The new server is now in place, which adds around 80% to the load capacity that was available last Monday when the Reading/Leeds tickets went on sale.
Had this new server been in place on Monday, then I believe that no issues would have been experienced by people using the site at that time. And as there were around 50% more users online simultaneously on Monday across the whole website than this website has experienced previously and things mostly ran OK, I think that's a pretty good indicat
I've been working thru a list of to-do's since the end of the summer, putting in place certain things for the new year for eFestivals. As ever with these sorts of things getting thru the list never quite goes as fast as hoped for, but even so much of the stuff is now sorted.
One of the more important things is sorted, and that's new staff for certain tasks. There's a new full-timer who's going to be having a big role, plus another part-timer who I've been bugging for a while and who is now in
As a part of the website redesign (which will go live within the next week sometime) there's now an RSS feed available of the latest eFestivals News.
For all the information, please see here.
This summer eFestivals has branched out into producing videos about festivals.
Although self-produced videos are becoming a bigger thing as the technology improves and becomes easier, nearly every festival video out there is of the "look at me and my mates being daft" kind, which aren't of much interest to anyone who doesn't know those people.
We've gone for quality and a more professional angle, with a more documentary feel, to give a feel of what a festival is all about. We've already
I've just downloaded and installed the latest version of Fedora (Red Hat linux), and it's a dream.
It has everything you could ever want on your computer straight out of the package, all as least as good as anything Bill could ever buy in (it's not like microshit actually come up with anything good themselves), and it all runs far faster than Windoze does on the same hardware.
Why is anyone still enriching Bill?
I've just dropped by the Internet Archive, trying to find copies of the original webpages that grew into the Glastonbury website I started, which then grew into eFestivals. Those pages aren't in the archive, so I'll have to do some further 'net hunting to try and track them down, or search thru my 500+ CDs of backups. Ho-hum.
Why am I wanting them? Well, it's coming up to ten years since I started the site, so thought it would be good to try and find some very early examples of where it all s
I've had an email from someone today who was emailing to say hello to the efestivals staff they met at the Big Chill. ... the only thing is, the people they met aren't efestivals staff.
In the past, I've even heard of someone who slept with a girl at a festival I wasn't at, and they were claiming to be me.
I guess imitation is a form of flattery.
I've just received a Comscore report for hit stats for websites that fall into the "Entertainment - music" category. I knew that eFestivals had a significantly greater amount of traffic than many other better known general music websites, but up until this point I hadn't realised by quite how much!!!!
eFestivals comes in at number 35 in the list, but many of the sites listed above it aren't really in the same market - things like yahoo music, myspace, seeklyrics.com, last.fm, napster, etc. I
My first proper blog entry ... I'm going to use this blog to detail a little of things going on at eFestivals towers that aren't directly related to festivals. It might be of interest to you, or it might not.
It's that time of year again when my thoughts start to turn towards the mad ticket on-sale days and the stupid load it puts on the eFestivals servers for just a couple of hours each time.
Last year I came up with a solution that worked reasonably well but not as well as I'd hoped for. So this year a number of steps have already been taken which have improved things substantually, and with some more things still to do I'm reasonably confident of a better result this time around. Fingers crosse
a major bit of performance testing has just been carried out, and given me one set of numbers. I now have to do some re-configuration of the servers, and do the test again to get a another set of numbers.
Hopefully, the second test will give significantly different - and better - results. If that proves to be the case, then the re-configuration will need to be made permanent, and these forums will perform better* on Sunday than they did when the Reading/Leeds announcement was made.
(*actua
I keep getting press releases for Global Cool - an organisation set up to help fight global warming thru reducing your emissions and offsetting. At the bottom it always says that they're "one of only four current organisations who reach the Government’s proposed standards for carbon offset schemes".
I was aware that only four organisations have been approved (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6276305.stm), and I was aware that The Carbon Neutral Company - who eFestivals use for offsetti
The festival scene well and truly has hit the point where anyone and everyone thinks they can put on a successful festival. 2007 has been full of attempts at running new festivals and events, with various success.
There's those who have a good idea as well as the skills to pull what's needed together, and who know how to sell their idea to a paying public. They put in the months of hard work on all the angles needed to pull the event off, and even if they lose money - as long as it's not too
Every now and then, I get emails from people that think eFestivals are the organisers of the festivals we list. In the last week I've had a few of these, and in each case it's people trying to blag free tickets. The most common theme is "I'm a mate of so-and-so, and he said to email you to sort out a freebie".
Oh yeah? If you're such a good mate of so-and-so, how come he isn't sorting you a freebie himself?
eFests stood up well to the hammering of Glasto ticket day yet again ... it slowed down at times, but was never in danger of crashing, and succeeded in breaking the previous forums record by over 50%. The tweaking done since the Reading/Leeds announcement obviously made a good difference.
But I guess that's the last time that eFests will get away without a full-on load balancing system rather than me working a kludge, so I guess I should start saving some pennies for next year.
The last few weeks have shown that we as a society have sunk incrediably low into the cult of celebrity. People are trying to censor others reasonable opinions on the actions of these celebrities, as tho the only thing allowed is star worship.
And thinking back 50 years, we used to take the piss out of the cult of leadership in dictatorships: at least those leaders had a real effect on people's lives of more than fluff.
It seems that my 'disappearance' is confusing some people.
After ten years of breathing, eating, sleeping and farting eFestivals I've decided to take a different role. 5co77ie has been appointed as full-time editor of both eFestivals and eGigs, and I'm moving on to develop new projects while still having a little involvement in both of the sites.
In the short-term I'm around to help and advise 5co77ie as necessary, as well as keeping a long-term role in developing and improving both sites
I've just had confirmation that something that has been planned as a nice addition to the eFestivals website for the last 18 months is able to go ahead - the current plan is for it to hit the website on 1st May, tho it might slip back a little as there's still a lot of planning to be made.
This is an exciting development, and one I hope that people will enjoy.
I'm going to be keeping the exact details of what this is under my hat for the moment (so those that know, no mentioning what it i
I've today removed the 'member mugshots' feature that's been part of this website since 2002.
It was originally included as a way for members to put up their photo, but since this feature was added to the forums at some later point, the 'member mugshots' section had near enough become redundant ... and it hadn't worked for a while as well for uploading new photos, due to its integration with the forums membership and the fact that the forums had changed how it encrypted users passwords - I c
Well, today is the first 'busy' day of the year, with T in the Park officially announced in an hour or so. With RATM having already leaked the line-up, traffic has been busy on the site since first thing this morning, and the servers have been coping absolutely fine - no stress at all.
For those who might have been on the site at around 8:30 this morning and experienced difficulties, that was for an entirely different reason - I was doing a little more pruning of non-festie posts, which is ve
I've just been approached by a major radio station to help them with a long show they're doing about festivals - from what they've said so far, it sounds like there could be me droning on about festivals for around 15 minutes!
Those that know me know that I can talk about festivals for hours and hours and hours, but that doesn't mean it's actually interesting or anything anyone wants to actually hear.
It looks like I'll be spending some time in a recording studio tomorrow to do the piece
having been ill and missed Sparks at Guilfest, I made a late decision to go to the Big Chill. I hadn't been before, and Lynz_star was going for efests, so I attached myself to her little group (who made me feel very welcome - thanks peeps ) and checked it out.
It's a great festival - bigger than I expected, and more free of corporates & advertising than most fests. The majority of time is spent sat down (it's the big chill after all ), with regular trips to the bars for more cocktails (yu
