Status on Alerts, Counters & Search

Heya folks -- okay, so here's where we stand so
far:

* Comment Alerts: The

tech team installed a fix this morning, so the problem of sporadic

comment alert non-delivery should hopefully be fixed. (If it isn't,
I'm

sure you will tell me about it...)





The tech folks believe the problem was caused by a problem with the
Alerts whitelist. As

I think I've mentioned before, a whitelist is a roster of machines
that

it's okay for another machine to "talk" to.





This is done for security

purposes, and to make sure that dedicated machines are only used for

what they're supposed to be used for.  If all the Journals
machines

can't talk properly to all the Alerts machines, some comment alerts
getting

dropped is a possible outcome.





As mentioned, if you're still not getting all your comment alerts,
please let me know.





* Hit Counters: A fix was put in to try to make hit
counters more robust. As Ian explained
it earlier: "When the hit counter is being updated very
rapidly, the file will

attempt to overwrite itself while it is already overwriting itself.
This is a write-lock, and the file blows
up." (Incidentally, I like his explanation.)





The solution that was implemented was to separate the reading part
from

the writing part, which should theoretically make it harder for the

counters to blow up. Also, if your counter does break, you still have

the option of adjusting
the count manually.





* Journals Search: Journals Search is acting...more
normal. Looking at the search
results for JournalsEditor,

I see that it's not picking up my older entries. I will have to check

with the tech folks to see if the Search index will catch up, or if we

need to do more work.





Please let me know via comments or e-mail if you're continuing to have

any AOL Journals or AIM Blogs-related problems...and I would
appreciate

it if you can pass the word to other Journalers that
this here blog is

meant as a resource for you all, so please stop by.





Thanks -- Joe