fine help on the "Edit window" (sometimes it makes me nervous and I have to "toggle it off") and the other two new functions in the "Site Manager" which are more important in my point of view:
• "File manager" and
• "Mass Delete Tool".

You find the Extension Documentation and the install of this new extension/functions on Kenneth Tsang (tsangk) Site:

The only limitation: it runs at the moment only on Browser "Chrome" and "Firefox".

If the question arise: where are the attached files gone of such deleted pages

• I hope you have done a backup before and can locate these files on your local backup.zip or tar.gz directory?

Here is (as an included page from the handbook) a short description of this new "Mass Delete Tool":

FoldUnfold

Table of Contents

Mass Delete Tool

Overview

Description

Installation

Location

Autofilling from selected category

Backup done?

Attached Files?

Example

Mass Delete Tool

Overview

This is/was a long lasting wish from many admins in the community.

Good message:Thanks to Kenneth tsangk who has written a little (unofficial) extension to the "admin:manage" page script to allow this now (for admins only).

Bad message. this extension scripts runs only - at the moment - on "Chrome" and "Firefox" (with greasemonkey app). Not clear on other Browser..

All the information you need is given on the Wikidot Extension site - where you can download the neccessary javascript estensions for your browser.
Here is only a short description (copied from the doc) what is possible and should be done before the Mass Page Deletion.

Notice If You do not like (after the installation) the automatically added Autocomplete in Wikidot Editor than you can allways switch of the settings of this very good help for advanced users on the extension site itself for your userid on the page ""MYSETTINGS" or at the bottom of the Edit window with the "toogle" switch (my preference).

Description

The mass page deleter utility allows administrators to rapidly and effeciently permanently delete a large number of Wikidot pages. This can be an extremely deadly piece of software and all actions performed here are irreversible. An autofill option allows admins to select a category from your site to automatically fill the "delete list" textarea. Individual pages may also be entered into a textarea (newline-separated) to be automatically deleted.
There is also

• a "switch" between "normal" pagetypes or "hidden" (saving _templates )- or All - and
• a "tags select field" - like in the ListPages selections - for better selection of the autofilled pages.

Installation

Again a remember: this works at the moment only for Chrome and Firefox broswer!

The installation instructions are on the Extension wiki on the Install page.

Location

After the install is the "Mass Delete Tool" located in the site manager section, after "Autonumbering of pages" and before the improved "File Manager".

Autofilling from selected category

To assist in rapid deletion of pages, all pages from the category to be deleted (like "delete" category) can be added to the textarea. This allows users to select a complete category from your site to automatically fill the "delete list" textarea.

Backup done?

it is stronghly recommended that the admin starts a backup before any auto-mass deletion of pages are done and wait for the complition of it! If you can you should download the tar.gz ( or zip) file to your local client/PC - otherwise the backup files disappear after some time and all is lost again!
By clicking on "Delete pages" the delete of all listed pages starts and on a "completion bar" you can see how fast it is working.

Attached Files?

If the question arise: where are the attached files gone of such deleted pages?

I hope you have done a backup before and can locate these files on your local backup.zip or tar.gz directory?

Example

Here is my example of trying to delete all "id:" category pages (without the hidden "_template" or "_start" page(s)!) - therefore the pagetype:"normal" is selected, and without any tags limitations used, after clicking on "Fill pages":

Helmuti_pdorf
Community Admin Team

by Helmuti_pdorf

I had previous experience of Sharepoint but wanted an easier platform for my team spread around Scotland which didn't require servers, developers or any cost and which was good for managing a project, developing documentation and communicating between project members. Little did I realise that 5 years on I would be a Wikidot Admin, provide first line support on the platform, have developed a business (currently part-time) based on developing Wikidot-based websites, or that I get withdrawal symptoms if I'm away from my Wikidot activity dashboard for more than a couple of hours.

But as with any platform, application or interest, there are things about Wikidot that I like and things that I think could be improved. I'd like to share a few of these with you. It is purely personal, others will have different likes and dislikes and different experiences with Wikidot.

