Status Of Teenhelp.org

[Skye]

As I'm sure you've read in our announcement given on November 8th, TeenHelp.org was experiencing massive downtime and server problems due to our previous host?s actions. His actions [Jeff], while not directly harmful to TeenHelp.org, were the cause of the 24 some odd hours of downtime we experienced on the 6th and 7th of this month.



We have been searching for quite some time now for a new hosting provider because the current provider, Jeff, was very unreliable and for the most part was never really available when worst came to worst with his server. We got fed up with this and the downtime we were consistently experiencing and decided to switch as soon as we possibly could. Granted, most of the time the downtime was not a substantial amount of time in itself, however, going down 5 and 6 times a day for unpredictable amounts of time proved just as bad as 24 hours of constant downtime. We have just completed the switch of web hosting providers. John at NitrousIS has graciously donated hosting services to TeenHelp.org and we have spent a great deal of our time these past three days making the switch and making sure everything is working the way it should be. Server specifications would only serve to confuse a lot of our members, however, the server is a lot faster and more powerful than the one we were previously on. This will help tremendously when we are under heavy user load. So if by some miracle everyone in your school logs on at the same time?no problem.



Known issues:

1.) While you may be able to access the site, somebody you know may not. This is not due to an error on TeenHelp.org nor an error on your friends computer. The reason for this is as follows: when we switched web hosting providers we had to change servers and make sure that the DNS service recognizes (or knew) that TeenHelp.org was in fact here (the new web hosting providers server) rather than there (our old hosting providers server). This process usually takes around 24 hours for all the DNS (Domain Name Service) servers in the world to do this update. As we have allowed for that 24 hour period of time by keeping the support groups offline, we have now turned them back on. However, as with anything, sometimes it takes longer. Your friends should just keep trying off and on and it should start working. If the issue continues, please have them contact OverDrive or myself about it. You may also contact us on their behalf.



2.) All staff members who had an @teenhelp.org email address, please contact OverDrive or myself and we'll set it up for you. You have two options, as you did before: 1.) you can use your account with a Pop3 program such as Outlook Express or Incredimail or 2.) you can have all email automatically sent to another email account such as your hotmail or yahoo account. As always, we do have our own schedules and lives to deal with...so it may not be immediately that it gets setup.