Slow Afternoon
The site is slow now - we know, and we're working on it. We got an influx of users today, thanks to the Wall Street Journal article and a Boing Boing reference. Traffic is ridiculously high (almost 15 times normal) and we're working on adding servers to compensate. Stay with us while we grow over the next few hours!
TIM UPDATE: Go away! Wait, that's unfriendly. We love you. If you go away, we'll love you even more when you come back--we'll kill the fatted calf!
But seriously, things are calming down a bit, but it's still running past capacity. Don't despair. Server upgrades are coming. Unfortunately, I can't just throw money at the problem. But I'm doing that anyway :)
TIM UPDATE: Go away! Wait, that's unfriendly. We love you. If you go away, we'll love you even more when you come back--we'll kill the fatted calf!
But seriously, things are calming down a bit, but it's still running past capacity. Don't despair. Server upgrades are coming. Unfortunately, I can't just throw money at the problem. But I'm doing that anyway :)
posted by Abby at 3:32 PM
29 Comments:
I've worked in an IT Company the last year, and before I did I had no idea all the went into maintaining a website and date base warehouse such as Library Thing is until my experience here! Good luck, I know often the Technology can be unpredictable and frustrating! We just dealt with having to switch an online LMS twice to different servers because for the sites usage grew unexpectidly.
Tim, the slowdown is understandable. We know you're trying to get it sorted out.
Frankly, I was more dismayed at how the Wall Street Journal article misspelled the word "Zeitgeist".
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Digg also linked to the WSJ article bringing yet more traffic ... Great site keep it up
Congratulations on the traffic surge. A post on my blog was linked to by fark.com last week--I was getting something like a visitor every three seconds at one point. Nothing to do but ride it out...
How do we post bugs?
I have added two books that are not linked to their main book group for lack of a better word.
Wild Cards, Volume 2: Aces High (Wild Cards) ISBN 0743479343
Should be associated with
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/25419
ISBN 0553264648
Spectra (1987), Edition: Reissue, Paperback
ISBN 5550697769
Spectra Books (1990), Mass Market Paperback
ISBN 553264648
Spectra (1987), Edition: Reissue, Paperback
ISBN 1852861592
Titan Books (1989), Paperback
Wild Cards, Volume 3: Jokers Wild (Wild Cards) ISBN 0743493362
Should be associated with
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/25445
ISBN 0553266993
Spectra (1987), Paperback
ISBN 5550703335
Spectra Books (1990), Mass Market Paperback
ISBN 1596872845
ibooks, Inc (2005), Paperback
ISBN 1852861762
Titan Books (1989), Paperback
Very cool site...I look forward to using it. Just a quick thing though for a literary website--it should be "members' bookshelves", not "members bookshelves".
smacfarl - you're right. The system guesses at combining various editions of books into their larger group (what we call a 'work' - see www.librarything.com/concepts.php for more), but it doesn't catch all of them. If you go to the "author page" for each book, you'll see an option to combine/separate works. From there, you should be able to make sure that your copy of the book is connected to the 'work'.
Oh, and for future reference, you can post bugs and ask questions at the google group, or email them to me (abby @ librarything.com) or Tim (tim @ librarything.com).
Anonymous - ak! fixing the grammatical mistake right now...
I just came through from Boing Boing!
You might be interested in gimme Your Stuff, our cultural exchange blog!
We have people trading books and other things from all around the world :)
http://gimmeyourstuff.blogspot.com
Thanks,
Rikki
Australian Ambassador for Gimme Your Stuff
Thank you abby.
Turns out the ISBN that was created had no author information. When I added the author to the book record it automatically linked up with the other versions for both books.
I actually got here from the Blogger 'Blogs Of Note' link.
What a load of boring bastards you are.
Please do the world a favour and kill yourselves.
It was also plugged on Bookslut.com
What a money-hungry fool you are. Please do us all a favor and stop trying to promote your blog/book through juvenile provocations.
cant find an area for contacting and troubleshooting so i'm posting here... i just bought a yearly account... now i cant seem to access it... i clicked back out of paypal, as directed....
i'm using opera if that might be an issue? or maybe its just the influx of boing boingers slowing things down?? (of which i am one)
please help!
thanks,
benjamin
pinealgland@Hotmail.com
happy to endure the slowdown (which is amillion times better now) just to know that more people are discovering LT!