First the things that I like about Wikidot. It is an easy platform to get started with. You can have a site up and running in a few minutes and there is no big learning curve for a basic site. Yes there are things to learn, particularly as you start to develop more complex sites, but that is half the fun! And you don't need to learn it all immediately. Most days I am still learning new things or new ways of doing things.

An aspect I really like about the platform is that it is very flexible: you can build everything from a standard wiki to a knowledgebase to a commercial website or intranet. You can make it as complex or as simple as you want without the platform dictating what the result must look like (as Sharepoint does).

The features that Wikidot provides out-of-the-box are superior to those of its competitors. Features like the ListPages module, live templates and dataforms are incredibly powerful. These and other features like selecting and sorting on dataform values are not available in heavyweight competitor products like Confluence, or if they are they are plugins that can cost a lot of money and often cannot be used together. We get these for free, ready to go, out-of-the-box with Wikidot. And they work together beautifully. There are many powerful features with Wikidot that you just don't find in other products.

Strangely another feature which I think is a good thing is the absence of a WYSIWYG editor. There has been a lot of talk about this on the forums over the years but Wikidot has, quite rightly in my opinion, kept to a wiki syntax. Other platforms like Confluence (which I use most days in a corporate environment) have moved away from this in favour of wysiwyg but it reduces the flexibility of the platform and also seems to reduce what you can do. So I am pleased that Wikidot has resisted the tempation to replace the powerful and flexible wiki syntax with wysiwyg.

The support forum and the community admins are one of Wikidot's great strengths. A user with a question or a problem can get an answer very quickly 24 hours a day. We have admins in the USA, UK, Belgium, Austria and Australia so most timezones are covered. The speed, friendliness and quality of the support is better than any other platform I have dealt with.

The Admins and gurus themselves are first class and are always willing to help with answering questions, providing code solutions and giving suggestions. It is a real team and one that I am proud to be part of. And the snippets and applications that they have developed, for example the recent Android app, have made Wikidot even more accessible and powerful.

But there are things that I would like to see and that could be improved with Wikidot.

I hate the fact that in common with other free platforms Wikidot is seen as an easy target for webspammers and SEO backlink merchants. It is too easy for an automated program to create an account and webspam site in a few seconds. Currently there are many hundreds of webspam sites created every day and we spend too many hours deleting them. I would like to see a robust captcha system or other security so that it is much harder to create these sites which devalue Wikidot's reputation.

The lack of communication with Wikidot users and admins is also a source of frustration. We really have no idea what Wikidot is working on or what the overall roadmap is. This is not just confined to ordinary users, we admins have no idea either and certainly get no better communication than anyone else.

This poor communication also extends to not giving us any idea what the progress is on wishes that are submitted on the feedback site. Wikidot users and admins don't just create wishes because they're bored, it is because there is a perceived need for a new feature. There might be a very good reason why a feature can't be worked on or implemented, but too often a wish is rejected with no reason given which is a) unhelpful and b) very demoralising for the person who has made it. More often though a wish just hangs in the air with no response at all from the developers. And if they do give a response, like accepting a wish, a user has no idea when this might be worked on, let alone delivered. As an example I have a wish that was accepted in June 2011 and there has not been a single bit of communication (or development it would appear) since then. That is not good enough. I would not get away with that in my current dayjob as Intranet/KM/Wiki Manager for a very big European company and Wikidot needs to improve its performance and communication in this area.

Wikidot is, without doubt, one of the best, most powerful wiki platforms currently available and it beats Confluence, Sharepoint, Wikimedia, Wetpaint and other platforms in most areas. It's not yet a platform which corporate IT departments like due to the fact that it is hosted and can't have Active Directory integration. If this could be achieved it would be a world-beater. But I would be happy to see more modest improvement: responses to wishes, more systematic development of features and definitely more communication from the development team.

I have really enjoyed the last 5 years with Wikidot and am proud that I have been able to contribute. I look forward to the next 5 years. As a flexible wiki, website, intranet, knowledgebase platform ….you name it… it is hard to find something that is better or more enjoyable to use.

