Tribe.net Company Blog's topics - tribe.net

Scheduled Maintenance Thursday, 29 Oct 2009 4 am PDT

tribehelp — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:04:03 GMT

Tribe.net will be unavailable for scheduled maintenance at 4 am PDT on Thursday, 29 October 2009. The site should be back by 7 am PDT.

Thanks for your patience, as always!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Emergency Maintenance @ midnight tonight PDT

tribehelp — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:10:38 GMT

We believe we have located the source of the trouble with logging in. This will require taking the site off line for approximately 30 minutes. You may get "server not found errors" for a few minutes, but don't worry, we will return!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Session issue update

tribe_c — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:25:12 GMT

Tonight's maintenance does not appear to have fixed the issue with staying logged in without checking remember me. We are in contact with former employees to resolve this issue and will post more information as soon as possible.

So, for now, only using "remember me" will keep you logged in.

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Maintenance 20 Sept. 2009 2 - 5 AM PDT

tribehelp — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:56:33 GMT

Tribe.net will be down from 2 to 5 am Pacific for maintenance. We are aware of the problem when logging in without "remember me" checked and will attempt to resolve this during the down time. Thank you for your patience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

27 Aug 2009, 3 - 4 am PDT: Scheduled Maintenance

tribehelp — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:00:40 GMT

Tribe.net will be down tonight for approximately one hour to add a new server.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Image uploading FIXED, again!

tribehelp — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:12:04 GMT

Back in business now.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Continued image uploading problems

tribehelp — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:21:30 GMT

It appears that while some images are uploading fine, others are still having problems. We are looking into this and will resolve it as soon as possible!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Image uploading FIXED

tribehelp — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:59:19 GMT

BIG THANK YOUs to everyone working on this for three days straight and putting all the pieces back in place to get this functioning again.

Everyone should be able to upload images in .JPG, .GIF, .PNG or .BMP format. Remember, the size limit per photo is 1MB.

If you continue to have trouble, please let us know by writing to help@tribe.net

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Site back up, but images still down...

tribehelp — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:20:27 GMT

We decided to bring the site back online despite still not being able to upload images.

The image server has a new disk, but still working on finding the correct configuration for the image uploading.

Thank you again for your patience!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Maintenance window: 1 Aug 2009, 3 -4 am PDT

tribe_c — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:24:55 GMT

Haven't done this in a couple months now, so we're doing it tonight. Should be quick, just a fresh start for all the servers.

Thanks!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Final T-Shirt orders and other Premium Goodies

tribehelp — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:12:18 GMT

We've gotten through the bulk of the tshirt orders now. All that's left now are annual ($50/month) subscribers who joined during the final months when the PayPal integration was down and upgrade subscribers. If you're among those groups, we don't have your address or size information, and given that so many have also been returned, we'd like to make it easy for you to let us know who you are and where to send the shirt. Please go to:

www.tribe.net/template/Tshirts.vm

And let us know how we can get you your shirt!

Next, we're ready to send out personalized tribe cards. Very soon, Gold Star members will see a new button on their home page: "Order Premium Goodies"

Here you can set your email alias up and order your cards, as well as find information about the subscription service.

Hope you like them! Let us know if you have any feedback or problems with the pages.

Thanks

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Blogging, bios, friends -- all fixed

tribehelp — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:59:19 GMT

Last night's error has been reverted and everything is back in place now. If you're continuing to have problems, please do let us know.

Thanks for your patience!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Blogging currently broken :(

tribehelp — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:38:19 GMT

Due to an untested fix that was rolled out last night to address a different problem, the blogging plugin is currently not functioning. We will roll back the change as soon as possible to get this working again.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

Hiccup this morning, Saturday 18 July 2009

tribe_c — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:14:50 GMT

We had connection overload this morning that caused several of the servers to drop out. If you're still seeing unusual behavior, let us know what server you're on (indicated at the bottom of every page) so we can restart it.

Thanks!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Instability on Sunday, 12 July 2009

tribe_c — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 08:45:28 GMT

Around 9:20 am PDT on Sunday, the new master database maxed out connections which caused the appservers to disconnect. Although the db server recovered itself within 10 minutes, several of the appservers did not, and later were restarted to re-establish their connections. While those servers were disconnected, you may have experienced problems logging in and uploading photos.

If you are still experiencing problems on the site, you can now help us troubleshoot the problem a bit more easily: I've added the server name at the bottom of each page. Please include that name (for example, mojito.tribe.inner) when you report a problem and we can more quickly determine if the problem is specific to that server or a site-wide issue.

Thanks for your patience as things continue to improve.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

"Request" listings now work correctly

tribehelp — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:27:31 GMT

This particular bug annoyed us from the very beginning but we finally have it nailed. Links to "requests" are now functional!

More updates coming soon!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Maitenance Window Tonight: 17 June 2009, 9 pm - midnight

tribe_c — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:55:31 GMT

More hardware installation happening tonight, which will necessitate bringing the site down. We'll try to keep the downtime to a minimum. Watch for updates on www.twitter.com/tribehelp and the status page http://status.tribe.net

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Database Server Swapped

tribe_c — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:27:34 GMT

Although we had to put this off on Sunday due to a hardware mix-up, we planned to swap the server out later tonight, but the power supply did it for us. When it crashed around 5 pm, we decided to leave it down and bring up the other server in its place. Not only did that save us the time of running the repairs, things seem to be running better now. Yay!

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Again with the database server...

tribehelp — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 02:03:37 GMT

Another installment of the weekly outage... The biggest delay in recovering the server is just getting someone physically to the data center, but we do finally have the new database server ready to install and if all goes well, it should be in place this weekend, along with remote power cycling abilities!

Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to push forward!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Scheduled Maintenance -- 3 June 2009, 6-9 am EDT (3-6 am PDT)

tribe_c — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:03:39 GMT

We are planning to have a maintenance window early tomorrow morning. We will keep this down time as short as possible, barring unforeseen events.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Prolonged unscheduled maintenance

tribe_c — Sat, 30 May 2009 07:01:03 GMT

Thursday night's scheduled maintenance unfortunately became all day Friday's unscheduled maintenance. As soon as I had decided to cancel the scheduled maintenance due to the failure of a DNS server and thus the load balancer configuration, the master database suddenly decided to turn itself off again. When that happens, similar to last week, it takes several hours to just get the hardware running again, and then another 12 hours or so to repair the database damage.

We realize the last several outages have been unusually long and appear to be more frequent, thus we are actively working on:
1. Building a new database server
2. Outfitting the data center with more remote access tools (to reduce the need to travel there to fix problems)
3. Reworking the database repair procedures to reduce the downtime when catastrophes happen

All in addition to continuing to rework the architecture and codebase and overall improve the site.

Again, thank you for your patience, we know how difficult this has been for everyone.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Scheduled Maintenance: Friday, 29 May 2008 1-3 am

tribe_c — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:44:08 GMT

Yes, it's that time of the week again -- time to restart the servers in hopes of preventing more ~unscheduled~ maintenance. We will try to get through this as quickly as possible!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Outage: Saturday, 23 May 2009

tribe_c — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:08:32 GMT

The Saturday outage was another typical database crash... nothing different really than the previous week's, but something we thought would be avoided by the midweek maintenance. Clearly it wasn't, and we're still trying to track down the root cause of this problem. We are building a new server to replace the one that keeps dying and when that's ready we'll schedule more down time to make that transition.

