403-Forbidden
Mood:  irritated
Topic: News
I've had a free Angelfire account for 8 years, and tonight, when I tried to log in to do my weekly update, as I've done for the past 8 years, I get this message:

[INCLUDE OF "/network/header.tmpl" FAILED: Template file not found]

Plus, when I try to get to my website to take a look, I get the "403-Forbidden" message.

Can someone tell me what's going on, please?

ANGELFIRE GLITCH REPORT
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: News

The Angelfire Team & Club Bloggers will be interested in this:

Here is an [apparent] glitch, which I discovered quite by accident today, concerning the 'Colorado' designation on the Angelfire web addresses:

When you go to:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22angelfire.com/co/co/%22&hl=en&lr=&filter=0
you will find listed, approx 2500 Angelfire pages which have an additional co/ added to the url.

Upon checking, I notice that the URL worked both with the additional co/ and also without it.

However, one cannot login to the A/F account, using the double co/

That is a strange one, to be sure!

Announcing: Angelfire Planet
Topic: News
I'm pleased to announce Angelfire's newest feature: Angelfire Planet. This is an extremely new thing for us and we're extremely proud of what we put together so far.

So, what is Planet?

It's not a social network, or a blog tool, or a photo album, or a slideshow builder, or a web page builder. But, it is a neat place where you can express yourself, connect with your circle of friends, share pictures and stories, or rate the pictures and stories of others. It's really not like anything we've built before.

Angelfire Planet is both a part of Angelfire as a whole and separate. It's a bit of a shift. That isn't to say that Angelfire will focus less on traditional web publishing, but now we also have something different.

As some of Angelfire's best community members, I encourage you to check it out and provide your comments. You are early-adopters, it only became available today, so your feedback is doubly appreciated.

Also: Your disk quotas and bandwidth alotments don't count on Planet, so you can build as much as you want, or post as many photos as you want, without worrying about it.

I encourage you to sign up and take the new features for a spin. The team is extremely proud of the work that we've done and are eager to show it off.

Please feel free to leave comments here with your feedback.

http://planet.angelfire.com

JP

Angelfire Maintenance Complete
Topic: News
Last night's Angelfire maintenance was completed successfully and all Angelfire features were switched over to the new facility by 5:00 AM with most features done by 3:00. Given DNS propagation time, everyone should now be seeing the new site. (You must be, if you're reading this.)

From past experience, I know that some ISPs do not properly notice DNS changes in a timely fashion and so may have switched over sometime later during the day, but they should all be set now. (I'm sure that someone, someplace will have one that has a broken cache, but that should be an extreme exception. If things aren't working right for you, please try restarting your computer. If that doesn't help, please post here and we can help you investigate.)

Although blogs and albums were a bit slower than normal today, we have finished database tuning and you should notice a pretty substancial performance improvement. I notice just looking at the club that viewing comments is quite a bit faster for me than it used to be. (Some of that, of course, will be because I'm physically closer to the machines. But the underlying hardware is also significantly faster.)

If you see any problems, please post here and I'll make sure they get raised to the team.

Angelfire Site Maintenance
Topic: News
Ahoy, mayteys! Tonight, the Angelfire Team will be conducting some major maintenance to move the site from its current home in Santa Clara, CA to its new home in Boston, MA. From approximately 11:00 PM tonight to 3:00 AM Eastern, during the cutover, Angelfire users will be unable to edit their pages. At not time will visitors be unable to see your sites, but you will be unable to update them. Although we are not planning on it, there may be other problems related to the move or afterwards which will need to be fixed.

While the new site will look exactly like the old site, you should notice a performance increase with the site overall thanks to newer and better hardware across the board. This move also puts us in a better position to do more of the updates that we have been planning on doing but haven't been able to. (Finally doing something with the states, for example.)

If you see any problems tomorrow, please don't hesitate to comment here.

