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Ad Astra

Winners!
Thanks For Listening...
Your winner by one vote is Funngunner, with a piece of the very neat series 'Their Finest Hour'! Congratulations!

As to your Review Winner
As stated, this is our Miranda Fave, who requested that Terilynn's Retribution take the Featured spot again. He also asked for an image of his Kzinti NCO as the fanart reward. Congrats, Miranda!

Remember...
We have the current review challenge up! Be the first person to review a story without one and win ten extra bonus points on top of your regular word count and usual bonuses, be the second person to review a one-review story and get five extra points. Nerys is currently ahead, but there's still a whole lot of time.

Winner, of course, gets a piece of fanart, gets to name a feature and gets to name the next challenge.
 
Server Stuff
All right, some of you are having issues with log-in, etc. So, here's some basic stuff (real basic, since Mike is the tech guy) that might ease your minds a bit.

1.) Everything is here. All stories are present and accounted for, all reviews are too. If there's a discrepancy in the site statistics, it's either a glitch or it's related to being on a different server. There's going to be some difference between the 'read count' on stories because of how those hits are stored.

2.) Ad Astra runs on an SQL database. That means that stories, reviews, users, etc. are all stored in tables and columns. The pages you see when you click a link are, essentially, custom built for you every time you click a link; the request you send to the server brings back the text, pastes it into the template and then you see the page. Ad Astra's database is currently over 10MB, and transferring a database between servers is a hair-raising experience (man, is it!); our biggest concern when we do is to make sure all stories and reviews make it over here okay. But inevitably problems do come up.

3.) That being said, I reiterate what's in the TOS -- ALWAYS back up your stuff. Always save your stories and reviews if you've made any changes from the original one you uploaded. Because even though Mike and I are a paranoid pair of archivists and spend a whole lot of time sweating about making sure your work is safe, bad things can happen. Even when we do our best, bad things can happen.

4.) When you have an issue, open a support ticket. We're not doing this to give you a headache, promise. We're doing this so we have a running log of errors that we can present, then, to the eFiction programmers and hopefully (even when we solve them ourselves) help make the next version of this program more bug-free. You can still give me and Mike a shout in private (I'm almost always on H G Lowe <--no spaces on AIM), but open a ticket for tracking purposes, all right?

Finally, bear with us. The reason why we did this server switch in this case was because we're really serious about making sure Ad Astra does not go the way of Hope Station. And when GoDaddy starts playing around with the servers like this, it's a possibility. Maybe not a probability, and not a guarantee, but the final point is that we do not want this site to go down. Especially since it's had such an amazing beginning.

So, if you have trouble, bear all this in mind. Contact me, contact Mike, open a ticket. We'll do our very best to help and are doing our very best to fix any issues that come up. And back up your work/reviews anyway, just to be safe.

Have a good (if you can!) Monday!
 
Pulling Ad Astra offline to debug, move everything again, make sure everything is in order. No panic. If you need me at any point, my AIM is in the news post above, or you can PM me, e-mail me or smoke-signal me.
 
Just to add my two cents (wait, inflation means it's more like five bucks, now)...

I cannot underscore the value of using our support ticket system. The reason we have it is mostly so I can easily track issues in a central location, but more important, the data I accumulate there allows us to just cut and paste code-level problems to the folks at eFiction easily, including every step I took to troubleshoot the issue.

I'll be very much obliged if you would open tickets there first; when you do, I get an email automatically.

Thanks!

-- ZC
 
Growing Pains, Hopefully Over

New Home
Ad Astra's new home is now on Washu, which is Mike's own server. I'm sure many of you noticed that the site moves much faster; this is because it doesn't have to compete for resources. The reasons we moved it are numerous, aside the speed, and they are:

1.) We are no longer at the whim of GoDaddy, which was who took Hope Station offline. Hope Station at its peak was not as big as Ad Astra is, and it still got axed. Better safe than sorry.

2.) Backup and restoration is much easier for us on Washu than it was on GoDaddy. We have broader access to control things.

3.) We don't have to worry about the site growth anymore. Moving it now saves us from potentially having to move it when it is a much, much larger site. The bigger a site gets, the harder it is to move. Putting it here now allows us a lot more room to grow without fear.

4.) This puts all elements together; the support services, potential forums and everything else. We can work from one host instead of two.

Those are just four. Now, onto other business.