To follow Tribe's status when it's down, check our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/TribeHelp

Thanks again for your patience!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Scheduled Maintenance: 19 May 2009 3 am - 6 am PDT

tribehelp — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:41:06 GMT

Tonight's maintenance will address some long outstanding database maintenance that should fix several issues. We'll let you know how it goes! This timeframe should be better for west coast users, sorry east coast!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Known issues resolved

tribe_c — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:10:35 GMT

Photo uploading should work now, images should load on pages and Ads are back.

If you run into any other problems, please let us know

Have fun!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Two Known Issues

tribehelp — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:42:10 GMT

We're currently working on resolving the google ad problem (they're not showing up) and uploading photos. We hope to have these resolved soon!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Back up and running

tribehelp — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:44:54 GMT

After a much longer than expected downtime due to physically moving and recabling several servers, we are back in business. We apologize for the delay as we did not expect it to take quite this long, but we were able to accomplish many things in our plan to upgrade and improve the infrastructure.

Thank you again for your patience!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Scheduled Downtime: 13 May 2009 9 pm - 14 May 2009 3 am

tribehelp — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:04:42 GMT

We are blocking out six hours tonight to do server moves and upgrades. During the downtime you may notice the site is up for brief periods while we do testing. We will do our best to minimize the overall downtime and post the results when we are finished both here and on twitter.

Thanks!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Unexpected Downtime: 9 May 2009

tribe_c — Sat, 09 May 2009 22:31:57 GMT

Once again, the master database server crashed.

It took the entire day to bring the site back up due to an unforeseen problem we encountered during the process. We will be scheduling more downtime in the next week to make adjustments to the configuration and move the servers to networked power units so that we can restart them remotely in the future.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience during this transition.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime: Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 1am to 3am

Mon, 04 May 2009 16:58:52 GMT

Tribe.net will be unavailable for weekly scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, May 5th, from 1am to 3am. We do apologize for the inconvenience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime: Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 1am to 3am

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:37:45 GMT

Tribe.net will be unavailable for weekly scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, Apil 28th, from 1am to 3am. We do apologize for the inconvenience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Unexpected Downtime on 23 April 2009

tribe_c — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:16:24 GMT

Once again, the database ran into a bug and surprised us with a crash this morning around 9:30 am PDT. The servers should all be up at this point, but expect a scheduled maintenance period tonight or tomorrow, and more regularly on a weekly basis going forward to address these problems.

Thank you for your patience and continued support!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime: Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 1am

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:31:03 GMT

The site will be offline while we add a machine to the database cluster. ETA for site return will be 3am.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime planned Saturday, April 11th 2009 at 1am

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:17:22 GMT

The site will be down for weekly maintenance from 1am to 4am on Saturday, April 11th. We apologize for the inconvenience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime planned Wednesday, April 8th at 1am

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:42:16 GMT

Tribe is scheduled to be down at 1am until 3am on Wednesday morning to repair a database table. We apologize for any inconvenience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

3 April 2008 Downtime

touguy — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:17:17 GMT

Today's downtime was brought to you by the master database server. Unfortunately, when that one crashes, it takes a while to recover all the information. Everything should be functioning normally again, and we now resume our regular programming.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Maintenance Restart Tonight: 31 March 2009 at 1 AM PDT

tribehelp — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:17:20 GMT

We will performing routine maintenance on the site tonight (more precisely, early Tuesday morning). Total down time should be less than 1 hour. Thank you for your patience!

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Phishing on Tribe

tribe_d — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:11:23 GMT

People have recently tried phishing on Tribe by creating accounts and sending out messages along the lines of:

"Subject: TRIBE.NET AWARDS

On behalf of Tribe.net, the world most populated free site. We wish to congratulate you; your active profile on Tribe.net database has won a prize with your reference number: T.US.P200944673. To keep your winning information confidential from other users, kindly contact your assigned processing agent directly by writing the service consultant at the Email: tribeserviceconsult@ymail.com and indicate your winning reference number for verification and approval.

Regard from Tribe.net
service consultant team."

This is a scam. Do not respond directly; report it to Help and we will deal with the profiles.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

19-20 March (Wednesday-Thursday) downtime explained...

tribehelp — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:30:30 GMT

Wednesday saw the loss of two of our webservers, which put an unexpected additional load on the remaining 7 and caused the site go offline for approximately 30 minutes in the evening. Thursday morning, the master database server failed, similar to the 8 March failure. A complete recovery from that type of failure typically takes about a day, so you may have noticed the site was up at times but not performing as expected. While we are still down two servers, the site is running, but expect more scheduled maintenance over the next week as we continue to replace and upgrade hardware.

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Ongoing database issues

tribe_d — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:59:39 GMT

While the move was generally successful and most of the servers are happy, the process has either created or exposed an ongoing instability in the database system. One of the database servers unexpectedly locked up on Sunday, March 8th. We're working through problems this has caused and attempting to fix file system errors that have accumulated over the last few years and that are causing increasingly frequent system locks.

We hope to have this sorted out by sometime tomorrow. Until then please be wary of posting anything that would be difficult to replicate.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

-Tribe

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Pet Scammers

tribe_d — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:29:57 GMT

Please be aware that not all posts for pet adoption are legitimate. In particular we have found a number of posts that appear to fit the model of "Cameroon Pet Scammers."

In such cases a typically desirable dog breed is offered at below market prices from an overseas source claiming that they cannot keep the pet for one reason or another and are seeking an adoptive home. Be aware that there may not be any pet and if you're asked to wire fees overseas it is not a good sign.

A representative site describing the situation is:
http://www.helpmerick.com/fun_with_cameroon_pet_scams.htm

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

ISP Move!

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:53:39 GMT

Tribe has moved to a new hosting agreement with Applied Operations.

http://www.appliedops.net/

I personally welcome this move after walking up 6 flights of stairs last Saturday during the outage because the elevators were broken. We are in the same space as http://www.kink.com, http://www.justin.tv, and the new datacenter for http://www.craigslist.org. Facebook is next door to us too.

Many shoutouts to Shatter and Banshee, who did most of the heavy lifting. Tom Sparks at Applied Ops provided a lot of the know-how behind the network improvements we implemented in this move, he's godlike. Seriously, before he got a girlfriend he was named one of Nob Hill Gazette's Most Eligible Bachelors. Finally, if you don't mind being ten feet away from Brisbane you really should eat at the Seven Mile House ( http://www.historic7milehouse.com/ )down by the Cow Palace. I know it looks like a dump but trust me. This bar puts a lot of the restaurants in San Francisco to shame. Look at the pictures on their website -- it's the SAME BAR. Holy cow.

The next week ought to be interesting!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Unscheduled downtime, 7am to 5pm March 2nd, 2009

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:12:13 GMT

Sorry about the unexpected downtime all day today, but it enabled us to take care of a real problem with tribe.net. Our SAN (storage area network) has been accumulating errors for about 3 or 4 years, and the move added the straw that broke the camel's back. The partition that held the database failed catastrophically, forced us to reformat that segment of the SAN and restore from backup.