Blogs / Albums Updates
Topic: News
I'm becoming lax again, but I wanted to drop a quick post here to indicate that we have just completed another round of Blogs and Albums updates, with additional skins for each and a number of other bug fixes. In specific, I know that many users have reported foreign character problems which should be fixed now. Also, there were problems with ampersands in posts and, in some difficult cases, many escaped ampersands being inserted into posts over and over again. There are also many smaller bugs fixed.

This is just a maintenance cycle, so there are no new features to speak of yet. With any luck, I'll have a more interesting announcement tomorrow.

If you see any problems with these updates, or anything else, please respond here and I'll make sure the issues are given attention.

JP

Blogs / Albums Updates
Topic: News
I'm becoming lax again, but I wanted to drop a quick post here to indicate that we have just completed another round of Blogs and Albums updates, with additional skins for each and a number of other bug fixes. In specific, I know that many users have reported foreign character problems which should be fixed now. Also, there were problems with ampersands in posts and, in some difficult cases, many escaped ampersands being inserted into posts over and over again. There are also many smaller bugs fixed.

This is just a maintenance cycle, so there are no new features to speak of yet. With any luck, I'll have a more interesting announcement tomorrow.

If you see any problems with these updates, or anything else, please respond here and I'll make sure the issues are given attention.

JP

Virtual call center support private venture
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: Searching for joint ventute team!
Topic: News
Hello,

My name is Mike and I am searching for those interested to do this "hobbie" and perhaps make money...
You must be experienced in Computer Technology, particularly in support.

I am looking to start a team of ten people to start a virtual call center. E-mail me for details to mike_olivera@juno.com

Cheers!

M.O.

Angelfire Update
Topic: News
I'm running quite a bit behind (busy, busy) but I wanted to drop a quick post to say that the Angelfire Team this week released a major update to the Blogs software, to bring it back up to the same revision that is running on Tripod.

Some features:

1. Many new templates including baby templates, health & fitness, and military-related themes.
2. Panel colors can now be set separately from others in the configuration, without using the advanced editing feature. Many of the templates have been updated to reflect this new configurability.
3. RSS is now enabled by default on new blogs. More browsers will now also be able to detect your feeds automatically.
4. Mobile posting has been made more resilient. You now get emailed responses if you fail authentication and you can now set a blog or gallery as your "default" so that you can use an easier email address to send to it.
6. Many other random bugs were fixed.
7. Other things that I can't remember because I don't have any of the documentation in front of me.

This week, we have also updated CGI support for paying members to Perl 5.8.5-- some of the time. If we don't see any problems, we'll be gradually upgrading the remainder of the servers. (This also includes some other backend updates.)

Next week, the Photo Album builder should also "catch up" to Tripod with photo printing support, better mobile posting, and more templates. (So you don't feel slighted as an Angelfire member, I should mention that we have an *extremely* exciting new feature that will be Angelfire-only coming out this summer/fall. I can't say anything about it, but it is unlike anything we currently offer.)

If you find any problems with blogs or CGI this week (or anything else), please respond in this thread and I'll make sure things get communicated.

Angelfire Toolbar / Performance Improvements / Other Updates
Topic: News
Today, the Angelfire Team has launched a new toolbar feature on all free member pages. This toolbar replaces the search box and text links which were previously placed around the top ad. On most browsers, the space requirements for the bar is almost exactly the same as for the old text links-- we have been careful not to take up more space and "push down" member content with this change. The new bar includes two completely new features: a "share" feature that lets email pages to friends and a "Top100" list of member sites that we happened to like at the time. (This is a new feature and the criteria for inclusion hasn't been strictly defined yet. There are also more than 100 pages in the list. I'd like to move that to list pages which are well done and frequently updated, but that is still a work in progress.) The bar also includes links to the member directory, a link to report abuse, and an "edit" button so you can go right from your page to the builders if you are logged in.

I'm also happy to say that site performance has increased significantly in the last two weeks, but there is still room for improvement. Although the speed at which Angelfire responds to page requests has not changed, we have however made downloading files faster. We also have about 30% more server capacity coming on line soon and that will also improve things.