Rob Elliott
Wikidot First-Line Support and Community Admin Team

by RobElliott

The Great Recession that started in 2007 had both economical and social impact. Despite the promising 2013 US employment statistics, we might see the recession in some EU countries for a few more years. We are afraid that EU is entering a very difficult period and will suffer from another, much deeper recession dip.

We are seriously thinking about relocating to another country. We have studied numerous "Best Places to Live" lists and found them highly biased. After long debates we constructed a list of requirements:

#1 Economically stable

A few years back Cyprus was one of our favorites. Not any more. Given the economical downturn we would be looking outside of European Union.

#2 No winter

This is a picture I have taken this very morning. April. It is Spring and Eastern already, but it is still snowing damn it!

#3 Stable, but independent legal system

Do you know how much time we spend reading all DMCA takedown requests? In a perfect independent system we could just drop them to Trash like the PirateBay does ;-)

No, just kidding. But seriously, have you heard about EU cookie regulations, ACTA or software patents issues? It is not only ridiculous, but frightening as well.

#4 Low and fair taxes

This is obvious. But at the same time "tax heaven" countries like Bahama, Cyprus, Monaco do not satisfy condition #1.

#5 Geographical location

New headquarters should be conveniently located and allow us to reach "rest of the world" in reasonable time. Right now we need 18 hours to reach east coast of USA, which is far too much.

#6 Politically stable

There is no way we would look into China or Middle East countries. Obviously the risk of being involved in a military conflict should be literally zero.

#7 Broadband internet

This is a must. We are spoiled with our multi-GB uplink and anything lower than that would be a serious drawback. This rules out lonely islands on Pacific Ocean with a satellite uplink only :-(

Based on the conditions we have a few solid candidates, listed in random order:

Hawaii

One of the "best places to live" in USA. Economy on the rise again, no winter. Quite far away from the mainland, but come on. No winter!

Norway

Although it is a cold country, it is outside of EU, has its own enormous oil and gas resources which makes the economy extremely stable. Great social care. Unfortunately… Norsk språk er komplekst. And stay away from Surströmming.

Somewhere in California

USA east coast might be great for similar reasons as Hawaii.

Switzerland or Luxembourg

Although located in the center of EU, they are independent and stable as hell.

Spitsbergen

It might be cold out there, but we would have a lot of time to work on Wikidot. Did you know they have only a few sunny days a year? That's when everyone takes time off work, go out and take the photos.

New Zealand

Why haven't we thought about it earlier? Edoras, River Anduin, Fangorn Forest, Gardens of Isengard…

?

The discussion is still open and we would really like to hear your opinion! Are there any places you would recommend and why? Maybe you live in a country we could move to?

by michal frackowiak

tsangk

Ed Johnson has already reviewed the application:

Wikidot for Android provides a very good way for Android users to stay current with and participate in forum discussions, easily send and receive PMs through Wikidot's messaging system and access sites that you are a member of. This is a great first release with a clean, simple and professional looking interface.

If you own an Android device — take a look at this amazing application and leave a comment! It is available in the Google Play:

by michal frackowiak

Logos of all finalists displayed on barrels of wine during the finale. Nice.

The challenge itself was awesome. The final round consisted of a presentation in front of the judges — top AWS executives. During the finale in Dogpatch Wineworks we had a chance to present Wikidot to over 500 attendants. The other contestants were so great we felt no huge regret not winning the Grand Prize. Wikidot was among the twelve very top competitors chosen from 2,500 entries from 85 countries and this is what mattered for us.

Andy Jessy, senior Vice President of AWS announcing the winners.

Congratulations to Mortar Data, TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud, LogMyCalls and Grand Cru who won the Grand Prizes. I also wish to congratulate QMedic, DemystData, PlanGrid, Poikos, Hive, Bossa Studios, Playblazer that were awarded with the First Prizes, as we were. It was great meeting you and we came back to Poland with our heads full of great ideas and plans.

During the finale winners smashed real rack servers with heavy bronze hammers. It was the moment I wished I was there. We were sitting in the front row with protection glasses :-)

We also had a series of great meetings, mostly regarding business. Hopefully some might turn into something exciting. We still need to digest all the great opinions and ideas we got for further development of Wikidot. Time will show if they are worth the effort. One thing I have no doubts now is that Wikidot is becoming a serious player in the web business. We will do our best to make it better and larger.

