The Breakdown
We don’t know how to put this forward and extend our profound apology to the entire RSS community. As you all know RapidFeeds has had a great fall a few days ago. This is a very unfortunate situation for Rapidfeeds and its users. On July 28, RapidFeeds abruptly crashed and knocked us for six. It has left us perplexed and deeply moved, and we know it has been the same with our over 10,700 members.
The fate had its beginning on July 20 when we started receiving emails from our subscribers notifying us of some connection errors. This was due to increasing traffic and so we decided to upgrade our servers as to be able to handle heavier traffic. We never knew we would lose everything in the process. Our hosting company came back saying that the entire website got deleted; even the backups.
This came to us as a shock of our lives. We were literally traumatized. We have devoted one and a half years to RapidFeeds; never saw it as a profit-making machine; have run it as a free service but never treated as one; and have always been prompt in customer support and served them with full dedication. This was the first and the most important project of our lives. And we are just not able to stand the shock.
It is with a heavy heart we say to our users that we have lost the entire database and all the feeds. We know that this is a big loss to you, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it now. We employed all our resources and tried our best to retrieve everything but could only get our hands on the code – thanks to the regular back-ups of the code we used to maintain on our personal computers. However, we relied on the servers for the database back-ups for its increasing size; and this is the biggest mistake we made.
What’s next?
We’ve decided to put the website back afresh in a few days. But this time, on much reliable and powerful servers. The jolt has taught us a great deal about the trade and you can take our words for it that we’ll now be more reliable and dependable than ever before. We are dedicating a team to manage such risks in future and will have contingency plans in place.
We wish a wholehearted thanks to all the users for your support and patience. There is nothing in words for us to express our regret to you, but we promise not to give you a second chance to complain. We truly value your relationship with us and hope to see you back online.
If you have anything to say, or wish to contact us for any reason, please feel free to email us at breakdown@rapidfeeds.com. Looking forward to your emails…
Regards,
Malik Mairaj
Akram Quraishi
Co-founders - RapidFeeds.com
P.S.: We haven’t received, in the last few days, any of the emails sent to us on our rapidfeeds.com email addresses as the website was completely down. This is the reason your emails might have bounced back or you haven’t heard from us in replies. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. You can now send us emails on the address mentioned above.
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 am
Thanks for all your hard work and dedication. I had signed on for your fabulous service and set up my feeds only the night before the crash. I was left wondering when they were all gone and your site too the next day! I take much comfort in knowing you are all so dedicated to us and that you have posted this explanation. Thanks so much!!!! I look forward to re-setting my feeds up. I assume we will have to re-register and all that as well? PLease let us know what steps we will have to take to be re-established.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Hi all,
Sorry to here about what happen, i was wondering what had happen to your site. I have only just started using your service, very easy to us which is what users want. Everyone in the world wants things to be easy, which in my opinion your setup is the best. My website is a working example and it runs in paralell with my main business which is registering and buying and selling International domain names in other words a domain name in your own language. This is an example of what i own: www.纽约市.net (new york city)at the moment you can not type these domain names straight into your address bar, but you will be ale to when ie7 comes out, some of the other web browsers are idn capable. If you need any more info please get in touch and keep up the good work. You will be back online soon hopefully.
Regards
Gary
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Guys, I’m really sorry to hear about the technical avalanche you’ve found yourselves buried under. Sounds like you guys are well on your way to digging a tunnel though. I find it extremely refreshing that you took the time to post such an informative and apologetic message here on the site. You guys made a mistake and though it’s had a profound effect on those of us who use Rapid Feeds, the way you’ve chosen to handle it show professionalism, courage and trust. I thank you for that.
When things are back in order, I plan on continuing to use Rapid Feeds.
August 3rd, 2006 at 7:02 am
Sorry to hear this. Like many others I’m also ready to restart with your service when it starts again. And I hope that rapidfeeds will be blooming again more and more in the near future.
Can you give us a date as when can we expect to see rapidfeeds working again?
