Webby Chat

Follow Us on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:49:00 +0000

Our address is @webbychat

Cheers!

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:17:00 +0000

With all of the year-in-review media out there, I started to think about how are year has been and what we are going to do in 2010!

Last year (2009) we:

Launched WebbyChat! - Just to get to this point it took us about 2 years of thinking, testing, planning, and funding.
Hosted over 1000 simultaneous users! - There were bumps along the road, but Crickey's powered through.
Got Hacked! - We were down for less than a day, thanks to a Brazilian having fun with a DNS attack. We learned how to defend ourselves better and take precautions for the future.
Upgraded to Version 2.0! - This took several months to complete, but we were able to add: Profiles, Avatars, New Powers, 50% faster loading, and a Robust system that can expand to meet the needs of all users reliably.
Q&A Testing! - Development and testing began to enable the webbychat bar to become the most intuitive way to ask and answer questions. Dare I say it, its an floating forum!

Next year (2010) we will:

Release the new Q&A/Floating forum! - This will allow our users to access the wisdom of their peers quickly and easily even when nobody is around.
Integrate our users! - The thing Webbychat does best is to allow end users the chance to connect over things they love.
Add some cool new powers! - Sounds, sharing, games, trophies, and more!
Surprises! - Let's just say we can't tell you everything just yet, but we think you are gonna like it.

Crickeys and Samwel thank you for your support, referrals, and continued patronage in 2009 and will continue to to our utmost to make you the coolest kids on the block.

Check out our quick install video!

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:00:00 +0000

WebbyChat 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:38:00 +0000

Say hello to Webby Chat 2.0 BETA! With this new version we're testing out a new server system based on XMPP. As well, we have some neat new features including:

User Avatars
Now your visitors can create unique and fun user avatars. They can customize colors, hair styles, and more.
New Admin Powers
Administrators have a new system to give out powers and change room colors in real time.

Give it a shot and check out our new video on http://www.webbychat.com

Enjoy!

New Webby Back Up

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:10:00 +0000

The new Webby Server is back up. It crashed after a test of the auto-reconnect code and took a long time to resolve. It's back up and has been tested once again to ensure that if it needs a reset the auto-reconnect code should work. Thanks for your patience, we hope those of you beta testing the new Webby are mostly pleased.

We will be rolling out the new version to select sites over the next week, stay tuned!

Hello Ya'll

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:24:00 +0000

Sorry for the inconvenience... the new chat will be back shortly!

Server Reboot

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:33:00 +0000

Server has been restarted to prepare for ON night.

Internet Evolution (We are cutting edge!)

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:59:00 +0000

WebbyChat help make your site responsive to its audience....so when I saw this concise description of the development of the internet I thought I'd share. We would all do well to take these concepts into account.

Web 1.0 – That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.

Web 2.0 – This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.

Web 3.0 – This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.

The site has a lot of good presentations on what this will mean. Click here to see.

~Samwel
Populate the Web!

Stability Measures

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:52:00 +0000

The regularly scheduled stability measures that take place around noon CST on Thursdays will take place around 7am CST going forward. We will be monitoring performance closely.

~Samwel

PS Bugs are rapidly vanishing from our new prototype. We expect to conduct some user testing in the next couple weeks.

Stability Measures..

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:35:00 +0000

Maintenance performed to ensure stability for this evening's Old Navy Night. The server will be back up in about 10 minutes.

Load testing in the new product is going very well. We are in the final rounds of testing that we can do on our own. We will be doing some live tests in the next couple weeks before our official transition.

Thank you for your continued patronage

Stability Measures

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:51:00 +0000

Maintenance performed to ensure stability for this evening's Old Navy Night. The server will be back up in about 10 minutes.

Sorry for the inconvenience (work continues on the next version of WebbyChat)

~Samwel

Server Reset

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:00:00 +0000

The server should be back up in about 10-15 minutes. Sorry for the inconvenience. This is done in preparation for tonight.

~Samwell

Server Down...

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:05:00 +0000

We are working to resolve it as fast as possible. Thank you for your patience.

Reboot for ON Night

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:32:00 +0000

We are rebooting the server to increase stability for ON night tonight.

Problem Resolved

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:27:00 +0000

The issue appears to be resolved and stemmed from a hosting company bug. We are still investigating the root cause. Thanks for your patience!