Please expect Tribe.net to be down after 1am one or more nights this week to continue working on problems like this. We did just enough to get the site back today, but there is a lot more work to be done. We hope that things will be a lot more stable after our move to another colo provider! Check my blog for details on what we did this weekend.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime planned today, Saturday Feb 28, at noon Pacific time for colo relo

tribe_d — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:18:34 GMT

After many thwarted attempts the Tribe servers should move to an enhanced colocation facility today. The process has been underway for two months now and only now, finally, does everything seem aligned for an actual move. We apologize for the late notice, but a seemingly endless chain unexpected events blocked us previously and made us wary of predicting the Great Transition.

The move will improve service and at the same time gives us an opportunity to lower costs. It is the most significant step thus far in moving Tribe onto a more secure footing.

Please bear with us. This is likely to take most of day.

-Tribe

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

Downtime tonight, 2/28/2009 1am to 3am

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:25:29 GMT

There will be downtime tonight to correct some database problems stemming from last week's crash. Downtime will commence at 1am and last until 3am.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Unannounced Downtime Yesterday - 2/21/2009

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:15:21 GMT

Yesterday we had an unscheduled outage from 8:15am until 5:00pm. The main database server had a hardware fault and had to be fixed. The fix was temporary, so there will be a scheduled downtime announced later this week to make more permanent repairs.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

New Image Servers

tribehelp — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:50:50 GMT

We have brought two more image servers online and are currently monitoring and adjusting the configuration for optimal load times. During these changes you may see some broken images or load failures. We are trying to keep these changes to a minimum, and we appreciate your patience during these times. If you receive an error feedback form, be sure to submit as that will help us troubleshoot code problems.

Thanks!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Status Check

tribehelp — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:59:18 GMT

Since the messaging fix a couple of weeks ago, the site has been running pretty smoothly with no major problems or unexpected outages. If you experience any problems, please do let us know.

We're scheduling downtimes now mainly for hardware upgrades and relocation to a new hosting service. We try to minimize the service impact of these so although we may proactively announce down time, we'll attempt to have as little noticeable actual downtime as possible.

We've also got several small frequently requested usability fixes in the works that we hope to roll out to the site very soon. Stay Tuned!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe will be offline tonight, 29 Jan 2009

tribehelp — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:51:55 GMT

Beginning at approximately 10 pm, Tribe will be offline for equipment upgrades. We plan to have the site back online by Friday, 6 am, 30 January.

Thank you for you patience and support!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Some still-outstanding issues

tribehelp — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:11:53 GMT

1. Avatar Cropping: This does not currently work. However, we may be able to implement a quick fix we are testing now.

2. Deleting messages from Unsubscribed (No Subject): These happened as a result of a maintenance routine from early last year that purged deleted messages in the database. Although senders had "deleted" the messages, the recipients still have pointers to them. As a result, those pointers are "orphaned" and when the recipient tries to delete the message an error results. There is no quick fix for this yet, but we are looking into resolving such database inconsistencies in the coming month.

3. Photo uploading: This is an intermittent problem specific to one of our 10 servers. Chances are that restarting your browser should put you on a functioning server. Also be sure that your photos are under 1 MB in size and conform to the acceptable file types (.JPG, .GIF, .PNG or .BMP).

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Known issue: Network timeout when sending messages

tribehelp — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:40:02 GMT

We are currently experiencing a time out problem when sending messages or accepting invites. This is different from the issue where you might see an Error Report form. If you see the Error Report form, please submit that and your profile will be fixed.

Tracking down the cause of the timeout problem is a very high priority for us. The timeout occurs when loading the confirmation page, and it does appear that the messages are being sent. You can check your sent items to verify this.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience while we work to resolve this.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

Downtime: Monday, 19 January 2008, 1-3 am

tribehelp — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:34:23 GMT

Please note: The previously schedule downtime did not happen.

There will be a brief downtime Monday, January 19th at 1:00am pacific. Tribe should be back up and running by 3:00am pacific.

This is a scheduled maintenance period to maintain performance and roll out a few fixes (non-US sign ups).

We apologize for any inconvenience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Reboot: 1am pacific time, Weds 14 Jan

tribe_d — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:53:29 GMT

There will be a brief downtime Wednesday, January 14th at 1:00am pacific. Tribe should be back up and running by 3:00am pacific.

This is a scheduled preventative restart to maintain performance.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Happy belated Amelia Earhart Day
From Tribe

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Second reboot of 2009! 5:00pm tonight Pacific!

tribe_d — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:51:38 GMT

There are some database replication issues that are causing a variety of problems and sluggish response. We will reboot the servers at 3:30 pm correct these problems. We apologize for the short notice and that this is not the most optimal time, but we are concerned that if we wait we may have "unplanned downtime" sometime before 1:00am.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

First reboot of 2009! Tonight! 1am

tribe_d — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 06:25:33 GMT

There will be a brief downtime tonight, Saturday January 3rd at 1:00am pacific. Tribe should be back up and running by 3:00am pacific.

This is a scheduled preventative restart to maintain performance.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Happy New Year From Tribe

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Reboot tonight, Tuesday Dec 30 at 1:00am pacific time

tribe_d — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:11:06 GMT

There will be a brief downtime tonight, Tuesday December 30th at 1:00am pacific. Tribe should be back up and running by 3:00am pacific.

This is a scheduled preventative restart to maintain performance.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Happy New Year From Tribe

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime Monday Dec 22 1:00am Pacific for software update

tribe_d — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:04:52 GMT

There will be a brief downtime tonight, Monday December 22nd at 1:00am for a software update. Tribe should be back up and running by 3:00am pacific.

This restart is to push out some minor software fixes to all the web servers and for some ad display fixes, though there are still some to go.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Happy Holidays From Tribe.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

18 Dec: Down time at 1 am

tribehelp — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 06:12:31 GMT

We will be performing routine maintenance on the servers and pushing out updates tonight starting at 1:00am Pacific time. The servers should be back on line by 3:00am.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

12 Dec: Updates on the State of Tribe

tribehelp — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:22:26 GMT

Lost Profiles: FIXED! If you or someone you know lost a profile in the last few outages, please write to help@tribe.net and let us know. We will need to know what email address the lost profile was using. In most cases we should be able to restore your profile, blog entries, photos, friends, tribes, etc.

Sending Messages: FIXED! If you or someone you know is having trouble sending messages, accepting invites, joining tribes, etc. please send the error report. That will tell us exactly who you are and will get your profile in the queue for the fix.

Email from Tribe: This issue should be fixed, but if you're ever waiting for an email from Tribe to activate a profile, change your email address or reset your password, and you don't receive it, first check your spam folder. If it's not there, send a message to help@tribe.net and we can send you the information directly to you in a reply.

New moderators: If your tribe needs a moderator, please hold an election and send links to the tribe's election thread and the winner's profile to help@tribe.net.

Spammers: Send the message and a link to the profile to help@tribe.net or http://people.tribe.net/tribehelp

Unable to upload images: This appears to be an intermittent problem. In many cases, restarting your browser should fix the problem.

