Due to some issues with our host, we will not be taking the site down today. In the unlikely event that things do work out and we are able to take the site down for upgrades, we will let you know.
We had originally stated that the site would go down on Saturday to make upgrades to the server running ClearCheckbook, but our host told us we could only do it this Friday from 2:00-4:00pm PST.
During this time, the entire site will not be accessible and CheckBot will be down.
We are upgrading the RAM in our server from 4 GB to 12 GB and will be replacing each of our 80 gig hard drives with 640 gig drives. This is all in preparation for launching ClearCheckbook v3.
Please make your plans accordingly and know that we will be working as hard as possible to get the site up as quickly as possible.
We're getting really close to having ClearCheckbook V3 wrapped up. Before we can make it live though, we need to do two things. 1) We will need to upgrade the ram and hard drives in our server. 2) Go through about 2 weeks of beta testing to ensure all the bugs are worked out.
Server Upgrade
In an effort to greatly increase the speed of ClearCheckbook after the V3 upgrade, we are going to upgrade the RAM to 12 gigs (up from the current 4). In addition to the RAM upgrade, we will also be putting in dual 640 gig hard drives (up from the current dual 80 gigs). Our current plan is to take the site down for a few hours on Saturday October 18th to make these hardware upgrades. We will post more about this when the time is closer.
These upgrades are going to cost us $420 in parts. If you have been thinking about possibly donating a few dollars to the site, now would be a great time!
Beta Testers
As we have previously mentioned, we will need some people to help beta test the site. To start off the testing, we are looking for 25 people who are willing to go through and use the new site and provide us with feedback, bugs, etc.
In an effort to try and get the best people to test the site, we will be looking at a few factors for the beta testers:
1) How long have you been a member of ClearCheckbook
2) What kind of technical experience do you have with web development
3) Have you ever beta tested a site or software before
If you are interested in helping test, please use the Contact Us form at the bottom of every page and let us know. Please provide any additional information that will help us understand your level of knowledge about the items mentioned above.
One other thing to keep in mind for people interested in beta testing... any information you enter during beta testing will not carry over after the site is launched. The testing period is for testing only, even if we ask you to use it like you normally would to get as much of a "real world" test as possible.
We are planning on starting beta testing on Monday October 20th (after the upgrades have been completed).
Thank you all for your patience while we finish up V3 development.
At about 2:00am MST this morning, ClearCheckbook started to experience some issues connecting to our database. After struggling to figure out what was happening, we finally tracked it down to some DNS issues with the server.
No data was lost during this time and everything is back up and running now.
There will be a scheduled system downtime on July 19th at 10:00pm PST. It should only last for a few minutes. During this time the site and CheckBot will be totally offline.
There have been three additions made to the Search page and one update made to the Quick Add form.
On the Search page, you now have the ability to search for transactions that have no category and/or no account associated with them. This will be helpful for tracking down rogue transactions. Also, you now have the ability to specify whether or not the transaction you're looking for is a deposit or a withdrawal.
On the Quick Add on the Account Summary page, if you are viewing a specific account (anything other than "All Accounts"), that account will be the default when you are adding transactions through Quick Add.
Please keep sending in those requests. They may not make it onto the site immediately, but if they're good suggestions, chances are they'll make it up sooner or later.
