%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 Announcements pertaining to Writing.Com! |
 |
| Greetings Members, Our first convention was a huge and memorable success! Our second convention was even better! ** Don't Wait! Space is limited to 70 attendees! ** ** Nearly 50 members have already signed up! **  Save $50 Before 1/10/2004 We laughed, we cried. Friends met for the first time and strangers became close friends. We have a fun-filled, creative and inspiring time planned for all who attend the Writing.Com Convention 2004. You won't want to miss this event. :: Save $50; Register Now! :: We're extending our Regular Registration period to January 10th, 2004. The regular registration period ended on 12/31/03, however, we didn't email to remind members about it. The registration fee is in addition to the total convention cost which covers all of your hotel, food and event costs. The extended Regular Registration fee is $25. After 1/10/04, we'll enter our Late Registration period where the fee is $75. While we still have some space available, the increase in fee comes because once we start handcrafting the convention experience for each of our attendees, it is a lot of extra work to go back and add/create things for add-on attendees who signup later.
Access this convention information at any time via the Convention 2004 link in your "Member Tools" pull down menu. :: Convention 2004 Scholarship! :: Each year, Writing.Com raises funds to help those who need some help to attend our convention. The Scholarship Fund is open to all members of Writing.Com who are Registered Authors and higher and have had an account for 3 months or more. For more information and to apply, please visit:
Please only apply for Scholarship funding if you are 100% sure that you can attend the event! Funds are very limited, so don't wait! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And don't forget to visit our sponsor: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your continued support of Writing.Com! ~~ The StoryMistress  andThe StoryMaster   ![Merit Badge in Visit WdC 7
[Click For More Info]
Awarded for visiting the site every day for a week . This badge can be earned over and over again. Each of these badges adds one (1) Community Recognition!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/achievements-Visit_WdC_7.gif) 
|
| Happy New Year, Members! We're proud to release our most powerful product to date. Not only are we empowering members to build a portfolio presence on Writing.Com, we are now enabling them to use that same portfolio to build a global presence, as well! :: The World's Best "Job" :: Writers are getting paid to write about: white sand Caribbean beaches, wildlife sanctuaries in Borneo, Indian Ocean hideaways, Rome, Paris, London... If you ever dreamed about the romantic life of a travel writer, here's an unusual opportunity to get your first assignment. * * http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing * * Please support our Sponsor and visit their site today! :: Introducing Professional and Enterprise Memberships :: Professional and Enterprise Memberships allow members the ability to set up and manage their own offsite domain names and websites right from within their Writing.Com portfolio! No need to know or understand high-tech mumbo jumbo, this membership for website hosting is very simple and easy to use. Simply use the established tools of Writing.Com to set everything up! Professionals have the ability to setup two (2) domain names and create working websites for each using tools already provided by Writing.Com. Enterprise Members are able to setup ten (10) websites with complete portfolio functionality. Create your own online community... run your business's website... market your newest publication! With a little creativity and direction, anyone can build a fully functional, professional website in hours, not weeks! To see an example of a simple website hosted with a Professional Membership, take a look at the following URL and its accompanying explanation: http://www.WriterU.Com/ "About Our Example: WriterU.Com"  Our new web and community hosting features are perfect for everyone from teachers looking to host their classes to small business owners looking to promote their products and services. Authors interested in selling their books and/or ebooks while providing forums for discussion will find our facilities to be fantastic. Those who currently have a stale web site hosted somewhere else will be amazed how simple it is to update and maintain an active presence with our tools. The new Professional Tools pull down menu provides quick access to everything provided with Professional and Enterprise Memberships, including our "Premium Plus Members' Handbook" .For the complete details on what each level of Writing.Com's paid memberships includes, please see: "Compare Free and Paid Membership Benefits" Memberships can be purchased from Our Store at: http://www.Writing.Com/main/store :: Extension For Grandfathered Free Accounts Has Expired. :: On May 15th we announced some changes to our Free Membership, including a reduction in items to a maximum of 5. For full details please see: "Important Changes To Our Membership Plans" The grace period has expired. Free members with more than 5 items have had their items over this limit locked for a two week period before they are completely purged from the system. :: ** Please Remember To Update Email Addresses! ** :: This is a reminder that email service for @Stories.Com addresses ended on 12/31/03. If other services have your email address in the @Stories.Com form, you should be sure to update them as soon as possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And don't forget to visit our sponsor: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your continued support of Writing.Com! ~~ The StoryMistress andThe StoryMaster