Errors when logging in: This is a temporary issue that happens when servers are starting up. It can also be worked around usually by restarting your browser.

Deleting messages from Unsubscribed Users: No fix for this yet, and it is fairly low priority at this time. No need to send the error reports unless you really want to.

Premium Members: If you purchased a subscription last year, or thought you made a donation, please check your account on PayPal. All subscriptions from the last 12 months are auto-renewing. This is the way PayPal handles subscription services for all customers. If you do not want to auto-renew, you must cancel your current subscription BEFORE the renewal date. See http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/template/SubscribeTribe.vm for more information on subscribing and premium membership.

Lastly, T-Shirts. Subscribers who qualified for or ordered T-Shirts up through April 2008 should be receiving them within the month. If you do not receive yours, please let us know.

And, as always, if you have any other concerns or questions or problems you'd like us to address, please email us at help@tribe.net.

Thanks!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

9 Dec: Tuesday evening outage

tribehelp — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:46:16 GMT

Yesterday afternoon it appears that Tribe was hit by a denial of service attack. We are aware of a number of minor scripting attacks that have caused some inconvenience recently, such as generating spam messages or creating huge numbers of tribes as quickly as the server will allow, but this was very unusual.

Denial of service attacks are difficult to defend against and even massively scaled systems become unavailable during the attacks. We are working on our hardware and software configuration to minimize our exposure and recovery time in the future.

If you continue to experience problems logging in and navigating the site, please first try restarting your browser to clear the old session state data. In almost all cases this will fix the problem and allow you to resume using Tribe normally. Please write to help@tribe.net if you're experiencing any other difficulties with the site.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Tribe

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Changes to premium subscriptions, different payment options and new features.

tribe_d — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:44:49 GMT

We encountered some issues with a few users who were surprised when their annual or semi-annual subscriptions auto-renewed through PayPal. Because of this we've made some changes to eliminate the payment options that were confusing and limit available options to those that caused no consternation. Please consider purchasing one of the following:

* A monthly subscription, automatically renewing at $5/month. PayPal will deduct $5 from your account every month and you will remain a premium subscriber until you cancel on PayPal.

* An annual or semiannual subscription at $50 per year or $25 per half year through a one time PayPal payment. The subscription will not auto renew. You must renew or shortly after the year is up your premium status will lapse (we will send friendly encouragement to re-subscribe).

* Annual or semiannual subscriptions at $50 per year and $25 per half year by check or money order. It will (obviously) not auto renew. You must renew or shortly after the year is up your status will lapse (we will send friendly encouragement to re-subscribe).

* We have and some requests from members who would like to pay more up front. We consider the requests on a case-by-case basis. Please contact premium@tribe.net

N.B. These changes do not effect current subscribers. Current subscribers with annual or semi-annual subscriptions will continue to be automatically charged by PayPal and their status automatically renewed until they cancel on the PayPal site. Current annual and biannual paypal subscriptions will remain in effect until you cancel yourself. We will be sending out our own reminders when your next payment date approaches.

If you would like to convert your annual or semi-annual subscription to a monthly subscription or to a one time payment option before it is automatically renewed, please contact us at premium@tribe.net so we can ensure your status is properly conserved.

Two of our planned new features for premium users are already available. One is the premium@tribe.net support line. The second is email forwarding (by request only) for premium subscribers. If you would like a your_handle@tribe.net email address forwarded to the email address of your choice, please send your request to premium@tribe.net.

Watch this space for additional features, including personalized "join me on tribe" calling cards. As new premium features are available they will be offered to all existing premium members.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime Tonight - Sat 6 Dec from 01:00-03:00 (am) Pacific Time

tribe_d — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:11:22 GMT

We will be performing maintenance on the web servers and pushing out some updates tonight starting at 1:00am Pacific time. The servers should be back on line by 3:00am.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

Slow log ins, occasional errors today (4 Dec 08)

tribe_d — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:57:03 GMT

One of the web servers has had some problems today which has resulted in slow logins or error messages. If you are having trouble logging in (in which case I realize you probably can't see this message), it has helped most users to restart their browsers. For some users (1 in 10 or so) a second restart might be necessary if the problems continue after the first restart.

We will have the problem resolved tonight.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

"Mature" Flag

tribe_d — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:47:05 GMT

You will notice the reemergence of the "Mature" flag. We had problems with our Google ad feed with left us with three choices:

1) run without advertising until the money ran out,

2) enforce content censorship to make advertisers happy,

3) build an internal system to direct sensitive advertisers away from their unhappy places.

We chose the last. The mature flag does not change the content visible to Tribe members. The flag is to help ensure that Tribe can both support it's unique community and remain viable.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

Downtime announcement 1:00am - 2:00am Pacific Time

tribe_d — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:39:53 GMT

Tribe's servers will be rebooted tonight at 1:00 to push out a small update. The typical reboot time is about 30 minutes, but it can sometimes run longer.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Brief Downtime Tonight, 1-3am Pacific

tribe_d — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 02:30:27 GMT

We are scheduling regular updates to the system which help prevent unscheduled downtime. There will be a brief planned downtime tonight from 1-3am.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

"Sending Messages" Bug fix available

tribe_d — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:50:48 GMT

Some users have had a problem with sending messages, replying to messages, and/or responding to invitations.

We've solved that problem.

At the moment it is a user by user fix so if you're having trouble send a note to help@tribe.net. Please include the email address you subscribed with if you are not sending the help request from that address so we can find your profile.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Brief Downtime Tonight 1-3 am pacific.

tribe_d — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:16:23 GMT

Tribe Users:

There will be a planned outage tonight as we push out a new update to the servers and reboot them. This update is primarily to fix a problem we're having with our adfeed and allow us better control of what pages ads are shown against. Many advertisers are a bit ticklish about some of the content on Tribe. Other social networks might clean up for the advertisers, we'd rather just not invite them to the places they'd rather not visit anyway.

There are few additional small fixes being rolled out and typically after a reboot things run a little more smoothly.

Please bear with us as this update is applied.

Note that in the near future we will be updating the hardware infrastructure (which in computer years is quite old) and reboots will be much faster - generally invisible to most users for a minor update push like the one planned for tonight.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

New Systems Associates executes operating agreement to manage and grow Tribe.net

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:19:13 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (PRWEB) November 10th, 2008 -- Utah Street Networks and New Systems Associates today entered into an operating agreement to manage http://www.tribe.net [Tribe.net, one of the first social networking sites], add competitive social networking features to the site, and revitalize the Tribe community.

The first priorities for New Systems Associates are to stabilize the platform and improve the site's performance. To accomplish these goals, the company is committing substantial resources to upgrade Tribe's hardware and application. The hardware migration will begin immediately, resulting in better performance and stability users expect from a world-class social network. New Systems Associates will also add new features to improve connections within the Tribe community and to other social networks and widgets.

In the longer term, New Systems Associates will grow the Tribe community by developing features including advanced privacy features, profile control, regional relevancy, personal discovery, and free-range connectivity. The company is committed to strengthening Tribe's alternative community and the unique ways in which users interact.

