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I don't think that moving forum topics to the Romper Room is doing the members any justice. Although they are a little hot on fire but they are still serious topics talking about real issues that concerns the welfare of Blogdrive members. They don't deserve to be in the Romper Room because they are not ill-mannered or arguing for the sake of arguing.
Moving these topics away from the main branch (in this case Helpee's on Fire) is like China's media control policy. I think forum moderators should re-evaluate what they move away from the main branch. It feels like censorship to me. Please reconsider this and move them back to where they really belong.
Everything is officially back to normal, no not normal, I mean up and running. Since normal would mean its down or still under maintenance or unavailable in Blogdrive terms.
This is yet another major disaster. Seeing that more people participate in the forum doing the "complaining" dance. And as usual, the Blogdrive defenders (as in Sinja, JfZ and others) would step in to "defend" Blogdrive.
These people are the saviours of Blogdrive, although they are very much unappreciated both by Blogdrive and people who are angry with the service. The defenders would stand up for Blogdrive no matter what it takes, including snapping pirate's neck, being insulted for masturbating in the server room, or having sexual intercourse with one of the server wire host. (eww...)
I, in my opinion, to be honest, in my honest opinion don't like the attitude of these defenders one bit. Here are the stereotypes:
1) they lie, that the service is running smoothly when it isn't.
2) they make fun of angry Blogdrive users posters, a big NO to customer services and professionalism. Though I must admit, they don't have one single bit of reason to provide professional customer service to these people, they are VOLUNTEERS.
3) they think, it's just blogging, it's just a blog, it's just a blog host, it's just a downtime. They fail to understand the importance and economic value of service downtime. OR they knew but they are just doing what they do best, defending Blogdrive.
4) they think, it's a free service, don't complain. And if you pay, just be patient.
What I really hope for them, at the very least is to be honest with the users, do not insult their problems, and do not ever, EVER say that blogging is just another piece of toilet paper.
Sigh. Will they ever understand? Guess not.
Surprice surprice! Blogdrive announced that they will be doing server maintenance from 3/10 till 5/10 (or was it just the 4th and 5th?).
Can you believe it? they actually took the courtesy to let us know! I'm so happy for them. Yay!
This can be found on the left bottom corner the moment you login.
http://www.blogdrive.com/manage/
Update to the update: 10/04/06:
We will be performing some more maintenance tomorrow, 10/05/06 between the hours of 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM PST.
Update 10/03/06:
We will be performing some routine maintenance on 10/04/06 between the hours of 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM PST. Sections of the site may not accessible during this time.
Blogdrive Team
And on the Blogdrive Update site (http://update.blogdrive.com/archive/6.html) is a new entry regarding the server maintenance.
Wow... I'm soo glad! I hoping Blogdrive will continue doing this in the future.
As everybody already know, Blogdrive has recently moved their data center, promising every blogdriver a better service with less down time. I was very looking forward to this event as this would definitely make Blogdrive a competent blogging platform. (And benefit my fellow readers  )
To me, Blogdrive is a wonderful work of art, programming, business and internet technology. Of course by saying that, I did not take into consideration the frequent downtime, the rude customer service, the slow responce time (in terms of everything: customer service, releasing new upgrades, and server fixes), the defensive sensitive forum regulars, and of course the deadly-inconsiderate-evil-money-minded spammers.
There are a few conspiracies regarding what actually happened behind the scenes. AH hah! I knew you love conspiracies. 
The move started on June 29th, as indicated in this entry. But by July 21st, it still wasn't completed. It was until Auguest 30th where there were signs of "almost done". Till now, I'm not sure if they are completely finished with the move but the red notice that was in the blog management area were now removed. After two months.
Michael has always been very good at telling stories, I loved the way he put things into an easy to understand, emotionally touching story line. But what really happened isn't always what the story claims, usually. It's true that the real Blogdrive crew consists of Michael, Tim, Jeff and Rick. Each specializing in different areas.
What's untrue is... the number of servers claimed. There's only one server, for all I know. And judging from the quality of server responce time, nothing has changed.
It is kept very cold inside to keep the thousands of servers safe from heat damage. It is also very loud in the data center due to the monster ACs and the thousands of server fans running.
