Where is Shipspotting.com ?

[Luko P.]

Hello fellow spotters,
Probably I've missed earlier information about this matter, and now I need some help how to deal with the site.
I cannot find the site as 'http://www.shipspotting.com' any more; last night the new version could be found as 'http://shipspotting.com', however I could not use the same functions as before.
After some more searching (and headache) found  url 'http://www2.shipspotting.com', and that is where my question starts: How can I make my machine go to 'www2' and not to 'www' page of this site? I.e. when I am at  'http://www2.shipspotting.com' and want to go to Forum's new topic, I am redirected to 'http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/newbb/newtopic.php', however there is nothing (as I should be redirected to 'http://www2.shipspotting.com/modules/newbb/newtopic.php'). So far I am doing everything manually, so when this text editing is finished and posted, I'll click 'Home' and wait for message 'The connextion was reset. Problem loading page... bla bla', then in prompt after 'http://www' I'll insert '2' to make prompt reading url 'http://www2.shipspotting.com/' and then our home page will appear. Is this happening only with my machine+Win7 ?

[Kelvin Davies]

It is working now but it is a bit of a circus.
Last night, I had the same problem as you. It took almost 1 minute for any response from the "new" site. Then, none of the functions worked; no forum, no photos etc.
Then this morning, I tried a couple of times but received a message that the connection was closed by the site. No access at all.
Many times over the past year or so, there have been complaints about a lack of communication and this is just another example.
If there was a planned switch-over from one site to the other, we should have been notified.
All it takes is one post from the person responsible on the front page. That might take 2 minutes to complete and everybody is informed immediately and everybody would understand some outages would be expected.
Now the original site is back up, it would again take 2 minutes to post a "Oops, we are sorry about the outage" message.
A check of the front page, the "News" section and the forums shows nothing!
Kelvin

[Pieter_Inpijn]

I am not amused either. This weekend at home no access at all to the site. Tried many times and using a slow telephone connection, with every second to be paided for, that is not funny. I was very amazed to see this morning at my job the "old" site appearing again. The key-word is indeed: communication please!

[Cody Williams]

I think they're just testing the site serves and all the technical stuff before the site goes live. I'd rather be using a site that works properly and to make a good quality site they need time and I think it would be no easy task try to shift just under 1,000,000 photos, all the forum data to a new server, user data, make the site secure, user friendly and have all the features requested by users, how hard would that be! The web developer is doing a magnificent job!

Also, "www2" means that the site is working off two servers. I do feel that there is a major lack of communication, it would be nice to hear how the building and testing of the new site is coming along

Kind Regards,
Cody

[Fred Vloo]

The site has gone public before, months ago, that was no succes.
Now they gave it a second try and this time was a real disaster: the site was very slow and "gone" 3 to 4 times an hour. People could not log in and I noticed that the full size of my photos never exceeded 200kb however all my photos are around 1mb. The lack of communication is de biggest frustration.
Cheers Fred

[Luko P.]

Hello everyone,
Thanks for your posts re subject matter. I learned that nothing is wrong with my machine and software, and now I see that URL 'http://www.shipspotting.com' is operating normally again. It was not my intention to criticize the idea of making this site more modern, user friendly etc. It was call for help, what to do when site is facing problems associated with transition period and migration process; when there are 2 or 3 different ULRs and none operating properly...
Regards to all,
Luko P.

[miraflores]

I had a complete new installation of Windows some days ago, I had modified my high speed internet connection also some days ago, but my connection to the SS server is mostly like a snail, sometimes not possible.
Is it only me?
I can agree with that the new site is not running but that the old site is not running properly is a shame.

I have with my internet connection no problems to connect to any other website, only the SS server.
Rgds.
Juergen

[stevo]

I think this will clear in a matter of time.
They are still working on the website(s) and that can give some problems.

There also a lot of visitors so this can cause all the problem. I read this website/forum 4 times a day (maybe more) and it's slow but ok by me.

Sorry miraflores, don't know why this is not running with you.

[miraflores]

@Stevo

My problems connecting to the server maybe caused by the much longer distance I live away from the SS-server.
Rgds.
Juergen