Last-minute launch hiccups

Well, we've just done our biggest, most complicated launch yet, and we're bloody pleased that it nearly all went to plan.

However, there are, of course, a few outstanding problems that we'll address as soon as we can. F'rinstance...

1. We can't accept PayPal just at the moment. Credit cards work fine, but PayPal's not going through. We're sorting this out with them, and we expect to have it up and running in a few days.
2. We're having issues with taking American Express cards. Again, we're taking it up with them, and that should be fixed soon.
3. If you've got unpurchased items in your shopping basket from a previous trip, you'll need to clear those out manually, otherwise it'll try to sell you those as well as a subscription.
4. A few people are having problems logging in with Moviestorm 1.2, and we can't quite figure out why. If this happens to you, change your password and you should be able to log in.
5. There's no message of the day on Moviestorm 1.2. It works fine on the development service, but it doesn't work when we make it live. It seems to be something to do with Amazon s3, and if we were a little more awake, we'd probably be able to figure out what. That should be sorted tomorrow. If it was there, it would look like this, but bigger. And you could click on it and get yourself a sub.
   
   
6. There are some visual inconsistencies in the site. We've moved stuff to new servers, implemented new CSS, and changed the back end systems, and guess what? We missed a few bits. We'll find 'em and fix 'em as we go.

There's more, of course, and we'll get to it all in due course. And doubtless, you'll find a whole bunch of other things we missed and tell us about them in the website forum and the feedback forum.

Anyway, thanks for your patience. We're off to put our feet up and perhaps sip a small glass of sherry. Just the one. Between us. We reckon we earned it. Especially Yolise, who shouldered the burden of the Web site work.

Oh - and to our American friends - happy Thanksgiving!

A new look for the Moviestorm site

We interrupt Johnnie's sequence of posts about coiffures for this important bulletin.

As some of you already know, we've been working for a while on a new-look Moviestorm Web site. It's now being put through its final paces with some of our pioneers, and we're gearing ourselves up for the Big Day.

It's been a long while since I was involved in any major Web rebuilding work (in a past life, I was one of the team who set up and ran the ISP UK Online) and I've pretty much forgotten almost all I ever knew about building servers and setting up DNS. The new pages are all ready, all the copy and images are in place, and the new community features are looking good. Now it's down to the tedious business of checking and double-checking the hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute rollout plan, making sure all the backup and recovery systems are in place in case everything goes horribly wrong on the day, and getting the thumbs up from every single person involved in the operation. It's getting to be like Mission Control at NASA. Or, more accurately, like the Air Traffic Control sequences out of Airplane, with Lisa doing an increasingly accurate impersonation of Lloyd Bridges.

No, you're right. We didn't say when the Big Day would be. When It's Ready™.

Johnnie will be back next week with more pretty pictures of people with hair. No, it's OK, I don't have a complex about it. Going bald is perfectly natural for a man of my age.