"This is nothing but good news for the Tribe.net community," said Darren Mckeeman, Tribe.net's IT Director. "New Systems Associates will inject sorely needed resources and manpower into the management and everyday operation of Tribe.net. They will develop the site along the growth path that has already been established."

Utah Street Networks, Inc. is the owner of Tribe.net, one of the oldest social networking sites on the Internet and pioneers of social graphing.

New Systems Associates is an LLC formed by long-time Tribe members who believe in protecting and expanding Tribe's unique culture.

For more information please email info@tribe.net.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe Status Page

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:42:58 GMT

I spent the last day or so setting up http://status.tribe.net. This is an independent monitoring system that will give you an idea of how the hardware for tribe.net is doing. I will be updating this monitoring system constantly -- if you ever want to figure out if something on tribe is working, try going here. If you can't get into tribe, then it'll be reflected here by lots of flashing red stuff.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Extended downtime

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:56:34 GMT

So, if you hadn't noticed, our downtime from Thursday was extremely extended until today, Tuesday. A vital piece of hardware malfunctioned and was irreparably damaged when we powered it back on. This equipment was scheduled for replacement on September 23rd -- we have the site held together with spit and bubblegum until we get the new storage solution installed.

We apologize for the extended downtime, this weekend was about as bad as it could get. We will be sending out an email to all users tomorrow.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Scheduled downtime

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:12:01 GMT

Tribe.net will be down THIS THURSDAY, September 4th, from midnight to midnight for scheduled maintenance and equipment upgrades.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

downtime and schedule

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:37:18 GMT

If you hadn't noticed, tribe.net has been down for the better part of 48 hours. The reason for this is that the image server died again -- this is another of those dreaded SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE with the old application I am so fond of talking about. While the site was down, I decided to set up a cluster of new machines to handle images, which we would have had to do for the new system anyway!

Also if you hadn't noticed, we are delayed about a month in our rollout schedule for the new codebase. I will post a new schedule this week after I meet (virtually) with the developers.

Finally, I will be in Las Vegas tonight through the 22nd -- read my blog to see where I'll be, if you are in Vegas and a tribe.net member, I'd love to meet you.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

T-shirt news! Want yours faster?

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:03:14 GMT

Attention our year long subscribers in the Bay Area!

So the good news is that we have the t-shirts! The bad news is that we are waiting until next week to mail them because THAT'S A LOT OF POSTAGE! In the meantime, I have arranged to have a table at Bondage A Go Go next week for you to pick up your t-shirts! Even if this is not your kind of place, there is enough space in this club where you can hang out with fellow tribesters and not have to watch people getting whipped.

OK, so some of you might be into that -- still a good reason to come pick up your shirt! Here is the info, and a special offer!

EVENT: tribe.net t-shirt pickup at Bondage A Go Go
DATE: 08/06/08 from 9:30pm to midnight 18+
Glas Kat Supper Club
4th and Bryant
520 4th Street, San Francisco, CA
Come for the shirt, stay for a drink and a dance!

Want to get into the club for $1? This week is TRIBE FIESTA for Bondage a Go Go, a regular promotion they do! Join the http://bondageagogo.tribe.net tribe and add your name to the TRIBE FIESTA thread for this week! Regular tribesters are welcome to do this as well!

If you are NOT from the Bay Area and you'll be somehow making it to this event, then let me know at darren@tribe.net and I'll bring yours!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

T-shirts, AJAX, and timelines, oh my!

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:15:05 GMT

If you've been following the company blog you'll know that I'm heading up a project to rewrite tribe.net with a group of tribe.net folks. This is a top-to-bottom overhaul, with machines, database server software, and application framework upgraded. We are experiencing some delays, but it's nothing I really didn't expect with a project of this magnitude. We're still doing it damned fast!

First off, we are altering our timeline for rollout somewhat. Here is our new schedule, updated from last post:

Alpha -- (August 3rd)
Beta test roll out (August 10th)
Tribe.net 3.0 rollout (September 10)

Second, we've blown a coder! Our AJAX/UI developer is moving on to greener pastures -- meaning some place that pays. If you are interested in an unpaid internship for the duration of this project please email me your resume at darren@tribe.net. It's not going to be anything too strenuous -- we're not going to ask you to make anything like Facebook's integrated chat bar at the bottom of their page, but we'd go absolutely nuts over you if you wanted to do something like that to defeat the evils of Facebook once and for all and just so you could put it on your resume.

Finally, we have t-shirts! My living room has been taken over by the limited edition of 500 t-shirts that we finally sold enough year-long memberships to order! We are packaging them all up this week and moving them out to the post office slowly but surely! The artwork is by http://people.tribe.net/stitchmind and if you want to do artwork for an upcoming series of 500 then send me an email at darren@tribe.net!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

The Sun shines on Tribe.net

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:46:36 GMT

So, today I basically got the go-ahead to go full speed ahead with the rewrite project. I have convinced management that I know how to scale Ruby on Rails.

I think you folks should get not only the most stable but the shiniest and the coolest toys to play with, since SOME of you are paying for it. Because of this, I've entered into talks with Sun and MySQL to run the next version of tribe.net on nothing but Sun Microsystems equipment with Enterprise level database support. We're also going to be using some bleeding edge technologies like computing clouds to make this as cost efficient as possible. I know this is probably wacky moon talk to more than a few of my friends and people reading it, but these are all good things.

Because of Sun's support for this project, I feel a lot more comfortable pushing the bleeding edge of what can be done. I'm also having fun looking at machines with four processors in them and 256 GB of RAM. That Sun product catalog is a lot like porn to me, except you can't get a PDF sticky. One of the things that I am particularly proud of is throwing tribe's gauntlet into the ring of making Ruby on Rails scalable. I'm not the brightest person on the planet, but it seems like this shouldn't be rocket science. We also have two interns working on Ruby on Rails and AJAX/UI code for us, and you'll probably be thanking them more than me for the minor tweaks that tribe.net has needed for a year or so now.

The new timeline goes a little like this:

Proof of concept (July 9th)
Beta test roll out (August 1st)
Tribe.net 3.0 rollout (September 1st)

Due to certain efficiencies in coding in Ruby on Rails, we may have the beta-test sooner rather than later. Paid subscribers will have the first whack at the new Tribe.net servers, as we're setting up the cluster specifically for them first. Once we have the bugs shaken out, we'll launch the site for all members.

In other words... ask Mark Pincus if you see him at Burning Man!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Big News for Tribe.net

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:33:15 GMT

I know it's been a while since you heard from me, but there's a very good reason for that. I've been very busy working on a complete rewrite of the tribe.net application and a restructuring of the tribe.net backend! Basically, we're upgrading some of our applications used to bring tribe.net to you, and we're working on the actual code that runs tribe.net to bring it a little more up-to-date with what is out there right now. When I say we, I actually mean we this time -- I've assembled a crack team of engineers and QA folks to assist me in this rewrite. If you're interested in helping out and know PHP, Ruby on Rails, subversion, XHTML, HAML, RHTML, AJAX and/or Python then message me!