Thousands of servers... right! Has Blogdrive improved their service so far? I, still see no difference.
The Cool Blogdrive Guy (one of the two Blogdrive admin) speaks in responce to a member's complain in the forum. Read the complain first.
Blogdrive has tortured me enough. I've been a customer for one year and I'm actively looking for other options. This is the third unannounced outage and unresponded to help tickets in less than 2 weeks. Even when it's "working" it takes over an hour to make one post due to crashes. I've had the patience of a saint, hoping and praying. Yet, Blogdrive appears to be flatlining. I've simply had enough. I'm not going to waste my time even commenting much more. It's time to get serious and find a host that is ready for prime time and living in the real world. I feel foolish for even giving my business to this company. Maybe, instead of Yahoo buying Blogdrive, we should see if Toys R Us would be willing to take over. Or maybe the Salvation Army. Message to Helpee: I get the sense that you're trying to help, that you want to help, but that you just can't help. People need a blog host to have things that work and it's simply not working. It's very sad, but it is just not working. It's not. If I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, that would be lovely. But, all I see are the pleas of my fellow members virtually begging for improvements to the pathetic levels of outages. Is everyone familiar with the oft-quoted definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That's really what staying on as a Blogdrive customer equals: insanity.
And here is his reply:
Hi Rich, I feel your pain. Any unexpected outages have been just that, unexpected. Earlier today there was a flood attack on the servers. The unusually high utilization caused a database error which propagated to the other servers. It took some time to correct it across all the servers, but all is well now with no data loss. We are now looking at implementing new measures to help protect against this type of scenario.
Most of the other "outages" you experienced before are do to spammers or spiders causing DOS attacks. We have been in the process of both a data center move and network overhaul to better supply us with the network capability and bandwidth necessary to handle these situations better. unfortunately do to the scale of both projects it is taking some time to complete.
I can't say it says a lot, but it certainly keeps the member's mouth shut for the moment. Let's see for how long.
Reference: Forum,
Tags: blogdrive, customer service
This is good stuff. I would have said it myself but I'm too gutless to do it. What's worth nothing is this:
Anyone who doesn't mind their site being inaccessible for hours, or even days, with no advance notice. Anyone who has no desire to have more growth potential for image loading. Anyone who doesn't care if the tech support for a paid account is not "priority tech support." It's really non-existent tech support. Basically anyone who doesn't take what their doing seriously. It's great for practice.
Here is the entire post: Seige, I appreciate your efforts to help. I really do. Funny, no not media power. But, I am motivated to get a solution to this quagmire. I'm sure most of you would agree that the best way to tick someone off even more is to make them feel that their concerns are irrelevent and frivolous. So I appreciate those of you, and us, who assume someone has a bona fide reason for flying off the handle because there really is validity to many of the concerns raised here. The frustrating thing is that I never in a million years thought that I was embarking down a road with BD that was a virtual dead-end with no chance of expanding with growth. You can see what I'm describing at my site: http://www.carrienews.blogdrive.com I suppose I didn't know anything about what growth requirements there would be. Now I do. I'll see what I can come up with as far as alternatives. I may need some suggestions as far as how to migrate blog entries to a host that has growth potential with more reliable software and servers. My suggestion is for anyone reading this who plans on having growth potential, be careful of putting all your eggs in the BD basket. It will be an exercise in futility and a good lesson for anyone in the business world of how not to treat customers. I used to rave to people about how great BD is. But, I can't do that anymore. So sad. Here is who I would recommend BD to: Anyone who doesn't mind their site being inaccessible for hours, or even days, with no advance notice. Anyone who has no desire to have more growth potential for image loading. Anyone who doesn't care if the tech support for a paid account is not "priority tech support." It's really non-existent tech support. Basically anyone who doesn't take what their doing seriously. It's great for practice. What's sad is that many of us have been offering suggestions ad nauseum for months now. Oh, well. Life goes on. Thanks, Seige, for pretty much taking my concerns seriously. After all, unstable hosting, non-expandable bandwidth, and no tech support are pretty serious issues. IMHO. Those aren't great selling points, are they? Who's fault is it? Why do they do what they do? Is a mystery.