Came here via the WSJ article. This is great! I work in Japan designing similar services for various interests and industries, but when I saw this site, I was stunned by the brilliance of the concept. Everyone's trying to do it with music and restaurants and what not, but finally we have something for books, and it's simple and fun and appeals to the majority of book lovers who just love having a library.
For kicks, I signed in an ran a search on my favourite author... and was instantly hooked. It's not about the tags, really, it's just having a virtual library that is, in a sense, a summation of your identity. Didn't someone say you could tell a lot about someone by what they read? You can show yourself off :D
On a personal level, I'm really grateful because this is the only way I can actually have a library... I'm moved countries so many times, I'd never have all the books I've owned in one place.
Anyway, you guys must be running around like mad trying to keep up with the traffic... Good luck and great work!
PS, if you could add a checkbox feature to the search results for registering those super prolific writers...
I'm guessing Dennis's comment is addressed to Wandering Scribe and not you, Tim. (And WS is just ... well ... sad.)
I liked the blog comments better before this was a 'blog of note.'
Yeah, tell me about it. And we're deleting a lot of comments before you see them. Pure spam.
Congratulations on the coverage. It's also great to find out you guys are on Munjoy Hill. Another Maine triumph.
Cool stuff - I didn't manage to come over here til about the same time, even though I found out about LibraryThing through the NG-um I can't remember the acronymn for the Next Generation Catalog listserv....
Anyway - any chance that we'll be able to some how get MARC records from other libraries in somehow or something in the near future? (or be able to add our own LCSH, etc?) Just asking because shockingly out of the 12 books I randomly had out yesterday to try - only one of my personal books was not in any of the libraries LibraryThing currently searches for...
The computer geeks visited today from the PC Mag article mentioning LibraryThing in an srticle on Social Networking sites...
Good Luck on the growth...
Hi, Tim,
New member, and already completely hooked. I have added about 130 books that other LTers have. I have also imported about 300 books from a Readerware file. It told me that they are ququed and that there were 4000+ books ahead of me and it would take around 20-25 hours. That was in the wee hours of Sunday a.m. Now it is telling me that they are stilled in the queque (? that doesn't look right) and that there are 3000+ books ahead of me and it will be 17-20 hours. That hasn't changed at all since noon. Should I just leave it and it will eventually get to me, or should I clear the queque and start over?
Also, what is the answer to the other LTer's question about keeping some books private while allowing most to be public?
Also, I have notticed that there is one book attributed to Marianne Williamson that was actually written by Bishop Kallistos Ware. I was able to edit one book where I found a typo, but this one it won't let me change. Marianne Williamson's writings seem to be of benefit to many, but she surely did not write this book! In fact, you can look on the picture of the cover and see that it is written by Kallistos Ware. Is there something you can do about this? A way to identify the person who has put the wrong author on that book and ask *them* to edit it? Or something?
Thanks~! I am really enjoying LT so very much!
Sincerely,
Pam Phillips
(pamslibrary)
Yes! Way back on August 29, 2005 LibraryThing was a small branch library. Now, it's transforming ITself into a main library. Well, pass another tax levy and keep expanding your virtual shelves.
Ok, it's been 6 days. I was hoping to make some headway over the holiday but I see this is useless. I just spent 18 minutes posting 1 paperback and 3 more minutes deleting "duplicates" which appeared after the page lock-ups manifested as multiples of one attempt to post one book. Two weeks ago this was a beautiful application. I do hope it will be one again someday.
- Barney Dannelke
You wonderful LibraryThing creators, you'll want to know that you're getting a big boost on editors' e-mail lists. You were mentioned on July 5 on the private e-mail list of the Editorial Freelancers Association. I'm about to go sing LibraryThing's praises on Copyediting-L, a public list with members around the world.
I enjoy LibraryThing and have 1,000s of books on my pages ~ some I own, some I've read, and some I just hope to read. It takes a lot of hard work to operate the site and appreciate all of your hard work.
That being said, I do tend to get frustrated with the amount of time the LT is either offline or is bogged down. I do hope the new servers help with this.
Funny how the two biggest spam comments (i.e. actually giving their links in their comments) weren't deleted.
I deleted the bad one. The "gimmie your stuff" one isn't so bad. It's not actually a link, so it's not link spam. Link spam is about PageRank, not promotion.
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