This never could have happened without our premium memberships. As a reward for that, our 1500 premium members will be the first folks allowed onto the new servers once we have the beta site running. Our current ETA for launching beta-testing of tribe.net 3.0 is early July. I'll let you know if anything changes here on the company blog.

If you'd like to be first in line to try out the new tribe.net 3.0 beta, buy a premium membership! It's still only $5 per month, $25 per six months, and $50 per year!

P.S. T-shirts will finally arrive in the next few weeks! Hurrah!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

A little education -- reposted from my blog.

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:43:11 GMT

I think part of the problem with tribe.net is that it can do so many cool things without much explanation. For example, if you take a look at my profile, I've added my last.fm XSPF feed, my Flickr account RSS feed, my Recipezaar RSS feed and my Livejournal feed. You can add some of these to the home page, but it's not obvious to the end user exactly how to do any of these things.

In the upcoming months, I want to learn how to write these drop-in modules for tribe and extend its functionality for the end user. I am working on my first one, a livejournal plugin for the home page. I can add one for just about any service (MySpace, etc) this way, and if I do this sort of easy hack then maybe folks can see the real potential and help me develop the site further into a full-fledged hub for keeping track of your social networking sites.

Here is a list of the sites I'm on, tribe.net first and then the rest in the order that I joined them on. I know enough about each of these to write a basic plugin for each.

1) Tribe.net http://people.tribe.net/tjcrowley
2) Friendster http://profiles.friendster.com/40141
3) RecipeZaar http://www.recipezaar.com/member/48416
4) LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1239005
5) Livejournal http://tjcrowley.livejournal.com
6) MySpace http://www.myspace.com/tjcrowley
7) YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/tjcrowley
7) Orkut http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=13149267762811006230
8) Twitter http://twitter.com/tjcrowley
9) Bebo http://www.bebo.com/DarrenM1904

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

March Newsletter

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:19:21 GMT

IN THIS ISSUE:

· Win a contest!
· Get on the VIP List!
· Check out a new tribe!
· Get on tribechat Instant Messenger!
· Check out Premium Membership for free!
Tribe.net member of the month: Jason Lee Jones

Profile Color Scheme Contest!

Coming in the next few weeks are new color schemes for premium members. In the interest of exercising some editorial control over your tribe.net experience, we are going to run a contest for all you web designers out there to build new skins for other users tribe.net profiles! This will take some knowledge of Cascading Style Sheets (css). Make sure you know what you are doing – any entries that don’t conform to standards will be thrown out! For reference, you can see a custom example of tribe’s Cascading Style Sheet for profiles at the following URL:

http://images.tribe.net/tribe/custom/tribe.zip

Join the tribe.net style contest tribe for more information!

http://tribes.tribe.net/tribestylin

Winners will receive a one-year premium tribe.net membership! We will run this contest once every three months, and the winning entries will be featured on the “Styles” tab of your profiles.

Please note: If you send us an email asking for an explanation of the above file, you will automatically disqualify yourself from winning one of the spots in our contest.

BaGG Tribe Army in 2008

One of tribe’s largest groups is the Bondage a Go Go tribe. Every Wednesday at the Glas Kat Supper Club, BaGG is San Francisco’s longest running weekly BDSM themed dance night. Tribe has been instrumental in building their word of mouth, and they’ve responded by letting premium subscribers in on this special offer if they just join the Bondage A Go Go tribe – they’ll have your name at the door!

From the Bondage a Go Go Tribe (http://bondageagogo.tribe.net) :

====

Affective immediately anybody in the BaGG Tribe who purchases a Premium Membership from Tribe.net will be issued a BaGG Tribe Army card that would allow them to attend for $5.00 a week for as long as the Premium Membership is active. The new Premium Memberships are available for the nominal charge of
$50 for one year
$25 for 6 months
$5 a month pay as you go

For their support of Tribe.net, these BaGG Tribe members would automatically be RSVP’d for the Fiesta and attend for FREE (the Mortals will still pay $1) + enter the club any Wednesday (excluding Anniversary and NYE 08) for $5.00. Save money. Support the Tribe. Be a part of the ongoing social experiment that ::is:: Tribe.net.

Proceeds from the Fiesta(s) will also be applied to adopting (2) Tribe Orphans per month from our Tribe with any additional amounts (after costs) being donated to the San Francisco Food Bank.

Happy New Year!

George Lazaneo

Promoter, Bondage A Go Go

===

Tribe of the Month

The Ham Radio Tribe (http://hamradio.tribe.net)

As I’m a great big geek, I have a ham radio license – I’m KF6 FJO. I use tribe.net to ask questions of other ham radio enthusiasts, and browse through this tribe to get an idea of what new radios people are talking about. It’s easier than ever to get licensed for ham radio. You can get a novice, technician, technician plus, general, advanced, or amateur extra license. For a long time you had to know morse code to get a license, but this changed in the 90’s with the introduction of technician licenses. Now most of the licenses do not require morse code to learn, just pass a multiple choice test and get a good radio. Radio is the one of the first technological social networking systems, and a lot of fun to boot!

==

TribeChat Server revived!

TribeChat is an instant messenger placing your friends list on an instant messenger client such as Trillian Pro or Adium. To connect to the TribeChat server, point any Jabber (www.jabber.org) client at (your tribehandle)@maitai.tribe.net with your tribe.net password. A web-based client available for premium users, but in the meantime the back end is online and ready to connect your friends list to any tribe.net user with an account and a handle. Watch this space for more announcements about this exciting project!

You can use the following IM client with our server!

==

Trial Period for Monthly Premium Subscriptions

Starting March 1st, there will be a four day trial period for monthly premium subscriptions. After four days, you will automatically be billed for your first month’s membership via PayPal. Check out how fast tribe is without any advertising for yourself today!

==
Tribe.net Member of the Month: Jason Lee Jones, politician

from http://tribes.tribe.net/jones_congress_2008
Representative Tom Lantos has announced that he will not be seeking another term. I would like to wish him well and hope that he recovers from the cancer with which he has been diagnosed. However, in an effort to provide California's 12th District a broad choice of potential Representatives, I have decided to join the campaign for this open seat in Congress.

Important: We need donors more than dollars! The more who donate, the more it will show grassroots support! Please make a donation of any amount! The donor number - not the dollar number - goes a long way!

We're happy to see that Jason is among the growing number of San Francisco politicians that is using tribe.net to reach out to their constituents!

You can see Jason's profile at http://people.tribe.net/jasonleejones

==

Final Word

We’re going through a period of adjustment here at tribe.net, and we appreciate your patience during this time. We’ll be making more than a few changes over the next few months, so watch the company blog on tribe.net (http://blog.tribe.net/) for up to the minute information on scheduled maintenance, upgrades, and service outages. We are trying to keep these episodes to a minimum, and for the most part they will happen between midnight and 3am PST. As always, thank you for your support!
Darren Mckeeman

"The Man Behind the Curtain"

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

tribe.net update 1-30-2008

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:28:21 GMT

We'll be sending out a full blown update in the future, but we wanted to update you all with what's going on here in tribe.net land!

1) We've just launched a limited test of a web based IM client for our premium users.
2) We've launched a new profile style (hot pink!) for premium users. More on the way!
3) We've put the framework in place for better spam/abuse reporting.