There was a topic in the forum devoted to reporting the status of Blogdrive not too long ago (one month to be exact). But after a short while it disappeared. I wasn't sure why the admin removed it but I do know that people aren't happy that it was taken down.
I do know that people are happy when they can be informed of the status of Blogdrive when they find something not working well with their blog. At least some kinda note or message that give them a bit of relief of some sort.
The forum, used to be filled with angry voices whenever a technical problem arises have been the one of the destination that people go to for advices. The other is the main tagboard, of course.
Now, let us put our hands together and give around of applause to the official Blogdrive update:
Let's hope it gets updated regularly. (not too regular, we don't want bad news, do we?) Reference: Blogdrive Update Forum, Tags: Blogdrive, Update, Server, Status,
This dude sure sounds really angry:
Any problem? BD should've inform the users.
BD, if u cant figure out the problem, the least you can do is put up somekind of announcement about these problems/failures.
Rick is even more angry "I'm sick of this!"
How many hours of frustration do we customers need to endure from Blogdrive? It's been 20 hours since I've been able to update my blog. Why does maintenance have to take longer here than at any other site host on the internet? This is adversely affecting my site and is bound to affect any potential business in the future. How can I be expected to have a news site if I can't offer news? The blog I'm paying $100 per year is always down, but the ad-supported ones seem to work. Can I transfer to a server that works? Why I keep thinking things will improve is really my own fault for having faith in Blogdrive. If anyone knows of other, more reliable hosts, please let me know. Helpee, do you care? Are things going to improve? Or are we content with these sporadic service levels. I'm not and I hope you're not, either.
Remember that there WAS a BD status thread in the forum? it already dissappeared. I have no idea why the authorities decided to take it down despite having receive support from various users...
Sigh... The worst part of all is that the reason behind all this problem remains a mystery. It's is unknown if it's actually a server failure, overload or whatever other reasons.
Tags: BlogDrive,
*Updates: Helpee explained in the forum:
As with any technology based company, unexpected situations arise from time to time. We work diligently to resolve these situations.
Yesterday we experienced an unexpected situation. In order to resolve that situation with no data loss and keep blogs present, we temporarily put areas of the site in a Read-only mode. We have since resolved the situation. We've updated any entries that were made during that time. This event affected both subscribers and free sites equally. Knowing it was simply a matter of hours before the site would regain full functionality and that only certain areas were affected we felt it unnecessary to notify all.
We will try our best to stay on top of such issues. I apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.
Someone in the forum has fallen victim to the responsiveness of trouble tickets. How in the heck do I get my money back? There's no cancel option anywhere. I've submitted 3 support tickets. I've called. Still, no one has contacted me and my account still shows that my upgrade is good through next year. How long does it take someone to get around to support tickets? I'm not sure if he/she has received a responce, but seeing that there's no further discussion on the thread would mean that the issue have been resolved. Usually, it's easier to get the admin's attention if it's brought to the forums. There are volunteery mods there who are keeping an eye on things and they get direct contact with the admins. (note: tips) References: Plain Text Editor bugs, BlogDrive Disaster, Never Expect Replies from BlogDrive Trouble Ticket, BlogDrive Forum, How To Get A Reply From Blogdrive, Tags: BlogDrive, Support Ticket, Trouble Ticket, Customer Services, Forum,
Helpee have created a forum topic to report on what's going on behind the scene. This is an applausible action because now we'll know why we are experiencing difficulties accessing webblogs. At least we know it's not a problem with our own computer (a relief). http://www.blogdrive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3137 I'm certainly happy to see that despite a sudden influx of spam to my blog (which is ten fold) basically because BlogDrive is now beginning to communicate with their users in a more formal way. Keep up the good work! Currently, it's reporting the status of the technical problems with the server. It's been stickified and locked from posting by normal users. I certainly hope it'll be regularly updated with the ongoings behind the scenes. This benefits the users as well as Blogdrive. Oh, btw I hate spam. Sigh. *Updates: They have removed the forum topic and started a brand new blog for it. Read them here.
