Website Performance Improvements
In recent months it's been reported that at times, our website is slow to respond and also times out with a 503 or 502 error message.
AdminJeff Bowman
(Associate Director of Information Technology, The Mountaineers)
responded
NOTE: Our website will be down from 9pm on Wed, Mar 29 to roughly 9am on Thu, Mar 30 to install the updates in Phase 4.
Overall Status: Phases 1 to 3 are complete, and Phase 4 is in progress.
Phase 1
- Completed Jul 2022
- We implemented nine items aimed at improving our website’s performance, three more than we had previously identified. They have resulted in a modest increase in our website’s speed/response time, and should significantly reduce, if not nearly eliminated 502 and 503 "timeout" errors.
Phase 2
- Completed Aug/Sep 2022
- We migrated/updated our core content types from archetype to dexterity type. While it will not directly lead to any website performance improvements, this is an important step that gets us closer to a suite of updates that will give us a significant website performance increase.
Phase 3
- Completed Feb 2023
- We migrated our web forms from PFG (PloneFormGen) to EasyForm. Web forms include feedback surveys, leader applications, incident reports, etc. Like migrating our core content types, this will not directly lead to any website performance improvements, this is an important step that gets us closer to a suite of updates that will give us a significant website performance increase.
Phase 4
- In Progress, Estimated completion end of Feb to early Mar 2023
- Upgrade our website platform from Plone 5.1 to 5.2 and Python 2 to 3, and update our web server to the latest architecture and operating system. These are the upgrades that will bring significant improvements to our website performance.
Phase 5
– Planned for Mar 2023
- Benchmarking and optimizing our web server and website's performance as needed.
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Janet Kimball
commented
A critical update! Charging people for something they don't receive is not only wrong but invites broader online criticism of our company. Not the image we should be projecting!
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Alison Crabb
commented
This issue is accompanied by an error message appearing on our site. Customer gets an error message, does not receive confirmation, order is not transmitted, but CC is charged.
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Laura Shauger
commented
It seems critical to address this asap, given how outraged I would be as a customer if my credit card were charged for something I did not purchase. Allowing this issue to continue is a sure-fire way to undermine our customers' trust in us.
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Darryl Booker
commented
This is a critcal asap update. It is not okay to charge peoples CC and not fulfill the order. It has happened multiple times. Nothing more important. You can imagine the experience of trying to buy something, not getting that item and being charged.
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Alison Crabb
commented
We have received an uptick of customer calls that their CC was charged but no order confirmation. CC charge is appearing on Stripe, but no record of the order on the website.
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A big thanks to Tess Wendel for identifying the needs for these improvements and rallying some volunteers to collect data that helped us better define the issue and where we can make improvements.