August 3rd, 2006 at 5:05 pm
So sorry to hear such terrible news. Good luck and please keep us informed as you make progress on the new version.
Thanks!
August 3rd, 2006 at 6:01 pm
If I have to setup my RSS feed again and if that means the RSS URL will be different from the old one, will you have a way to inform our RSS feed’s subscribers that they need to resubsribe at a different URL? My concern is that all of a sudden someone else will get my RSS URL and my subscribers will see a different feed.
August 3rd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Derek, We are aware about the confusion that will occur if the same Feed URL scheme is followed… So for that reason we are coming up with a different scheme for the Feed URL’s. This time it will be a better one… We’ll keep you posted.
August 3rd, 2006 at 7:08 pm
I searched like 100s of sites on the net and when I found your site…it was like finding a miracle to install RSS feeds. Very neat and easy procedures put a smile on webmaster’s face dealing with RSS feeds. For the first time, I was able to put RSS on my site (please check www.adawn.net) and I will be looking forward to do it again once your site is up and running. Thanks and good luck. Regards, A Dawn. Toronto, Canada.
August 3rd, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Keep the faith all! We still believe in you! We’ll jump right back in when your up and running again!
August 5th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Can you give us a very rough estimate of how long it will take you to be back, please? A few days, two weeks, a Month?
August 5th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Thanks for the great service you provide. I look forward to getting up and running with you again soon. We don’t learn from our successes. We learn from our mistakes.
kyyote
[url]KyyotesDen.com/Forum[/url]
Where UTEP Miners fans meet.
August 5th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Thanks to all of you here for your comments. It’s your support that’s building our strength and hope. We’ve been receiving bulks of emails in the past few days and so it has become difficult to be prompt in replies. We are working hard to bring the website back to life very soon and hopefully you can start using it at latest by 8th August (Tuesday).
Here are the answers to what you have asked:
Arielle - “I assume we will have to re-register and all that as well?”
You are right Arielle, you’ll have to re-register and create a new account. Also, you’ll have to create / add all your feeds again to your RapidFeeds account. As this is a fresh signup, you can signup using the same email address as you did earlier.
Whit - “Please keep us informed”
We’ll be posting updates on this blog. Also, once the website is up, we’ll let you know of this by email.
Derek - “…will you have a way to inform our RSS feed’s subscribers that they need to resubsribe at a different URL?”
Yes. Your subscribers will be informed about your new URL when they try to access your feed at the old URL. Any updates in this regard will be posted here in this blog. So please come back and check in a couple of days.
Gary - “You will be back online soon hopefully.”
John - “Can you give us a date as when can we expect to see rapidfeeds working again?”
LibriVox - “Can you give us a very rough estimate of how long it will take you to be back, please? A few days, two weeks, a Month?”
Yes. We’ll be back very soon. We are constantly working on bringing back the website ASAP and as mentioned above, it will be up at the latest by 8th August (Tuesday).
Gary, Thanks for updating us on your business. It’s interesting.
Wiz, Dawn, Greg, kyyote and everybody else here - Thanks for all your support and encouragement. We look forward to resume our services to you ASAP and wish to serve you better in future.
August 7th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Great job so far Rapidfeeds! Look fwd to the day where this service is up and kicking again.
Cheers!
theone
Art of Attraction
August 7th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Thanks for everything guys! Hope rapidfeeds would be a great tool to the community again.
DOL
Day Trade Online
http://daytradeonline.blogspot.com
August 7th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Hi rapidfeeds!
I hope you get the web-site on the right track in the future. Because i think the rapidfeeds, is one of the greatest tools on the web. Look fwd to the day where this service is up and kicking again.
Regards From Michel.J webmaster Of Gayeuroshop.Com
August 9th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
You’ve made this whole process so easy! I’m sorry to hear about what happened and hope that the new servers can provide what you need. I think this is one of the greatest tools ever!!
September 15th, 2006 at 3:20 am
I havent found other services better than this. Hope it’ll be back soon coz i need it.. Good luck..
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