Thanks again to AWS for organising this great event and for giving us the opportunity to take part in the finals. We enjoyed these few days a lot.

by michal frackowiak

by michal frackowiak

As a First Prize winner we already get significant credits to spend on AWS services and a ticket to San Francisco to compete for a Grand Prize. This year the Grand Prize will be announced in 4 categories: Big Data & High Performance Computing, Business Applications, Consumer Applications and Gaming. There are three finalists form every category. Wikidot competes in the Consumer Applications category. We will also have an opportunity to have a series of business meetings with potential investors and partners.

The criteria for the challenge include business model aspects and usage AWS products. The fact we made it that far clearly proves to me that Wikidot is a superb project with a stable long-term business model and well-designed infrastructure. I definitely enjoy working at Wikidot but events like this one make me even more excited about it!

Keep your fingers crossed! Squark and I are going to San Francisco for the Challenge Finale on 23 Jan!

BTW: Are there any Wikidot users in the California, close enough to SF? If so, what about a meeting?

by michal frackowiak

we made it to the semi-finals!

Wikidot has been selected among five other contestants in the Consumer Applications category: Appy Couple, LogMyCalls, Hive, Magnasoft NorthStar and Powhow.

We are really glad that Wikidot has been recognised as a great web project and for its usage of AWS services. Congratulations to all semi-finalists and good luck!

Wikidot has been running 100% on Amazon Web Services since September 2012 and utilises several AWS-based services: computing instances, autoscaling, storage, load balancers, monitoring and several management tools. Wikidot also uses Chef to manage and configure up to 40 server instances.

by michal frackowiak

I wish you all best. Wisdom, peace of mind, strength and patience. And success, whatever success you wish for right now.

For us, each year brings new challenges. I am really glad we can go through them with you — our great community. At Wikidot we are taking some time off to get ready for whatever new challenges and opportunities await us. Keep your thumbs crossed!

The photo above shows a Christmas bauble made by my daughter for charity fundraising. Cute, isn't it?

by michal frackowiak

The deal is simple — purchase or prolong any of our paid plans (Pro Lite, Pro or Pro Plus) at a discounted rate and enjoy the awesome premium features! The deal will last the whole week till 30. November.

To upgrade your account, please go to Account >> Upgrade and choose your plan. The panel will show the discounted prices.

by michal frackowiak

The new option allows granting the view permission to the user who created a page. A small addition, but as you will see it opens a number of possibilities — you can now hide pages from everyone, while allowing users to create pages and view the pages they create.

Imagine a drop-box system where you want your users to leave messages as wiki pages so that you and a given user can read the page and comment on it. At the same time you want to keep the conversation hidden from other users. The new permission settings make it easy to set up.

I would like to show a small example of a system collecting feedback which works just as described. It will use 4 major Wikidot features:

1. Templates and Data Forms
2. Autonumbering
3. Permissions
4. Listing pages

We will use category feedback as a drop-box to contain all pages defining the structure, as well the actual feedback pages.

Step 1: Design a data form and a template

We will use an easy form to get things started. Let's create a page feedback:_template with the following content:

 [[form]] fields: title: type: static value: "[[size 200%]]##666|Please leave your feedback!##[[/size]]" feedback: label: How do you like my site? type: text height: 5 [[/form]] 

Nothing fancy so far, just one field. Now, when you try to create any page in a category, a form will appear:

Sure this needs some styling — we will get back to it. Explaining how forms work and how to design them is beyond this example, but you can look at the official documentation.

Step 2: Set autonumbering

Asking users to choose name (URL) for every page they create does not work in this case. Autonumbering to the rescue! This way you can point users to a single URL, e.g. feedback:create and the page they save will automatically get a sequential number as a name — feedback:1, feedback:2, feedback:3 etc.

Within the Site Manager you need to find Autonumbering of pages option and set the category feedback to be autonumbered.

Now you can set a single URL for creating feedback pages. Let it be feedback:create/edit/true. Whenever a user visits this page, the form automatically appears. Upon saving, the page automatically get its name and it's displayed on screen.

