Typepad Crisis

This is a part of the Typepad email I got less than an hour ago:

For over a year we have been growing the TypePad service and adding capacity as needed. This growth has been extraordinary, and we are now serving ten times the traffic we were serving a year ago. About three months ago we learned that the data center we were in had no more available power, with no option to obtain more. After some evaluation of options we decided that we needed to go through the process of physically moving out of that data center. And while we would need to grow capacity, we had to stay within the limits of the power available in our current facility.

At this point a race began to procure a new data center, buy more equipment and move data, and then servers, to the new facility.

We did a search for a facility that had the capacity for us to avoid getting into this situation again. We then leased space, numerous new servers and other equipment, added ten times the bandwidth of the old facility, got a dedicated data connection between the old and new facility and began to build out new cabinets to house the servers. Two weeks ago we began the move. Due to even more rapid growth than expected in the use of TypePad, we needed the capacity a week earlier than that. So basically we lost the race to move, and the excess load on the servers in the old data center started to cause failures in systems that have created poor service for you and, unfortunately, further slowed the move.

[Emphasis mine]

Yeah, basically. I complained about the atrocious service on Wednesday. I have been leaving messages on the "help ticket" and nobody mentions the sad fact that there is actually a problem at Typepad itself and it's more than just the trackbacks.

Here are the error messages I got today upon publishing the posts.

Friday, Oct 28, 06:53 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.60e5fcc.1130496721.d645f92
----

Friday, Oct 28, 08:26 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.50e5fcc.1130502278.1f5fe5e
----

Friday, Oct 28, 08:46 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.60e5fcc.1130503582.d7c801a
----

Friday, Oct 28, 11:03 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.30e5fcc.1130511687.aa7ebae
----

Friday, Oct 28, 11:13 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.60e5fcc.1130512202.1f63ed
----

Friday, Oct 28, 11:21 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.60e5fcc.1130512725.29a150
----

Friday, Oct 28, 11:48 a.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.50e5fcc.1130514434.28445a9
----

Friday, Oct 28, 12:09 p.m.
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.50e5fcc.1130515621.29bdb2c
----

Friday, Oct 28, 12:21 p.m.
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
----

Friday, Oct 28, 03:14 p.m.
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
----
I got an error message for every post published today. The last two times, the post changes were NOT published. I had to go back and rewrite / edit the post again. It seems I spend more time praying and waiting for a post to be published than writing the bloody post.

Damn it Typepad! Fix the service. And stop offering sign up deals and discounts when you don't have the bandwidth to handle the extra load.

Comments

[*ginevra]

Hi Isaac:

I'm really sorry that you're frustrated. It's been a tough couple of weeks for all of us here, and I know I'm a little late to comment here, but please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.

Ginevra