We will also be tightening our "remote loading" restrictions somewhat in upcoming weeks. Free users that use Angelfire solely to host files for other websites may find that ceasing to work. (They may also have their accounts removed.) However, we will be making more lenient other restrictions (such as with image search engines) to make things better for real Angelfire members. If you are just using AF to host your files, please consider creating a webpage or two or upgrading to any paid account.

Also: last week's issue reported here with Angelfire members sending email to AOL has been largely resolved. We have been advised that users that send a lot of mail to AOL may still be blocked, but the situation has been corrected for most.

If anyone sees any problems with the new release, please respond in this thread and the team will work to fix them. We are aware of problems currently with some small number of bottom ads in the rotation on some sites which can cause pages not to display properly for some users. (Other users will simply not see a bottom ad, but I don't think anyone will complain about that...) The team is looking at these problems.

This is a longer update than I had expected. I'll try and keep it shorter next time. :)

Angelfire Update
Topic: News
This is just a quick heads-up to club members. The Angelfire Team is in the process of completing some upgrades which aren't particularly noticable, but may affect some people.

1. The abuse-prevention software has been updated and now treats less-kindly free members who are using Angelfire solely for file storage without actually having a webpage. If you are using Angelfire in this manner, I recommend that you build a brief page and you should have no problems. Alternatively, Angelfire allows file storage for paying members.

2. In the next two weeks, Angelfire will begin scanning all member content for viruses, trojans, worms, and other assorted ilk. Files which have been contaminated will be deleted. If we believe that the infection is a deliberate attempt to spread the virus, the account will be removed and the user will be permanently banned.

3. In upcoming weeks, Angelfire will be upgrading its paid CGI support from Perl 5.8.0 to Perl 5.8.5. There are very few feature differences between these two releases, however some scripts which rely on bugs in the previous release may not work properly. If you experience any problems with CGI support, please check to make sure it isn't a compatibility problem.

And finally, in the next several days (today, if we can get to it), Angelfire will launch a new visitor's toolbar on all free member pages. This toolbar will take the place of the current search box above the ad . This toolbar will contain a new "sharing" feature (to email the page you are looking at to someone else), links to the site directory and a new "Top100" feature, and other changes. For an idea how this will look, you can see a similar toolbar on all free Tripod sites. (For example, http://cwnurses.tripod.com.)

If you experience any problems with any of these features (or just have general comments or suggestions), please let us know by responding in this thread.

Angelfire Update
Topic: News
This week, the Angelfire Team has made some updates to make Microsoft FrontPage usage more stable, especially if you created a new account in the past couple of weeks. If anyone that was having trouble with it before is still seeing problems, please respond here and we can try and work it out.

In the upcoming weeks, there are several major changes being planned for the site backend, though there should not be much that is user-visible. The primary goal is to improve site performance for builders, but we're also doing other stability work. (A second goal is making membernames simpler for new members, and eventually offering some sort of *membername*.angelfire.com access. Many details have yet to be worked out.)

If you see any issues or have any suggestions, please feel free to respond in this thread.

Happy Mother's Day to Blog Helpers
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: peace and quiet
Topic: News
Happy Mother's Day to all the nice ladies
who solve our problems, day in and day out.

I have picked up so many good tips, over the
past few months, that I've been visiting this Blog.

The guys are also helpful...but this is Mother's
Day, after all.

We have prepared a little card for you nice
folks at the following URL:
https://www.angelfire.com/co/begumnoor/mothersdayblog.jpg

Have a great day!

Topic: News
The Angelfire Team has released an update today which should improve performance significantly in the builder tools, the member directory, and the other top level features. (The big blogs performance improvement was last week.) This release also includes the standard run of bug fixes and little tweaks.

This update should be largely invisible to members. If you see any new problems today, please respond in this thread and we'll get to work on fixing them.

In the meantime, I hope members have had a chance to check out the new commenting and customization features in the Photo Album tool which we released last week. We're always looking for feedback on our new features.

Thanks!