Step 3: Set permissions

Right now everyone could view everyone else's pages. We should dig into Permissions settings and make sure that:

1. any Wikidot user can create a page,
2. only the user who created the page can view it,
3. the user who created the page can edit it (this is optional).

Of course admins and moderators can view the pages too.

Step 4: List all your feedback

Now let us create a simple page to list all feedback pages. ListPages module should make it easy. Let's create a page feedback:_list with content:

 [[module ListPages category="feedback"]] by: [[*user %%created_by%%]] %%form_data{feedback}%% [[%%link%% link]] -------- [[/module]] 

Here is how it works with a couple of my own feedbacks:

Step 5: Final refinements

The system already works! One final thing is to style the form a bit and add a "Thank you" text that should appear after the feedback page is saved.

First part is unfortunately involves editing the CSS theme for the given category. You should add the following piece of code to the theme for category feedback:

 tr.row-0 { display: none; } #action-area h1 { display: none; } #page-title { display: none; } 

If your site originates from the default template, the easiest thing to do is to create a new custom theme (under Custom Themes in Site Manager) like this:

and apply it to the feedback category:

Now for the "Thank you" text. The change is easy and involves editing the feedback:_template page:

 = [[size 250%]]Thanks for leaving your feedback![[/size]] = [[size 150%]][/ Back to the main page][[/size]] ==== [[form]] fields: title: type: static value: "[[size 200%]]##666|Please leave your feedback!##[[/size]]" feedback: label: How do you like my site? type: text height: 5 [[/form]] 

We could also display the data from the feedback page, but this is up to you now.

Rather than seeing another screenshot, why don't you just take a look how it works live:

feedback-example.wikidot.com

Wikidot already had powerful tools to build application-like websites. In the example above, the key elements have been used to create a really simple, but extendible feedback system, where the new permission settings play a critical role.

The above system could be easily adapted to handle various contact forms or even support requests from customers if you also enable page comments.

If you find the above example useful and decide to implement a similar system on your site, please let us now by adding your comment here!

by michal frackowiak

UPDATE (19.26 UTC): Wikidot seems to be running at full speed despite large portion of Amazon Web Services being down. We will keep monitoring the situation.

UPDATE (20.15 UTC): Situation is stable. We will recover remaining parts of Wikidot.com tomorrow. It is good to have redundancy on multiple levels :-)

UPDATE (6.29 UTC, the next day): It looks like AWS, our cloud provider, was experiencing serious issues yesterday. Several other web services that depend on Amazon were affected. See http://status.aws.amazon.com

Best regards,
Michał

by michal frackowiak

But in the end we believe that community wikis require a different approach, which should not only provide all required features to grow, but also accelerate their growth.

Today we would like to announce a new category of sites at Wikidot:

Community Sites!

It is a new kind of sites that combine the best things we have at Wikidot:

1. Free!
2. More capable than Pro Plus!
3. Extra promotion - we will help your site get more popular
4. Direct support from our team!

In the past we have been working closely with admins of many popular sites and we wish to somehow standardise the way we contribute to popular, high quality wikis. Also by our personal involvement and support.

Large wikis play crucial role in growth of Wikidot itself. But we realise that large sites with hundreds of members have very specific needs. We have been adding features to help managing large number of users, pages or files, or even purchasing extra servers to handle traffic during special events. By introducing Community Sites we would like to continue these efforts.

Community Sites have all premium options enabled by default, including custom branding, user profiles within a site, advanced web statistics. But some options are unique to Community Sites: there is no Master Admin (all admins are equal) and the site is protected against removal. The access cannot be set to "private".

Sounds good? The trick is that not every site can become a Community Site. Only active sites with quality content can join. But in return we will do our best to help the sites grow.

We want Community Sites to be an alternative to both free and paid sites and we hope we can boost growth of already popular sites and help develop new ones. We definitely want Community Sites to become flagship wikis of Wikidot.

To learn more about Community Sites check our the Frequently Asked Question page. If you think your site qualifies for a Community Site, please apply and we will get back to you with more details!