We will probably push out a few new builds between now and Monday to fix bugs as we find them, plus we have a few other problems that should be fixed very soon. In the meantime, enjoy!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe.net Premium Memberships -- an update

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 23:05:28 GMT

Since launching our premium subscription service on December 1st, 2007 we have gotten a good response in both feedback and subscriptions purchased. Due to the feedback we got before the launch, we had high hopes for this subscription service. While the program was a success, certain goals had to be reached in order to expand tribe.net aggressively. We have decided to concentrate on making tribe.net more stable and eliminate single points of failure for the next six months. Since we cannot hire a programmer until six months from now, all changes and some bug fixes will be handled in-house by existing staff. We have already started adding functions to the existing application for our premium users, but the major changes will have to come in six months. In the meantime, we are investigating adding premium functions to the site such as the following:

1) Jabber servers to provide our premium users with a private, secure instant message system that will allow us to extend tribe.net’s functionality.
2) A secure API for premium users to develop client applications with.
3) An improved photo album function for premium users.
4) An improved mobile phone interface for premium users.
5) Additional Online Contact Fields such as Game Console (currently testing for Wii) and ID (represented by Wii number)
6) Concentric friend groups named by the user
7) Integration with Bittorrent file sharing for sharing files between yourself and your private groups.

The things we are doing over the next six months include the following:

1) Moving tribe.net to a cheaper ISP (weekend of December 28th)
2) Making changes to code to improve performance.
3) Conducting a third party SPOF (single points of failure) audit and eliminating those SPOFs.

The features we are rolling out before the new year are as follows:

1) Implementing a better spam/abuse reporting system
2) Implementing vCard files for all users
3) Implementing vCalendar files for all events.
4) Implementing a contact list feature for premium users, for at-a-glance view of online friends and how to get in touch with them.

We are still evaluating the response to our premium subscription program, so our timeline may or may not change over the next six months.

SCHEDULED DOWNTIME
We will have scheduled downtime after midnight on December 28th and 29th, until 6am for work on our DNS servers. Due to this work, tribe.net may be totally unavailable during this time. Do not be alarmed. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Darren Mckeeman
“Man Behind the Curtain”

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe.net in the San Francisco Chronicle

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:31:51 GMT

Check out what open source sex columnist had to say about tribe.net today!

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/violetblue/

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Important news from Mark Pincus

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:07:24 GMT

Here is the latest email from Mark:

It's that time of year when people tend to overeat, so we’re going to try to do our part by taking some donuts out of circulation. We’re sure that you’ve noticed the recent instances of site instability and the plague of outages resulting in the much-hated “DONUT FREAK OUT” page. First, we replaced the DONUT FREAK OUT page with something more informative. Second, we’ve listened to our users for solutions to our site instability problems. The overwhelming consensus is that our users love tribe.net so much that they are willing to pay for a premium subscription for all the functions that we now give to you. We’re excited (happy? grateful? nervous?) to say that we’re going to launch the premium subscription service next week. Between November 30th and December 15th we’re going to offer premium subscriptions at five bucks for thirty days.

So here’s how it works while we’re developing the upgrades: Tribe’s traditional, free service is going to continue just as it always has and always will. Those that want to upgrade can click on the PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION link, fill out the information, and sign up. The premium subscribers will automatically have a gold star instead of the orange bubble when they’re online. The Premium Subscribers will not see much of a change initially, but will receive a list of what the new, premium features will be on or before December 15th. We’re not going to say what they’ll be before December 15th, but it’s pretty cool. On February 1st, the Premium Subscription features will come online. If we get enough interest from people, we will offer six month and twelve month premium subscriptions (obviously with a discount for subscribing long-term) along with month to month premium subscriptions.

We’re aware that some people may not be able to sign up for premium service for various reasons. For those folks we offer the free service, but we’re also offering an ADOPT A TRIBE ORPHAN link where some kind folks can help out one of their friends (or maybe a lucky, random person) by upgrading them to premium subscription status. A lot of us give gifts during this time of the year, and this might be a cool way to take care of some people on our gift-giving list.

We feel so grateful for this outpouring of support from the Tribe communities. You all have made this a truly wonderful week to say: “Thanks!”

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Downtime on 12-12-2007

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:20:30 GMT

Tomorrow morning, 12-12-2007 at 3:00am PST, tribe.net will be down for some routine maintenance. Estimated downtime is one hour.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Outage 12-06 to 12/07 -- Image server rebuild

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:12:27 GMT

We had a hard drive problem with our main image server yesterday afternoon, which led to an all-night outage while I rebuilt the machine. We still have a few issues but they should be clearing up within the hour.

For those of you who bought a premium membership, replacing machines that die like this is what your money is going towards! A lot of the equipment in the tribe.net cabinet is approaching the MTBF (mean time between failures). If it hadn't been for the tribe.net premium members, the site might still not be up! Thanks again!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Announcement delayed

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:31:10 GMT

We're going to put out an announcement about the future of tribe.net in the next day or so. I was hoping to do it first thing this morning, but I have been working on some codebase changes that I wanted to announce and they aren't quite done with testing yet.

Be patient, it's probably less than a day a away. Sing that song from Annie!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

DONUT FREAK OUT

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:02:09 GMT

I'm implementing a new "down for maintenance" page this weekend which has more info on it, such as outage cause, ETA for the site's return, and a spiffy SWF file that Brian Lawler insisted that we use for any new DONUT FREAK OUT page.

I am considering something else in the spirit of "Donut Freak Out", but with less tendency to become obnoxious after seeing it 3 times. Of course, this may mean it's obnoxious from the very beginning to some folks, but it'll probably give you an idea of what I think is humorous. If you want to see it, I will be testing it around 3 am on Sunday morning.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

October 17th-18th outage

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:06:20 GMT

From October 17th until the evening of October 18th, tribe.net was unavailable due to problems with our MySQL database servers. For the most part the problems are resolved, but there will be more maintenance on the site over the weekend (Friday through Monday morning) during off-peak hours from midnight to 4am.

Thank you for your patience!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

September Tribe Mixer!

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:07:41 GMT

f you're going to be in San Francisco this Thursday, September 13th, come to the Tribe.net Mixer at the Glas Kat! The Glas Kat also has WiFi now courtesy of tribe.net -- come on down and join us for happy hour!

Glas Kat Supper Club
520 4th Street between Bryant and Brannan
18+ with ID
7pm to 10pm
RSVP to this event:
http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/event/TRIBENET-MIXER-09132007/san-francisco-ca/2d25e82c-c179-404a-a544-fde767414a99

Join tribe.net staff and fellow members for an evening of drinks and deejays. The Glas Kat is an awesome space with a full dinner menu, and mixologist Danny will be on hand to prepare delicious libations. We hope to see you there!

If you haven't yet checked out our Official Tribe.net Events tribe, containing pics from the last Mixer, here is a link: http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

New project from Mark Pincus

wendy — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:11:33 GMT

Tribe’s founder, Mark Pincus, has a new project:
Texas Hold’em Poker on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2389801228&b

If you don’t already have one, create an account in FB, and add the Texas Hold’em Poker application.