|
| Happy Holidays Members! I'm very pleased to post that the Email Server Upgrade is complete! All email accounts and contents have been transferred. All known problems have been corrected and the system has been running very smoothly for the past 24 hours. If you have questions, please be sure to first click the "-?-" in the quote information line next to "Space Limit:". We've included some of the most commonly asked about issues. If you have further questions, please post in "Technical Support Forum" and we'll work to get your question(s) answered. If you have questions, please do keep in mind the "Holiday Season"; we will do our absolute best to be as quick as possible for you!Once again, we really do appreciate everyone's time and patience throughout the upgrade process. You were a wonderful group, even when this past week's road was a little bumpy! Even though it may not have gone totally as planned, the silver lining of this cloud is that it forced us to learn a whole lot more about the email system than we would have any other way... I have no doubt that it all happened for a reason and the knowledge gained will surely help out Writing.Com in the coming months.  Thanks and Happy Holidays! ~~SM and SMs ![Merit Badge in Newsfeed
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on posting your 2,500 th Newsfeed Note or Comment!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/achievements-Newsfeed.gif)
|
| Greetings Members, First, thanks for your extended patiences as I work out some final bugs in this system. You all have been really wonderful and supportive through this upgrade and we really do appreciate that! As I went to email the newsletters last evening, which were late to go out because of the upgrade, I "chose poorly" the means in which an updated newsletter mailing script would deliver the letters while taking member email quotas into account. Previously, the emails were placed right into member email directories by a script, by-passing the actual action of emailing them and saving much load on the server. In trying to email them, I managed to clog the email server with over 100,000 newsletters! This led to slowed email. I have corrected the problem with newsletters so we should not have this problem again on Wednesday(s).  Unfortunately, however, while I was working to correct the problem, I made a couple of changes. One of those changes did manage to force all email to Writing.Com members to bounce back to the sender with a mailbox not found message. The bouncing of email was happening from approx 2pm this afternoon until just before Midnight today. It is now corrected. (The change didn't effect the soon-to-disappear Stories.Com email addresses, so you may have received some spam during this period.) If you sent mail from your Writing.Com email account to another member, the messages about the email failure most likely would have failed to make it back to you as well. You can venture into your "Sent Mail" folder and resend anything you'd like to. Please be sure to visit your "My FeedBack" area to see if you received any reviews today. Reviews will have been lost in an email "vortex", as will have survey response notifications and other "from Writing.Com" automated emails. I sincerely appologize for the problems today and for the extended length of time this upgrade has taken. I am fairly sure that my next NOTICE will be tomorrow afternoon/evening letting everyone know we're completely done and back to normal. Thanks again for your patience and have a wonderful holiday season! ~~SM
|
| Greetings, Here's an update on the email server since the last one posted: Email Problems Now Fixed: -- The "N/A" new message count has been corrected after much research. It is back to normal. Please note that "normal" means that it checks for new mail in your account once every 30 to 90 seconds. This has helped to curb the load to the mailserver in the past and we'll be keeping it in place, I think. Depending on how the page loads fall, it IS possible for you to see "No new messages" but still see new mail in your inbox. It just arrived between that 30 to 90 second window. -- The other "Timeout" issues should all be corrected. -- The spam filter had not been setup correctly before the move; so there were about 2 days of unfiltered email. Sorry about that! It's fixed now and all mail is being filtered again. -- The link to the "Trash" folder has been corrected. Members who clicked the link earlier today were seeing no mail, when there was some there. I had incorrectly made the link to the trash mailbox. -- Problems with changing email passwords have been corrected; if you still receive an error with your