Login Issues
One way to (hopefully) correct the log-in issues you've been having on this site is by following this procedure:

1.) Log out from your 'Account Info' before all else.

2.) Clear your cookies and browser cache.

3.) Log back in and use the www.adastrafanfic.com domain. Use it every time. While the SKO subdomain works, computers get confused when they're asked to visit the same site with different URLs.

4.) If you still have a problem, open up a support ticket. There's now a button right up there on the top bar where you can go right to it.

New Stuff
There are a couple new things. Above on the dark blue bar is now a Support link, where you can open a ticket for Mike. Use it when you have troubles, not because we're being pedantic, but because this allows Mike to track long-term issues and fix them.

The second thing is that all links, including the News link on each news post is now fixed. You can read the news all the way back from the very beginning.

All URLs are now standardized. All story stats are correct. You may have lost some edits, but if that's the case, there's nothing we can do. We would definitely like to reiterate that you should always keep a current copy of your own works and reviews, because even though we've busted our butts to keep this place smoothly operating, bad things can happen.

Take comfort that they're far less likely to happen now, but still back up your own work.

Welcome back! I missed you guys, too.

-Steff
 
Reposted for Mike!

Why We Love Slicehost
This morning at around 0930 Pacific Daylight Time (US, GMT -7), I was trying to move a file from a subdirectory to the root folder and ended up emptying out the entire Ad Astra structure, which means that for a while, the whole site was deleted.


We run nightly and weekly backups here (thanks to Slicehost's backup package), so we just restored to a backup caught at just after 2330 PDT. I immediately destroyed the slice and re-imaged using the nightly backup and we're back online. Looks like we didn't lose any data, though any reviews or changes made between now and then was lost.


If you're looking for a virtual server that is featureful and has an amazing support staff willing and ready to help you with most anything server-related, I highly recommend them. The slices are decently priced and you get a lot of bang for your buck. Also, if you could help us out, a referral would be quite awesome as we get credit for it.


Forums Update
We're working on designing and putting up a new forum for Ad Astra, so you and your favorite authors can discuss stories and writing! Stay tuned as we keep working on it and hope to have it up and online soon. We have a test forum up and running right now, but registration is closed until we determine how we're going to use it.
 
Forums!
If you'll look up at the top bar there, you'll notice a new addition. Namely speaking, Ad Astra's forums are now online, albeit in beta. Please read this post to understand the procedure from here.

Review Hunt
Nerys and Miranda are neck-and-neck, though Miranda's ineligible since he won the last contest. Given the downtime of the prior week with server moves and that, we're gonna take advantage of this time to change when the featured take spotlight -- namely, like everything else, it'll happen on Wednesdays from here on out. This review hunt ends in just a few days, so if you want a piece of fanart, to name the featured story and to name the story challenge, go give some love! Work count points, plus regular bonus, plus an addition 10 points for being the first reviewer on a story with none, and 5 for being the second.

Have fun with the forums; I'll be over here breathing. And have a great weekend!
 
03.25.09

Great Review Hunt Winner!
And our winner is Anna Amuse with a whopping 2699 points! So, Anna gets to name the next challenge, a piece of artwork she would like, and a featured story. The next runner up was Miranda Fave, who came in with 2262 points, and he was followed by Nerys Ghemor with 2113 points. Awesome work, guy and gals!

Other participants were:
CeJay, David Falkayn, Funngunner, Gumnut, Lil black dog, Mistral, Mrs. Picard, RobScorpio, Sam Pengraff, Terilynn, Verenna

Motivational Motivations
The Motivational Motivations challenge is now closed to entries. Please, please, please send me your votes for the winner. You can PM, IM, e-mail, smoke signal, whatever, but please take the time to vote and let me know. I'll close voting on Wednesday of next week, just to give you plenty of time to read and let me know. Thanks.
 
03.25.09

Great Review Hunt Winner!
And our winner is Anna Amuse with a whopping 2699 points! So, Anna gets to name the next challenge, a piece of artwork she would like, and a featured story. The next runner up was Miranda Fave, who came in with 2262 points, and he was followed by Nerys Ghemor with 2113 points. Awesome work, guy and gals!

