Guess what guys! We didn’t launch yesterday. Here’s why:
I was installing tracking onto the site and double checking all the links before it went public, so I actually moved the site from the test server to the production server. In doing so, I overwrote all of the shows I had uploaded over the last year with a folder that didn’t contain them – which deleted them all. Turns out that it takes 10 seconds to delete 32 gigabytes worth of material, but days to restore it.
So after having my panic attack, I quickly began to find all the files again (luckily that wasn’t too difficult because I already had them nicely categorized and linked to on the new site) and started an uploading queue. I got everything ready to upload and clicked that good ‘ol synchronize button and watched the upload start. I’m still watching it, and I probably will be for another 24 hours at least. As soon as that upload is finished – we’ll go live. Promise.
I’ve come to terms with it, I needed to be humbled and I accept that. Life goes on. Besides, some good things came out of it.
Mega-fans will recall when all of our podcasts were hosted on WeAreBrilliant.com even if you clicked the link on the Dewoh website. That’s a left-over from the Seth and Brian days – I just had too much data to move back and forth. For the relaunch I had moved it to the Dewoh server where it belongs, but slowly, and I didn’t change the naming structure very much. Since I had to reload it all anyway, I went ahead and fixed that. Now the naming structure actually has some standards, and things make sense. Because of this, new episodes go up faster, and (more importantly for me) development of the site is much easier to test (new features and the like).
Back in 2007 when we launched Dewoh.com for the first time, we launched on July 30th. I’m knocking on so much wood right now, but I think it’d be awesome if we launched 4 years after that date. That’s my new goal.