email box, please change your password again to correct the problem - I saw only a couple people with problems and I fixed them myself. Updates On Progress: -- The email area's header interface has been updated! It is now much cleaner and a bit easier to read. The trash link has been moved to the end of your folder list for easier access. The icons in the header (inbox, new msg, etc) are all clickable now as well. -- The mail area now includes mail space quota information. Please note that these quotas are being enforced, so if you are at 100% or near it, you may be missing out on new email. Email that comes in over the quota is returned to the sender with a note about your full email box. We greatly appreciate your support and understanding in our effort to conserve our resources! -- Please note that some quotas may not have been correctly updated. After we transfer email, we have to re-check the quota; the processes that do these things are run separately and so there may be a time delay of a few hours. This is only because of the email transfer and will not be a normal issue. -- Email data transfer is still underway for inactive accounts. We are still bumping accounts that become active to the top of the to-be-transferred queue. Please reference the previous message(s) for more details if needed. We'll send a full sitewide announcement once the complete email upgrade is finished. That should be Sunday evening. Thanks and have a wonderful weekend, ~~SM
|
| Greetings Members! I wanted to provide you all with a quick update on the status of our email server upgrade. Please note that at this time, the email upgrade is *still* underway. I had to make a few changes along the way to provide better performance for our 40,000+ members which slowed things down quite a bit. The major pieces of the move have been completed; there are just a few small bugs to fix and loose ends to tie up. All email accounts are correctly setup and receiving new email. We are still transfering old email data from the old server to the new one and expect to continue doing that for another day or so. Since we're transfering old email data based on last login times, most members who are on the site are able to access all of their email. If a member logins in and their email hasn't been transferred yet, they are bumped to the top of the to-be-transferred list. (Please see below for more if you're not able to access old email, but can access your email account.) We are presently having a problem with the "new email count" checker that is listed on each page members load. We've updated this area to say "N/A..." to reflect the server's current inability to check for new email automatically. You'll need to check your mailbox directly to check for new email; we are working to correct this. We are also away that sometimes when members access their email, they receive a temporary email error. We are working to correct this as well. (The "see below" from above:) There was a small anomoly with transfering the INBOX email of some members with a lot of email in their INBOX. That email is not lost, I just have to write another automated process to finish putting it into place for those people to access and see it correctly. This is being worked on and I hope to have that all corrected by the end of today (Friday). Also, for obvious reasons, we chose to hold off on sending this passed Wednesday's Newsletters. Since everything is now getting back to normal, we will send them all out either later tonight or tomorrow afternoon... So STAY TUNED! Thanks again for your patience throughout this process, we appreciate it! Once another status update is available, we'll post it here! ~~SM
|
| Hello! Just a quick note that we will be beginning the email service upgrade within the next hour. As each account is transferred, it will have access back to it's email account. Email is the only service that will be effected during this time period. Thanks for your time and patience. ~~SM ![Merit Badge in Monthly Calendar Contest Badge
[Click For More Info]
[Link To User support] , Thank you so much for your support in my July 2023 Merit badge sale. I appreciate you! Enjoy! [Link To User sunnie]](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Monthly_Calendar_Contest_Badge-1921527_14.gif){kind=icon}
|
| Season's Greetings, Members! This email contains important information about hardware upgrades to our email server scheduled for Thursday, December 18th beginning around noon. Please read this email in it's entirety (even if you read the pre-nouncement). A link to this will be provided from email accounts while the upgrade is underway. For current information and updates, please see: "Site News & Announcements" :: The World's Best "Job" :: Writers are getting paid to write about: white sand Caribbean beaches, wildlife sanctuaries in Borneo, Indian Ocean hideaways, Rome, Paris, London... If you ever dreamed about the romantic life of a travel writer, here's an unusual opportunity to get your first assignment. * * http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing * * Please support our Sponsor and visit their site today! :: Upgrades To Our Email Server Hardware :: It is time to upgrade our email server's two year old hardware to new. The processors in our new