Other participants were:
CeJay, David Falkayn, Funngunner, Gumnut, Lil black dog, Mistral, Mrs. Picard, RobScorpio, Sam Pengraff, Terilynn, Verenna

Motivational Motivations
The Motivational Motivations challenge is now closed to entries. Please, please, please send me your votes for the winner. You can PM, IM, e-mail, smoke signal, whatever, but please take the time to vote and let me know. I'll close voting on Wednesday of next week, just to give you plenty of time to read and let me know. Thanks.

I took a week off from reviewing because my fingers were still sore from the week I won...but I will be back reviewing very soon when the next contest starts..

Rob
 
Believe it or not, I never pull any jokes when it comes to my 'official' duties, such as archiving, so this is just the straight news.

Blogs?
Currently, Mike's got a question up over whether people are interested in having blogs hosted here on his server, under Ad Astra's banner. Go feel free to weight in with a yay or a nay!

Great Review Hunt Update
As I mentioned in the last news update, a new Great Review Hunt is on, namely speaking with the Shameless Self (or Other) Promotion! For all stories on the Master List, there's an extra ten bonus points up for grabs for each review written for them. The winner gets to name the featured story, the next challenge and a piece of artwork!

Current Challenge
We already have a few entries into the newest challenge, so feel free to go over there and chip in! Just click on the Challenges button, see the most current open one, and then dash off a story -- remember, any length, any characters, any series. All are welcome.

Have a great week!
 
Reposted for the Teddog:

New Admin, Hijacking Your March 30th News!
I'm back in power again, kinda. To introduce myself, you can call me Rach or Teddog and Steff has hired me to help admin with my water cannon along side her wood chipper. Ha! Actually, I'm quite a nice and bouncy person and she wanted some extra help keeping everything running smoothly. I may be bribed with fluffy puppies and freshly baked cookies.

Motivational Motivations
We need more votes to determine the winner of this challenge. The entries can be viewed here and your votes can be emailed, PMed or IMed to SLWatson. Remember that your vote counts - VOTE TODAY!

New Contest
One of my jobs as an admin is to set up and run a new monthly contest on the site. The actual details about the contest aren't public just yet, but we'd love to know what prizes all of you would be interested in.
 
And we finally have a winner, by two votes, for the Motivational Motivations challenge. Funngunner's Legacy takes the prize! Great job all, though. There are currently two entries for the Orders Be Damned challenge, submitted by Anna Amuse. Feel free to throw in, you still have a week!

This next challenge will be judged exclusively on the forums. So, if you're not a member already, go sign up and get active!

Great Review Hunt Update
The Great Review Hunt is going fairly well; currently in the lead is Miranda Fave. Then there are FOUR people who are all in a pack where there are only a few points separating them: Gumnut, Mistral, Sam Pengraff and Lil black dog. Anyone can still take this.

Remember, there are ten extra bonus points for every review of a fic that's currently featured on the Master List.

New Admin, New Goodies!
Our new admin Teddog is currently working on a super secret project to add another contest, this one running monthly, to go along with our already wildly successful Great Review Hunt. Right now, she wants to know what kind of prizes people are interested in, so please feel free to go weigh in and vote!
 
Saturday News!

Well, the pack is spreading out and the push to the finish has begun! Still in the lead is Miranda Fave, followed by Gumnut, then Mistral. But anyone can still come in and take the win. For those who're still sort of new, the winner of the Great Review Hunt gets to name the next story challenge, the featured story on the front page and a piece of fanart from either Teddog or I, just for them!

In case anyone missed it, the points are calculated like this:

1.) Actual review word count, not counting signatures or fic quotes.

2.) Bonus points. The idea being to reward longer, more in-depth reviews, so the focus can be on quality and not quantity. So, 101 - 200 words means 10 bonus points, 201 - 300 equals 20 bonus points and on up the ladder.

3.) In this particular hunt, all reviews of stories on the Master List get an additional 10 bonus points. It's never too late to add your story to the Master List, either, just head over to the Shameless Promotion thread and recommend one or two of yours, as well as one or two of someone else's.

Motivational Motivations Challenge
Finally tie-broke, the winner was Funngunner with the story Legacy! Congratulations!

Orders Be Damned Challenge
Prompted by Anna Amuse, there are currently three entries for this challenge and plenty of room left for even more! And this time, voting will take place exclusively on the forums (since those poll ticky boxes are much easier to tally), so if anyone's not signed up yet, please feel free to do so!

Have a great weekend!
 
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