PinoyWrimos

So the celebratory post the other day was kind of too early, I know. :P Anyway, again, let me declare: THE NANOWRIMO WEBSITE IS UP (FOR REAL)! Here’s the official announcement from Chris Baty:

Hey there! We sadly lost one of our big database servers to disc failure on October 1 eve. We’re working with our webhosts to bring it back online in the next four or five days, but the NaNoshow must go on! We spent the last 24 hours reconfiguring everything so we could try to relaunch with one database server instead of two.

Also, we’re sad to say that the disc failure meant we lost a day’s worth of new accounts and posts. Our most recent back-up was 9/30 at 1:15 AM. So if you created an account or made any changes after then, they’ve been lost and will need to be redone.

With only half our database arsenal in place, the site will be extremely slow, and the solitary database server may not be able to handle the load, in which case we’ll need to take the site down until both big-gun database servers can work as a team again. But it was killing us to be dark in October, and we’d rather be slow (with occasional weird ‘Cannot connect to database’ errors) than not have anything up at all.

If you’re just browsing the site, you can help keep the load on our database lighter by only signing in when you’re ready to post something. Clicking on the “Customize Forums” link on your My NaNoWriMo page and unchecking forums you don’t want to read will also save us precious data cycles.

[Source]

It’s going to be a bit slow since their big database died, so let’s all be patient as we hit the boards (then again everything was also slow last year, but not this early). Hopefully they fix things up soon so it’ll be better for us as we post and browse the boards.

In case you’re thinking that all we can do is wait…well, we can actually help them get things better, which is what I will post about later. For now, I need to get to work. ;) See you at the boards!

UPDATE (10/2/08): So the surge of people visiting the NaNoWriMo website seemed to have caused a hardware failure in one of their databases. Interestingly, it had to happen on October 1, right? Anyway, the NaNo tech people are working on getting the site back up, so I hope it will be up within the day. :) I will keep you guys updated!

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October 1, 2008 means it’s a holiday in the Philippines to respect our Muslim brothers and sisters as they end Ramadan, but this date also means something for the PinoyWrimos.

THE NANOWRIMO WEBSITE IS BACK UP!

Well, okay. I’ll let you in on a little secret. The website has been up since last week, but it wasn’t fully announced. This is for the people who visit to test if there are errors in the site and they could report it, and to lessen the surge of visits on the first day of October. :) I’ve known of it and have been poking around the site for a while, but they asked us not to announce it yet as the staff tries to iron out everything.

And it’s really looking good.

But the point is…THE WEBSITE IS BACK UP! The NaNoWriMo fever starts now!

Returning Wrimos can still log in using their old usernames and passwords. Newbies can now register and start making some noise on the boards. :)

SOME REMINDERS, THOUGH:

1. Please make sure you make Asia :: Philippines one of your REGION AFFILIATES. You can do so by going to My NaNoWriMo > My Regions. Click on the Regions tab and look for Asia :: Philippines and click on the Join link. This will make the Philippines regional forum show up in your forum list, and would include you in the region’s mailing list.
2. Not only that, please make sure that you have set your HOME REGION to Asia :: Philippines. After affiliating with the region, go to My NaNoWriMo > My Regions and click on the Home Region tab. Select Asia :: Philippines as your Home Region. This is important to get accurate region stats — the word count that you will enter during November will be counted in with the Philippines’ total word count.

After that, make your presence known at the boards! There’s a wealth of information that can be found at the message boards — from plot ideas to character realism to writing tips. There are also genre lounges, where you can find people who are writing the same genre as you, or groups, where you can find newbies and oldies, writing groups and people who are  younger, same age or older than you. There’s places to find music and technology to use for November, as well as places to rant, to rave and procrastinate. There’s also a new place for the rebellious Wrimos — see there’s no excuse!

But don’t forget to drop by the regional forum and say hi! :)