We are experiencing problems with one of our servers...

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:47:00 +0000

We are experiencing problems with one of our servers, we are working to resolve it.

Reboots before events

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:44:00 +0000

In order to stabilize the system for big events, we will reboot approximately 10 hours in advance. This is an interim step before we transition to our new version in October.

Happy Hunting!
~Samwel

Why Thursdays?

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:54:00 +0000

For those of you wondering why we are making changes on Thursday nights of all nights, here's why.

Thursday nights are when our system has the highest load. The old server barely handles the load, which is why we are switching to a new server architecture. We do lots of testing on other nights without anyone knowing about it, but in order to test the load, we have to test on Thursday's when we have our highest amount of chatters.

We will work harder to coordinate our testing event with our site administrators.

New Server Issues

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:46:00 +0000

After a big failure with our new server, we reverted back to the old system. The new server is intended to handle a much greater load. Obviously, that didn't happen.

All Paid accounts will be getting a FREE MONTH for the inconvenience. In the future, in all testing circumstances we will always return to the original platform on request or before events.

We appreciate all the support even when things are grim at webbychat. We really are trying to make things less stressful for you :) Unfortunately, we have a scalability issue to get over. But, rest assured, we will get past it soon. Thanks for testing with us.

Reboot!

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:38:00 +0000

I am trying to do a pre-emptory reboot to ensure stability of webbychat for the evening. Sorry for the inconvenience now. We think it will pay off later!

~Samwel

And the system is back!

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:41:00 +0000

Sorry for the inconvenience....the new system (in testing now) will eliminate this issue in the future

Thank you so much for not hating us too much!

Aghhhh

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:20:00 +0000

We are having a problem wih our vendor! we are working to address asap

New Server Coming Soon

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:34:00 +0000

Hi Webby Chatters!

We have been hard at work on a new version of our chat server. The current system was simply not scaling well enough and we want to give our users the best chat experience possible. The new system will, hopefully, allow us to scale better and faster than ever before.

In addition, we will have some new features for site owners and users to play around with. Here's some:

User Avatars
Users will be able to create avatars using our custom made avatar creator.
Delete Specific Chat Messages
Site admins will be able to simply click a specific chat message and have it deleted. All other users logged in to the chat room will see the chat message fade away and vanish in real time.
Clear Log
Site admins will be able to issue a clear log command that clears the entire log history in real time. All users logged in to the chat room will see it fade away in real time as well.

The major purpose of the upgrade was to enhance our uptime and availability as we grow our userbase. The new system will run the chat server on multiple machines and distribute the load. Some of you will connect to server A, server B, server C, etc. But you can all talk to each other. This is transparent to the user.

Server Failures

When a server fails or crashes, you will probably NOT be kicked out. Instead it might just appear that noone is talking until the server recovers, then you'll see all the chat messages appear again. Or, you might silently be switched to a different server.

We'll need help testing the new system soon, before we can be confident in it's ability to scale.

Come in and Test!

For some time we will have the NEW system running at www.webbychat.com. You can test it out there. You will not be able to create avatars, but you might see some of the admins with them. Testing also earns you smileys!

All other chat systems will still use the old system until we are confident in making the switch.

Thanks for your help! Please give us feedback, we really do listen to it.

Old Navy Weekly Woes

noreply@blogger.com (crickeys) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:20:00 +0000

Hi All,

Yes, we're aware that it's Old Navy Weekly. We had some complaints about some delays in the chat so we reset the server. It automatically logs everyone back in within about 3 minutes though. Unfortunately ONW is hammering our current system, and until we have our NEW & IMPROVED system in place, we're stuck trying to keep things going with what we've got. Note, the new system will soon be ready for testing, and while most of the ehancements have to do with stability and speed, there are some new functional enhancements for you to play around with too. Stay tuned.

WBC Update Work is Underway

noreply@blogger.com (Samwel) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:08:00 +0000

I just want to let everyone know that we (Crickeys, principally) are working hard on the next version of WebbyChat. The next version will function faster, provide greater stability, and allow users to do many more cool things.
Please keep sending feature requests! We have been and continue to take notes and add new ideas to our list!

I really think you are going to love the new WebbyChat! The waiting is the worst part.

~Samwel