What an insane and agonizing few days its been. Phandroid and AndroidForums have both been down or painfully slow for several days and gosh golly YOU WANT ANSWERS! So allow me to explain…
It was only 2 months ago that we gave away $100 to celebrate Phandroid generating 1 million pageviews in a month. The day before MOTODEV started that number had lept to about 2 million for Phandroid and ANOTHER 2 million for AndroidForums. Traffic doubled! On top of that, all the buzz from MOTODEV and CTIA caused a ridiculous amount of traffic that not even TWO dedicated servers could handle.
Overloaded servers… that’s just the tip of the iceberg. My last couple days in San Diego I got pretty sick and couldn’t do much of anything – so with the servers getting pounded and fresh off attending MOTODEV/CTIA, you all were left hanging. Traffic spike, sick, sick and traveling… and now I’m back (still sick), the traffic hasn’t ceased but thankfully we’ve diagnosed the problem and have not only addressed it in the short-term, but have a long-term solution in the works. I can only explain the past several days as a total shit storm, I apologize for the downtime/slowtime but trust me, I wasn’t exactly eating cookies and reciting nursery rhymes.
I want to sincerely thank everyone who contacted me, asking what was wrong and offering their assistance. It was a bittersweet feeling to know that so many people rely on Phandroid/AF for their Android fix… with the bitter part being the sites were down. Furthermore, it was great to see community members come together trying to address the problem. Unfortunately this was an issue that fell squarely on my shoulders and the timing couldn’t have been worse.
I want to especially thank those of you who – despite having your patience tested and suffering through several days of agony – saw the bigger picture and really hung in there and expressed your loyalty to the community we’ve built. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. We’ve been bringing you Android goodness for 2+ years… we’re back and bigger/badder/stronger/better than ever before! The sites are now powered by THREE dedicated servers and over the next few days we’ll be replacing one of those servers with a super server that will ensure future traffic increases/spikes won’t bring our beloved Android network to its knees.
Apologies to everyone and thank you to everyone for your continued support. We got the sickies out of the way and we’re going to have the best holiday season on the face of the earth. Or as our community manager (Phases) summed up the entire thing in four words: “Our bad” and “Let’s roll”!!!