server are approximately 4 times faster than the current one! As our active member base continues to grow steadily, keeping up to date with our resources is extremely important. Hardware Upgrade Scheduled For: Thursday - December 18th, 2003 - Beginning @ Approx. Noon  We expect no loss of email, new or old, while making this upgrade.After the upgrade, you will not experience any changes to the interface or the email system, including folders and address books. Moving the email server's 90+ Gigs of data will take between 12 and 24 hours to complete in full. That will mean some downtime for email services on Writing.Com. Downtime will be short for the most active members. We'll be transferring accounts individually with an automated process that will move the most recently active accounts first. As the mail for each is ready, the account will be re-opened. Very Important Information:  Please note that when we move to the new server, we will begin to pay morestrict attention to the amount of email space members are using. Due to technical limitations, we have not been able to automatically enforce the email limits. With the server upgrade, that problem will be corrected. Please note that this isn't something new. The limits have always been publicly listed and we're now able to acknowledge them. We have kept our pricing for email membership level stable over the past two years; this "bug fix" will enable us to do that for a third year in a row! Service Upgrade for ALL Membership levels! We are increasing the email limits for ALL membership levels. Following are the OLD limits followed by the NEW limits. The OLD email limits were: (whichever comes first)Free Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 250 Messages Basic Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 250 Messages Upgraded Members: 16 Megs (16,384 kb) / 2,500 Messages Premium Members: 16 Megs (16,384 kb) / 2,500 Messages The NEW email limits are: (whichever comes first)Free Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 500 Messages Basic Members: 10 Megs (10,240 kb) / 1,250 Messages Upgraded Members: 20 Megs (20,480 kb) / 2,500 Messages Premium Members: 40 Megs (40,960 kb) / 5,000 Messages For complete details on what each membership level offers, please see:
 You can view your total email usage by going to your email box and clicking "Folder Summary". Note that for members with larger amounts of mail, this may take a little while to load. The mail system will display your total in "kb". If you are over the quota limit for your membership level, some of your email may not be transferred to the new server. Unfortunately, we are not able to guarantee the order in which email will be transferred, however, we will make all attempts to transfer newest email first. For those members over their quota, we have decided to offer burned CD's for your old email. For $40 US, we will zip your entire email directory and burn it to CD. The $40 charge includes USPS postage to anywhere in the US. Please contact me via email if you wish to order this service. This option will only be available for 2 weeks.  Please note: To best support all Writing.Com members, we will be creating the means to provide additional email space for a fee in the future. We do not have an ETA on when that service will be offered, but moving to the new email server is a step in the right direction! We greatly appreciate your understanding and patience throughout the upgrade process. Migrating to a new email server is one of the "once-every- couple-of-years" time consuming things that must be done to keep Writing.Com online and stable for us all to use and enjoy. This upgrade preceeds some very exciting site upgrades planned for the end of this year and the coming new one. I look forward to completing it so that we can move on to the next things on our todo list and get back to creating new options and features to you all, our members! Thank you for your time! ~~SM (and SMs) And now, some "standard" reminders: :: New Costumicon Subscription Period! :: Costumicons subscriptions are available for purchase! This month features our special Holiday section with costumicons themed for the Winter season, Chanukah, Christmas and much more. There's even one for the Humbugs of our community. In total, there are more than 500 different icons to choose from! A round of applause to The StoryMistress for building such a vast selection. Thissubscription period will continue until January 3, 2004. http://www.stories.com/main/my_account.php?action=ea_form&type=costumicon :: Extension For Grandfathered Free Accounts :: On May 15th we announced some changes to our Free Membership, including a reduction in items to a maximum of 5. For full details please see: "Important Changes To Our Membership Plans" The grace period has been extended and will expire January 1st, 2004. At that time, Free members with more than 5 items will have items over this limit purged. :: ** Please Remember To Update Email Addresses! ** :: If you are still using your OLD @Stories.Com email address anywhere, this is a reminder that email service for @Stories.Com addresses will end on 12/31/03. If other services have your email address in the @Stories.Com form, your time to update them is running out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And don't forget to visit our sponsor: http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your continued support of Writing.Com! ~~ The StoryMistress andThe StoryMaster
