Server Status May 3rd

We are currently experiencing an issue that we are working to resolve. The current time is 1:51pm Pacific Time.

Update (5:03pm Pacific Time): The issue was found with be with our infastructure hosting providers DNS servers. Because of this some of you may have been unable to access WebBasedCron.com. That said, cron job still continued to run. They are working to fix the problem and everything should be back to normal soon.

Thank you for your patience,
George
WebBasedCron

Fighting Spam with ReCAPTCHA

For those that don’t know, a CAPTCHA is the image you see when filling out a form that you’re required to type out. The main purpose for these images is to fight spam. The term was coined in 2000 by Carnegie Mellon University and stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.

ReCAPTCHA is a fantastic (free) CAPTCHA service designed also by Carnegie Mellon University that allows a website to protect themselves against spam. For example, now when a user goes to Register or submit a Support Request on WebBasedCron, they’ll see something like this:

To submit the form, the user will need to type in the text correctly. The best part about ReCAPTCHA is that by fighting spam it’s also helping to digitize books. You can learn more about it here, but basically the words displayed in the images are taken directly from real books. A fantastic innovation on an originally great idea.

Checking Server Status On-Demand

Hi everyone,

As you probably read in our previous post, this morning we experienced an infrastructure issue that caused WebBasedCron to go down for short period of time. The problem was fixed and everything is back to normal. A great comment was made requesting a way to monitor the status of WebBasedCron without needing to go to the site.

That said, I created a service which monitors WebBasedCron on an external server with the results shown here: http://status.webbasedcron.com. You can also subscribe to the status using this RSS feed . Please keep in mind the time displayed by the status URL is in UTC.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Server Status March 16

Hi everyone,

We experienced an issue today with our infrastructure hosting from roughly 2:30am EST to 7:45am EST. The problem has been resolved and everything is back to normal.

My apologies for any trouble this has caused,
George
WebBasedCron

Server Status January 15 2009

Hi everyone,

We experienced issues between 6am to 8:30am EST. The problem has been fixed and everything is back to normal.

My apologies for any trouble this caused.
George
WebBasedCron

4 years old – going on 5

Hi everyone,

This past November we celebrated our 4th birthday. Thank you to all our loyal customers and we look forward to serving you in the years to come. We hope everyone has a safe and happy holidays. All the best in 2009.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Server Status November 27 2008

Hi everyone,

We experienced an intermittent problem this morning between 4:00am to 9:00am. This problem has been fixed and everything is back to normal. Our apologies for any trouble this caused.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Server Status Nov 4

Hi everyone,

WebBasedCron was down from approximately 3am EST to 9am EST today Tuesday November 4th. My apologies for any inconvenience. The problem has been resolved and everything is back to normal.

Thank you,
George
WebBasedCron

A big step forward

Hi everyone,

Last night we flipped a switch to improve the long-term stability of the WebBasedCron architecture. To make a long story short we moved cron job execution, the database and the web server on to separate boxes. Some of you may have experienced a few hiccups – but everything should be running smoothly now. If you are experiencing any issues please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks,
George
WebBasedCron

Server Status June 13th

Update: 7:30pm EST WebBasedCron is back to normal.

Hi everyone,

Our infrastructure hosting provider is currently experiencing problems since 5:30pm EST. They are working on the problem and WebBasedCron should be back up shortly. I will update this post when WebBasedCron is back up. (7:30pm EST) Everything is back to normal.

My apologies for any trouble,
George
WebBasedCron