Re: Issues and Questions Specific to the Forum (not for general questions)

[gardendoc]

It used to be that neighbors chatted over the back fence about the garden.  The forum is simply a new form of an old custum.  I for one enjoy discussing the garden and garden issues.  I do not worry about company marketing or compensation.  If the forum is slow, so be it.  There are no questions or comments that need absolute immediate responses.  

[acanfield]

Hopefully whoever hosts this service is checking not only the web server, but the database server, firewall, and communications devices and links.  And they need to test it from outside their own network.

[mjb8743]

Hopefully whoever hosts this service is checking not only the web server, but the database server, firewall, and communications devices and links.  And they need to test it from outside their own network.

There's no problem accessing the other Earthbox sites, it's only the forum, and it appears to be random.

[tag]

It used to be that neighbors chatted over the back fence about the garden.  The forum is simply a new form of an old custum.  I for one enjoy discussing the garden and garden issues.  I do not worry about company marketing or compensation.  If the forum is slow, so be it.  There are no questions or comments that need absolute immediate responses.  

The bottom line is Earthbox is paying for a quality of service that they're not receiving. If the users of that service don't let Earthbox know that there is a problem how is Earthbox going to be able to address the issues. Complaining about unsatisfactory load times or forum speeds so slow you cannot post is not an attack on Earthbox, at least for me, it is to inform Earthbox that the gateway for many new or potential customers to their brand is not performing up to their normal quality standards.

[MaryB]

It's great to see the forum up and running again. It's the place I go to for the latest, best advice and also to refresh my memory when setting up the EBs. IMO, this forum is the best inspiration EarthBox has to not only sell products but to provide some of the best customer service all provided by happy, satisfied customers. Hopefully, it's a win-win.

[bobk]

It used to be that neighbors chatted over the back fence about the garden.  The forum is simply a new form of an old custum.  I for one enjoy discussing the garden and garden issues.  I do not worry about company marketing or compensation.  If the forum is slow, so be it.  There are no questions or comments that need absolute immediate responses.  

The bottom line is Earthbox is paying for a quality of service that they're not receiving. If the users of that service don't let Earthbox know that there is a problem how is Earthbox going to be able to address the issues. Complaining about unsatisfactory load times or forum speeds so slow you cannot post is not an attack on Earthbox, at least for me, it is to inform Earthbox that the gateway for many new or potential customers to their brand is not performing up to their normal quality standards.

How do you have any idea what the SLA Earthbox is willing to pay for.  I'm pretty sure that when there is an outage that the EB Forum is not top priority.  Since EB employees use the site, they would also see the problem.   When the up time and down time are compared, the uptime is probably in the high 90% range.  Since this site is not for National Security the amount of redundancy being purchased would be limited.  There are a lot of things that can go wrong between the server and client side.

[kathy]

First off, let me say I am slowly getting around to doing a bit of housecleaning on the forum. So if you see some of your posts moved, modified or removed by me....all I am doing is re-routing  questions that are not "forum specific" int this topic and removing posts that have requested those questions get asked in Questions and Answers. I am also slowly changing the header to: Re: Issues and Questions Specific to the Forum (not for general questions).
Now onto the forum issues: Bobk, thank you for your right on summation of forum downtime. We are at the mercy of the big brother computers and have no control of when, how or what they do. We pay a price for a service, how much we pay, has no influence on when, how or what they do.
It is a good and bad thing that our forum now contains so much data, bad that we have had to go to a bigger server, great that there is all this wonderful knowledge.
There is no EarthBox employee assigned to the forum. John and I particpate when we can because of our passion for gardening, our horticultural degrees and our love of EarthBoxes, not to mention our appreciation of EarthBox providing this format. I serve as the pseudo administrator of the forum, as best I can. I am far too old to be a computer geek or software maven. Charles is the host, is the best way I can put it, his company keeps this up and running from an operational stand point. (our store and website are on a separate server)
I know a couple of things, the software, the level of service and the lack of a full time adminstrator will stay the same for quite a while.

[kathy]

I think I actually got too wordy on that last post....it cut me off. Anyway, it is what it is for now folks. We have looked at changing software, but it is a large task.....to change, we could lose all this history, and knowledge we have. We know of no easy transfer of this data. It is not our ability or unwillingness to spend the money, it is time and quality.
That being said I truly miss be a regular 'poster' on this forum and hope to someday be able to fully participate again. I spend the majority of my forum time with housekeeping issues and scanning every new member for spam!
I have done this not in defense of EarthBox but to hope to shed some light on the issues, so that you understand, we are indeed doing the best we can. I will continue to do what I can, but please understand.....we are sometimes at the mercy of those tech people.

[MILKMAN46]

  WOW!! I'm on line with the forum. I been having problem with trying to read and log on. You can say I'm using  WOW instead of AOL. OK I'll see how this last. Later.

[grb1]

I'm still having problems with this forum loading.

[kathy]

It was down for a few hours today GRB.....was it today, you were having problems?

[grb1]

Thanks for the info Kathy,
Yes, it was today. About an hour ago is when I tried getting the forum.

[LuckyWife]

I can't seem to get my zone and location to show up on my replies even after going to my profile and filling these areas in.  Any idea what to do?

[cushman350]

I can't seem to get my zone and location to show up on my replies even after going to my profile and filling these areas in.  Any idea what to do?

Don't forget to save this new info, click Change Profile.

[movrshakr]

You MUST scroll down and click the "Change profile" button at the bottom of the entry form.

I have forgotten to do that a few times too.  It is usually off the screen to the bottom, so it is easy to miss doing.