The day before free day and the web site is already experiencing problem. I found slowness, php errors, db errors, general errors when trying to reach sparkfun web pages or this forum. Other seeing the same thing?
Now I see a message the web site is shut down.
and no longer in the catalog
I wonder if they are doing real updates, or if that message comes up automatically when their load avg goes to a certain level. If it’s the former, it may not be all bad, if it’s the latter, then the site will be totally dead tomorrow.
Good thing I made my cart last night when the site was nice and speedy 
Perhaps they are fixing an ordering problem someone mentioned on another thread.
Leon
They’ll just making sure all is ok before the big day.
It seems to be working again, very slowly.
Leon
Half the time when I try to load a catalog page it just dumps me off to the news page… >:|
I totally forgot about free day. Thanks for reminding me 
Although I suspect the sheer volume of college students with infinite free time parked on the site hitting “refresh” every second will probably crowd me out 
Catalog still not working…
rushourgraffic:
Catalog still not working…
Site’s getting thrashed - but it seems to be behaving rather better at the moment…
Arrrgg! It’s down again.
This is frustrating! The website is at a crawl, and I can’t do searches or get picaxe parts because it says that there are no products! Maybe if they got rid of the banner and some other things to streamline the website…
The Eight-Bit Link:
This is frustrating! The website is at a crawl, and I can’t do searches or get picaxe parts because it says that there are no products! Maybe if they got rid of the banner and some other things to streamline the website…
I don’t think they’re too worried as they’ll get the purchases one way or another (unless the site remains as it has been for the last few hours). I just wish they would restrict this to accounts that have actually made purchases in the past, or accounts that were created before the thing was announced and thousands of new accounts being created just to get free things that most people will never even use. I just want to try to get the 10hz GPS module but I assume I won’t have a chance, either due to all the on-the-hour clickers or server issues.
I still cannot even login to my original account or one I just created today - I know for the fact that it was working before I clicked “sign off”. IF the site get fixes, I may have to create a third account tomorrow just to try to get in but I find it unlikely that these server issues will pass in the next 7 1/2 hours.
Getting better… But maybe as an idea for the future,a sparkfun ‘lite’ that kicks in when it gets bogged down like so.
Yup. It’s getting absolutely caned. Tomorrow at 9am mountain it’s going to be virtually impossible to buy anything.
it will be ironic that after giving away 100,000 dollars in free stuff there is a high probability that the net result will be:
-
new unlikely to be repeat customers with multiple accounts and scripts will get the majority of sales, the majority of those will be resold.
-
loyal customers will spend hours staring at a blank webpage that won’t load, be late for work/school ultimately give up and be mad at sparkfun for how poorly the thing was run and ultimately have a worse opinion of the company.
i applaud them for trying but i think the growing pains might sting a bit. i think it probably should have been a lottery system where winners had a ‘day’ to redeem the codes (tying the code to an account or shipping address)
however if you think about it maybe the sparkfun crew are very smart, if its slammed all day and it ends at 11pm they might only give away 20-30 dollars worth of stuff
in all seriousness best of luck to you guys!
There’s another three hours or so to go, and the site is very slow. I thought of putting a couple of items in my cart and seeing if I can get them for free, but I’ve got better things to do with my time.
Leon
Its stopped for me, nothing loading except the forum.
Can’t get to the site at all right now.
I put a couple things in a basket last night when I could get in. We’ll see what happens in two hours.