PS. You can submit ideas for Community Sites too, and if you convince us your idea is the next-big-thing, we could help you build it.

by michal frackowiak

For some of you (especially managing high-traffic sites) it became clear that something had been wrong with stats for the last few weeks. And by "something" I mean large delays in analyzing logs, missing traffic and temporarily unavailable result pages. We are really sorry about these problems and we have been working hard (often till late night hours) to fix them.

The reason for these problems was the faulty (non-scaling) design of our log storage and log processing architecture. Two bottlenecks have been causing a lot of problems recently: central database used to store log files from several web servers and shared filesystem for analyzed data. These bottlenecks became even more apparent after moving servers to AWS.

Yesterday we moved to a completely redesigned (shared-nothing) architecture. We created it from scratch. All data and logs are now stored in a scalable storage (Amazon S3) and are being processed by independent workers.

A few days ago we needed over 6 hours to calculate web traffic for all eligible sites. Now it takes 30 minutes. 12-fold improvement. And we can make it even faster by increasing the number of workers. The instant benefit is obvious: more up-to-date and reliable results. Finally!

Last but not least: as the post title says, we are now adding web analysis to all free educational sites. We believe it is a nice addition to this increasingly popular plan!

by michal frackowiak

we would like to inform you that next week,

Monday to Wednesday (3—5 September)

we will be performing a major re-configuration of our servers behind Wikidot.com. All our servers and services will be migrated to a different location and a different provider, namely to Amazon Web Services in Virginia, which is about 1,000 miles North-East from our current location, Dallas TX.

No worries. Although it is a huge operation we have been planning it ahead in much detail. We expect no interruption to Wikidot.com services and no sites hosted at Wikidot should be affected. We cannot rule out unforeseen issues with an operation so complex, but we will be there to fix them ASAP.

One thing will however change and it will require your attention: static IP addresses for custom domains. If any of your Wikidot sites use "A" records on your DNS servers, you will need to update these records. But do not worry — we will email admins of all affected sites with detailed instructions and we will provide a reasonable transition period.

In the long term this change will help us easier maintain our resources, and should leave us more time to do the cool stuff we all want at Wikidot. Not to mention we expect better reliability and performance from the new setup so that your sites would be served better.

For these interested: we are moving to a configuration with approximately 25-30 CPU cores, 125-130 GB memory and 1.5 TB of fast disk space on 16-20 provisioned servers, all managed with the awesome Chef software. Plus, there are 6 external services we heavy rely on. We will also utilize all sorts of goodies like automatic resource provisioning, multi-level redundancy, load-balancing, monitoring, auto-scaling and so on. My colleagues tell me it is a state-of-art and bulletproof configuration that will perfectly suit Wikidot, so let us see!

PS. All critical data is already being replicated live to the new location, so the process has started and is going very well. We will keep you informed about the progress.

Image by PhilipC. No, we are not moving any hardware either by train or any other means. We always rent servers, this way we stay flexible :-)

UPDATE (Tue, 8:59 UTC): We have just moved. Uploaded files were unavailable for a short while and we are still bringing some functionality back. Activities are still not up-to-date and site statistics (the Pro feature). But other than that, things are running pretty smoothly.

UPDATE (Tue, 10:21 UTC): We are still working on improving performance and making all translations work for your sites.

UPDATE (Tue, 12.00 UTC): It looks like all major problems has been resolved. The whole operation went smoothly. I hope most of you did not even notice the transition :-)

UPDATE (Tue, 15:36 UTC): The transition went pretty smoothly. The last remaining piece, the traffic statc for Pro accounts, will be brought on-line tomorrow. Sorry about it, but I highly appreciate your patience!

UPDATE (Fri, 14:29 UTC): It has been a touch week, but we have solved almost all issues. The transition resulted in a few unexpected problems, but thanks to you they have been all traced back and solved. Wikidot is considerably faster now and (as we believe) more stable. Thanks for your patience!

by michal frackowiak

Hi, we have just opened a shop with a few Wikidot gadgets you might find cool to have. For now there are laser-engraved mugs (white and black) and black T-shirts with a small Wikidot logo on the chest and a larger one on the back.

