ArtSites Updates

I just wanted to let everyone know that we will be making some changes to the infrastructure that runs ArtSites.us and all of our customers' websites. If all goes well, you will not notice any changes. Just in case there are some issues, I thought I would give you a brief overview of what's going on so that if you do see something odd you will know what's going on. Some of the following details may be hard to follow but I did want to get this out to everyone. We will be looking after everything so you won't have to do anything.

The most important point is that I'd like everyone to keep a closer eye on their website if the can. If something seems to be behaving differently that you think it should, send us feedback describing what is happening.

Over the next couple of days we will be moving each website to a new web server. The process involves copying the website to the new server and then making changes to the domain name so that it points at that new web server. There will be a period of time of no more than an hour where we will not actually know if a visitor might be coming to the old website or the new one. To make sure that you or your visitors don't make any changes or submissions to your old website, there will be a "maintenance" message on the old copy of your website anywhere where a change might be made. You website will still be readable but you won't be able to get into the administration system and your visitors won't be able to post guestbook entries of mailing list submissions. As I said, this limitation will be no longer than an hour and that hour will only be under some very unlikely circumstances. Most won't see this at all.

The website move is the first stage and should take a couple of days. The second stage will be the movement of email handling. That's likely to happen next week sometime but I will send out a warning before hand so you will have a better sense of when it will happen.

Also, during this time we will likely queue up any non-time-critical request until after the transfer process is complete.

Let us know if you you have any concerns or questions about this process.