UPDATE 2:23PM: OK the site is working. What a nightmare when we launched.
I specifically asked the hosting company what we could do about the server problems, and they put us on a new server for this launch.
They now tell me I’ll need to spend like eight grand to optimize the performance.
And I think I’ll have to do it. Not to bother you with my problems, but as I have always done with FSM, I try to balance getting the best value for our customers with the fact that we’re still running a business. I have labor costs, postage, supplies, hosting, etc.
I’m going to refrain from further advertising (our email blast) for the rest of the day, to let the “early birds” (or at least the people who read this blog) go through the listings and finish whatever purchases they want to make without the traffic getting heavy again.
Thank you!
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UPDATE 12:24 PM: What a nightmare. I am so sorry to the folks who were patiently waiting for 10AM (even taking a day off work!) only to have the site crash and be virtually impossible to use.
Believe me when I say I am just mortified. It was so bad, that not even I could use it—it timed out for me too!
So it’s a couple of hours later and the site is working now. Normally by now I would have sent out an email blast to remind people to come shop. But out of loyalty to the “early birds” I will wait until 2PM to do that, so that people still trying to check out, or maybe look for something else, won’t have additional competition.
The hosting company has informed me that, basically, I need to spend many thousands of dollars on mitigation measures to make the site work better. And given that there’s no alternative, I will probably do that. Because I can’t stand these technical problems.
Thank you to everybody who stuck it out—and I hope people keep ordering!
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I AM AWARE THE SITE CRASHED, LIKE, INSTANTLY. CALLING TECH SUPPORT. JEEZ. SORRY!
UPDATE 10:22AM: They are working on fixing it. Will advise asap.
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The Paul Scannell CD collection is LIVE at www.fsmcds.com!
Here is a spreadsheet you can use to quickly sort through the available titles (as well as our existing stock).
If you are new to our store, please make an account first! Otherwise the shopping carts could get messed up and you’ll lose your selections.
Shopping carts will hold your items for six hours exclusively to you! After that they will still be in your carts, but others can buy them too.
Please be patient as the site slows down today from all the traffic. We have upgraded the server, but it is likely to still slow down.
This is a really cool collection, especially strong on French composers like Delerue, Sarde and Petit. There were some CDs I had never even seen before!
Any questions or issues, email LukasKendallMV@gmail.com.
It will take a few days for us to ship all the orders, and we will automatically combine multiple orders into one shipment to save money on your postage costs. The excess shipping will be refunded to you after it goes out—trust me! But you’re always welcome to leave special instructions for us upon checkout.
Thank you!
**failure to properly register information in any way. I left out a word above.
Well, almost anything would be better than the current state: a), the website doesn't provide a very broad picture of available items in the first place, so b), one is dependent on the spreadsheet to search for available items that one might want, which is an unwieldy workaround on which to have to depend in the year 2025, and therefore, c) everyone frantically searching and jumping onto the website all at once causes more than just slow or crashed access, it causes failure to properly information in any way. For example, it added several items to my cart and the cart icon showed a number of items present--and then, only after multiple crashes, it displayed every item as reserved …
I think the only fair thing to do at this point would be to stop action for the day and announce another start time on a different day later this week. As it is, the way things have gone today isn't really fair to everyone sitting here trying to monitor for updates.
Lukas, if you're going to continue to broker sales of large collections like this on the basis of announcements that drive heavy traffic to your site all at once, you're going to have to make better server arrangements. Otherwise, maybe you're better off just making portions of big collections available on an ongoing basis as you complete data entry of each couple of hundred new items or so…