It’s free, really fun, and addictive!! Tournaments are in beta, and private rooms are coming soon too, along with a bunch of other very cool features. Check it out!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Two new application servers added today

jenni — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:52:07 GMT

Thanks for everyone's patience this morning between 9am and 10:30, we have added two new application servers to our pool, with the hope that performance will improve. We have a little more tidying up to do this morning, so there may be a couple more instances of people being logged out, but we expect to have everything smoothed out within the next 20 minutes or so.

If you are experiencing problems with being logged out of the site frequently this morning or through the weekend, please post to the Bugs tribe: http://bugs.tribe.net or email help@tribe.net

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

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Tribe Mixer pics

wendy — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:00:52 GMT

Thanks to everyone who came to the Tribe.net Mixer in SF last night ! The drinks flowed and the dj's rocked. Here are some pics, in case you missed it:

http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/7236170c-c56b-4e4f-bdc8-8c697bab6265
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/1bbaa4ba-ec44-428a-a3bd-6ffd8b382ddb
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/05f44940-15be-4db8-b7b7-99e291dea75d
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/58587bfa-067d-4ba8-ba28-b9710f808c26
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/7225d83e-1412-47c8-a136-e5d042293b7a

The next Mixer will be in August. If you'd like to host a concurrent Mixer in your city, please let us know and promote it in the official Tribe Events tribe:

http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe.net Mixer

wendy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:07:05 GMT

If you're going to be in San Francisco this Thursday, July 12, come to the Tribe.net Mixer at the Glas Kat!

Glas Kat Supper Club
520 4th Street between Bryant and Brannan
18+ with ID
6pm to 9pm
FREE - please RSVP to Darren: http://people.tribe.net/tjcrowley

Join tribe.net staff and fellow members for an evening of drinks and deejays. The Glas Kat is an awesome space with a full dinner menu, and mixologist Danny will be on hand to prepare delicious libations. Deejays to be announced. We hope to see you there!

If you haven't yet checked out our Official Tribe.net Events tribe, containing pics from the last Mixer, here is a link: http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Zero friends bug

wendy — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:53:11 GMT

We are working diligently to resolve this bug, which results in some members appearing to have zero friends, or in some cases one friend. We are very sorry for the inconvenience! We hope to have all friends restored to the affected profiles soon . Thanks for your patience while we work on a fix.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 1 reply

Tribe.net is looking for a Web Application Engineer!

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:35:46 GMT

Tribe.net is looking for a qualified Web Application Engineer professional contractor, to perform bug fixes and additions to our codebase for the site. Knowledge of Apache/Tomcat/MySQL is expected. The role will provide the opportunity to take the lead in feature development and debugging. We're looking for a programming expert who understands the Tribe community and how important it has become to the people who participate in it. This position would be at least 20 hours of work per week.

Job requirements:

- BS degree or relevant experience in Computer Science or related technical field
- experience working on large-scale, multi-user, public websites
- 5+ years Java experience including: JSP, JSTL, JavaBeans, Servlets, JDBC
- Strong working knowledge of HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Strong working knowledge of MySQL
- Strong working knowledge of web application servers and frameworks such as Tomcat, Turbine, etc.
- Experience using code management and build tools such as Subversion and Ant
- Experience using web based bug and issue trackers such as TRAC
- Able to comfortably navigate a Unix environment

The ideal applicant also has the following skills:

- Shell scripting using Perl, bash, etc.
- Experience/interest in social networking sites

Tribe.net is the premiere social networking website in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has a user base of over 750,000 members. We are growing every day, and keeping up with that growth from a developmental standpoint is vital to us. Reply to me with your resume to apply!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe Marriage

wendy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:52:08 GMT

Congratulations to Brian L. and his bride Korin, who tied the knot on June 15!
http://people.tribe.net/brian/blog/9cf7f2e5-f65b-4193-a52d-cf596f1747ea

We wish Brian and Korin the best!!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Bugs, Mixers, and More

wendy — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:17:15 GMT

The photo cropping bug has been resolved. Thanks Brian! We’re also working diligently to resolve some other persistent bugs. Sincere thanks for your continued patience.

The next Tribe.net Mixer is planned, so mark your calendars for July 12! We are hoping to have concurrent mixers in S.F. and a couple of other cities, which will be really cool. If you haven’t yet already, please check out the Official Tribe Events tribe for updates:
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer

Many members have expressed the desire for a new Tribe maintenance page, and we'd like you to help us design one. Your submission can be very simple, like a funny phrase or photo links, or the page can be more intricate and fully HTML coded. Please post your suggestions to the Tribe maintenance page tribe: http://tribes.tribe.net/maintenancepage

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe Events

wendy — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:00:50 GMT

Thanks to everyone who came to the Tribe.net Mixer on Thursday night! It was great to see old faces and meet new members. The dj's were great, and the drinks plentiful. We hope to make the Mixer a regular occurrence! Here are some pics, in case you missed it:

http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/b2c24923-4c23-4ed0-998a-192c1e1c3bf6
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/723d90bd-a952-406d-a7ba-fb7d5d473e41
http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer/photos/04f2b958-7fd6-41ed-9e7a-7243d1b9edd9

Please join the new Tribe Events tribe, to keep abreast of upcoming official Tribe.net happenings:

http://tribes.tribe.net/tribemixer

Keep tribing, and if you haven't yet done so, invite a friend to join you on tribe today.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Tribe.net Mixer!

wendy — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:40:45 GMT

If you’re going to be in San Francisco on Thursday June 14, come on over to the Tribe.net Mixer!!

6pm to 9pm
Glas Kat Supper Club
520 4th Street, between Bryant and Brannan
18+ with ID
FREE -- PLEASE RSVP to people.tribe.net/tjcrowley

Join tribe.net staff and fellow tribe members for an evening of drinks and deejays! The Glas Kat is an awesome space with a full dinner menu, and mixologist Danny will be on hand to prepare any libation you might think of (no host bar). Your esteemed dj’s for the evening are all fellow tribe members:

Itteki, http://people.tribe.net/itteki
Jonboy, http://people.tribe.net/c6d04775-39b3-4826-b2eb-3179f496eb55
Tomas Diablo, http://people.tribe.net/tomasdiablo

We hope to see you there!

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies

Updates and helpful links

wendy — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:20:11 GMT

Many members have commented on the improved speed of page loads. Thanks to Jenni for making that happen!

Also, the My Friends’ Blog posts module is working again, however if you’re still having problems with it, try clearing the cookies and cache from your browser.

Do you have a great idea for enhancing a tribe feature, or introducing a new feature? If you haven’t already, please join our Brainstorm tribe, and let us know about it! http://brainstorm.tribe.net

Also, if you haven’t yet joined the Tribe Bug Report tribe, this is the place to post about your bug woes: http://bugs.tribe.net

Sending an e-mail to help at tribe dot net will be great too! Please be sure to include your operating system and browser information.

The FAQ tribe is informational, and may contain answers to questions that you just haven’t been able to find elsewhere: http://faq.tribe.net
We always welcome questions by e-mail though, so feel free to send your questions to the Help e-mail above.

posted in Tribe.net Company Blog - 0 replies