References: Blogdrive Update,
Tags: BlogDrive, Forum, Spam,
Continuing on my previous entry I'm going to tell you the best way to get a responce. But there's no guarantee because it's still up to BlogDrive admin to do it.
Common Sense
Many many trouble tickets are being send in by a large amount of BD users, hence it's obviously a lot of work for the admin to look at and then reply. To make things easier for them, some simple measures can be taken.
Before you send in a question, make sure you check if somebody have already asked the same issue in the forum. This would help avoid you from appearing stupid.
Make your message short and simple with proper English. If you were to write a whole long piece of nonsense and not addressing the main issue, your message would probably be deleted even before reading.
A little common sense goes a long way.
Having done all the above but still not getting a reply. It'll be time to blame BD for poor customer service instead of youself.
References: Never Expect Replies from BlogDrive Trouble Ticket, BlogDrive Forum,
Tags: BlogDrive, Customer Services, Forum,
I know I've always suggested to everyone that whenever a problem arises with their blogdrive they should send in a trouble ticket to let the authorities know about their problem. However, as far as BlogDrive's customer service is concerned, trouble tickets, or in other words support tickets are not to be bothered, whether it's a mojor bug or not.
Trouble ticket are meant to be a form of method for BlogDrive users to communicate with BlogDrive administrator whenever there's a problem. However, many people tend to misuse this service and often lead to giving the admins too much unnecessary work.
On the support ticket page, it's clearly stated that due to large amount of tickets received, they may not respond especially to problems with designs.
Due to the large number of trouble tickets received, we may not respond to all. Especially those which are in regard to Blog design, are obscure or trivial in nature. If you are experiencing a problem setting up or editing your Blogdrive account, or if you would just like to leave a comment, please fill out the form below. We will contact you as soon as the problem is resolved. Any information you provide here may be shared with others.
It's also stated that they will respond as soon as the problem is resolved. This makes a lot of sense when no trouble tickets (known) have been responded, ever. Because no bugs or other known issues have been fixed yet (that are of any concern). This goes back to things like PTE, Page not Found, and some others. It's reasonable, just as stated they will not respond. Unprofessional. In a way. Sadly. Personally, I've send in many trouble tickets and have never once received a reply. Not once. Could be my memory failing. Do you have a similar experience? Tell us about yours. References: Plain Text Editor bugs, BlogDrive Disaster, Tags: BlogDrive, Support Ticket, Trouble Ticket, Customer Services,
Another BlogDrive user's complaint, Allison writes for wabimysabi and has been featured on the main BlogDrive page as a featured subscribers before. Read it here. She talks about her overall opinion with BlogDrive which both involves good and bad points, stressing on the "Page cannot be displayed" error issue which has been annoying me and (I'm pretty sure) many others as well. However, I think it can't be entirely blamed on BD because it may just be the connection problem on individuals, or the host server that BD is using. Nevertheless, it's really annoying. Here are some interesting stuff she touch on: I'm not sure what's going on behind the scenes of BlogDrive at the moment. If they were upgrading servers, or tweaking the features... surely it would be in their best interest to post a notice to that effect on the main page. The Forum. What to say about the forum, except that one has to have an enormous set of balls and a bag of bravado to go and ask for assistance or feedback there. It scares me. HAHA, ain't that true? But now since Christine and Andy is gone, everything is calm and peace. I assure you that you do not have to be afraid to post in the forum. BlogDrive has better features than Blogger or LiveJournal, but frankly, if they had a tagboard on the main page, I wouldn't have signed up for their services back in the day, particularly if it were the apparent focal point of the page. In short, I think BD needs a bit of slick, detached professionalism to kick up it's image a notch or two. Am I nervous? A little bit. I want BlogDrive to succeed. I want BlogDrive to eventually kick Blogger's dauber into the dirt. I also don't want to lose all this pointless garbage I've written and become so attached to. For the record, I am willing to help out BlogDrive in any way possible, and that includes not only renewing my account, but upgrading it as well. It still beats anybody else's blogging service hands down. I feel you, I'm sure most people do but this is up to the Administrator of BlogDrive to make it happen. References: BlogDrive... My .02, Unresolved / Unanswered Trouble Tickets,
Technorati Tags: BlogDrive, Customer Services, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga,
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