|
| Hello! I am rescheduling the date for the email upgrade to Thursday, December 18th. A sitewide announcement about the change will be sent out to all members sometime tonight. ~~SM ![Merit Badge in Reviewing
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on giving your 1 st review!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/achievements-Reviewing.gif)
|
 Greetings and Happy Holidays Members! (This is a little long, but please take a moment to read it all the way through...  )It is time to upgrade our email server's old hardware to new. Our last email server upgrade was a little over two years ago. The processors in our new server are approximately 4 times faster than in this current one! As our active member base continues to grow steadily, keeping up to date with our resources is extremely important. We expect no loss of email, new or old, while making this upgrade. After the change, you will not experience any changes to the interface or the email system including folders and address books. Tenative Schedule: Wednesday = December 17th, 2003 @ noon Tenatively, I am scheduling the upgrade for Wednesday December 17th. Complete moving of the email server and its 90+ Gigs of email data will take between 12 and 24 hours to complete fully. That will mean some downtime for email service on Writing.Com. The amount of time each account will be offline for email service will vary from one member's account to another, (more on "how it will vary" below). I am not sure of the exact times, but we won't try to do this under cover of darkness (ie; night time). This is because if we have troubles with the move, we'll want our web hosting company's superb support team to be available to us. I would expect that we'll start the process around noon; I will provide more exact information a day or two before via email to all members. The downtime will be limited to a short period for most active members. We will be transferring the contents of all email accounts individually with an automated process. As the mail for each account is transferred, the account holders will be able to access their email. We will transfer the email of the most recently active accounts first. This will mean very little downtime for the most active members but I can't say for sure how much. It will vary from account to account. Very Important Information: Since our email storage space has grown so much so quickly, please note that when we move to the new server, we will begin to pay more strict attention to the amount of email space members are using. Due to technical limitations, we have not been able to automatically enforce the email limits. With the server upgrade, that problem will be corrected. Please note that this isn't something new. The limits have always been publicly listed and we're now able to acknowledge them. We have kept our pricing for email membership level stable over the past two years; this "bug fix" will enable us to do that for a third year. The current email limits are: Free Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 250 Messages Basic Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 250 Messages Upgraded Members: 16 Megs (16,384 kb) / 2,500 Messages Premium Members: 16 Megs (16,384 kb) / 2,500 Messages
** You can view your total email usage by going to your email box and clicking "Folder Summary". Note that for members with larger amounts of mail, this may take a little while to load. The mail system will display your total in "kb".** If you are over the quota limit for your membership level, please make attempts to clean your email boxes up. This not only relieves strain on our servers, but it frees up our costly redundant hard disk storage space. Once we begin to enforce the email quotas, if you are over the limit you may lose email or may not be able to receive new emails. Please note: To best support all Writing.Com members, we will be creating the means to provide additional email space for a fee in the future. We do not have an ETA on when that service will be offered, but moving to the new email server is a step in the right direction. As soon as I am more certain of the exact time, I will send a site wide email'd "ANNOUNCEMENT". That will be approximately two or three days before the actual upgrade. We greatly appreciate your understanding and patience throughout the upgrade process. Migrating to a new email server is one of the "once-every-couple-of-years" time consuming things that must be done to keep Writing.Com online and stable for us all to use and enjoy. This upgrade preceeds some very exciting site upgrades planned for the end of this year and the coming new one. I look forward to completing it so that we can move on to the next things on our todo list and get back to creating new options and features to you all, our members! Thank you for your time and I'm very glad you made it all the way here!! ~~SM (and SMs)
|
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
I am thrilled to have been chosen for Third Place!
Congratulations reviewers! Well done! 
Congratulations winners!!