Although we have not advertised the shop so far, we are glad that some of you have already purchased a few gadgets! We already had to order extra supply of T-shirts!

Enough talking, just take a look:

shop.wikidot.com

PS. Any ideas, comments are highly welcomed! If you have an idea for a gadget, let us know!

by Squark

Later this week we will be opening a gadget store, initially featuring T-shirts and mugs — all with our logo printed or engraved.

Now here is the thing: there are

five ten free T-shirts to win!!!

And here is what you have to do to get one of these: comments to this page are closed right now. We will enable commenting tomorrow, Tuesday, Jul 3, at exactly 5.00PM UTC time. Authors of the first 5 10 comments ("I want a T-shirt" is enough) will get free T-shirts!

For your convenience here is the current time and date in the UTC (GMT) timezone:

You can use any of the numerous converter utilities to find your local time. Set your alarm clocks! Cheers and good luck!

by michal frackowiak

The key problems we are addressing are:

• How can we adapt to long-term growth in content and traffic?
• How can we adapt to short-term traffic spikes — like ones from popular sites like RoaringApps.com, Snow Leopard we had in the past?
• Are there any single points of failure in our infrastructure?
• What happens when key elements of our infrastructure fail?
  • • Are they redundant? If so, is the failover easy enough?
    • How quickly can we repair or replace them?
    • Is Wikidot platform still available and usable?
• Do we have a recovery plan?

In fact our current setup is quite resilient. Data durability has been always our top priority: we always keep multiple copies of database (redundant disks, redundant database servers, daily backup to a remote datacenter) and uploaded files (we use Amazon S3 to keep them safe and secure). We rely on quality hardware and quality datacenter services to keep Wikidot up to its growing tasks. It has been working quite well so far, with only a few issues (recently we discovered one of our servers has been up for 2 years without even a reboot!). But even "a few" issues is still too much for use.

In every scenario we considered we could fix a potential problem — replace a broken element, re-assign critical task to other servers, or even rebuild the whole cluster in a remote datacenter. But there are some potential problems we have identified:

• Provisioning time: it takes 2-4 hours to get a replacement server in our current datacenter
• Hardware failures: it takes from one hour up to several hours to fix a failed component
• No 100% setup automation: there are parts (servers) configured "by hand" — even if we have scripts that automate most tasks, they require manual interaction
• No automatic failover or healing: there are a few servers that play a critical role and any failover to a backup server must be done "by hand"

We are now dedicating a significant portion of our time to find a solution to the above problems. The goal is to create an automated, highly-available and scalable setup. We have the design almost ready with parts of the infrastructure already working. We are evaluating alternative datacenters too, including Amazon AWS.

It is not the first time we consider AWS as a home for Wikidot. But honestly, last time we did, AWS did not have half of useful features it has now. We already use AWS for a number of critical things, including email delivery, geo-aware content distribution, backups, file storage and even DNS.

Although Amazon AWS appears what could be a big win for Wikidot, but it is still too early for the final word. I would rather be careful praising AWS before we set-up a proof-of-concept stack and it proves to be as efficient as our current config.

I will keep you informed about our plans!

by michal frackowiak

No data is lost

except for file uploads from the last half hour before the crash.

While recovering the failed server, we have reconfigured the rest of our servers to bring back as much functionality as possible.

The services that do not work yet include:

• activities: no new activities are created when pages are saved or edited; activities cannot be browsed FIXED!
• thumbnails: some need to be re-generated; until then some can be missing
• uploaded files: it might take longer than usual to request uploaded files until our cache servers "warm up"
• translations might not work on all sites FIXED!
• site statistics are not available right now, and some data from today might be missing
  • • update: site statistics are available for 2012 now, stats for yesterday and today are being generated

Unfortunately some time passed before we could bring Wikidot up after the failure. Meanwhile we have reported our Facebook profile and Twitter page.

I am very sorry about the issue — believe me, we are working as hard as we can to bring remaining functionality back and to minimize the negative impact of the failure.

I will be posting updates about our status.

Best regards and thanks for your patience,
Michal

by michal frackowiak