Angelfire Update
Topic: News
The Angelfire Team has completed the maintenance today which includes a number of new features:

1. Angelfire Blogs has been updated to be more responsive and to fix several known bugs. It's a big under-the-hood overhaul so there may yet be some bugs to shake out but it looks good so far.

2. Angelfire Photo Albums has been given a major update. We now support "advanced customization" similar to with the Blogs tool. In addition, you can now enable commenting on your images with the same level of comment moderation as is supported on Blogs.

3. New members to Angelfire will now go through a slightly different flow which ends with allowing them to select what build tool to use.

4. Microsoft FrontPage extensions are now enabled by default for all new accounts. Existing members will still have to activate on their "My Account" page.

5. The backend for the old Angelfire counter has been updated to now spit out PNG images.

6. Various other internal updates.

If you see any problems on the site today, please respond in this thread. We really appreciate the time that members take to look over our new features and try to break them since it makes for a better product overall. I'll make sure that any comments in this thread get handed off to the appropiate people.

Maintenance Today
Topic: News
Today, the Angelfire Team will be performing maintenance on the site, in order to improve blogs performance and to also add new features. During this maintenance, users will be unable to post comments or new entries on blogs for approximately 30 minutes. We apologize for this inconvenience as we move the blogs onto the new backend system.

I'll make a larger post later on this afternoon with information about the changes. If anyone is willing to help test (basicially, just use all the features of the site and let us know if you find any problems), that is always appreciated.

As always, if you see any problems please respond in this thread.

UPDATE: The maintenance has been moved to Wednesday morning. We will make a followup post when it is completed.

AF Update Today
Topic: News
The Angelfire Team released a follow-up to the release last week which we believe corrects all the known problems with that release. This includes a fix for paid CGI support, fixed counters, and a fix for members with mixed-case member names that were unable to log into their real sites. If you see any additional problems this evening, please comment on this post and I'll make sure the issues get addressed.

We are currently running a process which is correcting the mixed-case members. We expect that to run for another hour or two, but once completed it should catch everyone. Also, if you uploaded any files to the incorrectly-created-directory then they will temporarily be lost. Tomorrow, we will work on providing you access to these files in some way.

Again, if there are still any problems please respond in this thread. We have at least one more major update planned for this week and we want to ensure that there are no bugs before we start on that.

Thursday Update
Topic: News
This Thursday, Angelfire release a backend site update to resolve a number of small bugs on the site, as well as to prepare for an update to Angelfire Blogs and Angelfire Photo Albums which should be available in the next two weeks.

Unfortunately, it has been brought to our attention that older members (>3 years, at least) with mixed-case member names are now being logged into a downcased member site, without their existing content. I have received word that this problem should be corrected by Monday afternoon. If you are affected by this, you will not be able to update your site this weekend but it will continue to be visible to visitors. In addition, I ask that you do not attempt to move files from your mixed-case account directory to the newly created downcased one.

In addition, there also appears to be a problem with user counters. (The old Angelfire counter, not the Html Gear one.) This should also be fixed on Monday.

If you see any other new bugs which might be related to this release or any questions, please comment on this post to let us know.

Please read and absorb previous blog -----
Mood:  special
Now Playing: Very Special Arts of SOuth Africa needs YOU!
Topic: News
Disability Arts Webwww.angelfire.com/ct/vsasouthafrica s.zartz@comcast.net vsarts@telkomsa.net 'Nuff said --- SZK

Sandra Z K -- Webmaster VSA Arts of South Africa
Mood:  energetic
Topic: News
Hi all of my fellow angelfire bloggers -- did not know that we even HAD a blog online till now. This is a SPECIAL favour. I am the Performing Arts Coordinator and sort of webmaster of www.angelfire.com/ct/vsasouthafrica which is in ...South Africa. Yes, I was born there and moved to the USA in 98. PLEASE visit us and help these disabled kids and adults in Africa! They are something else .... my email is s.zartz@comcast.net, so if you want to blow off some local or international steam, email me! Sandy Z K OTR/L