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.

Today (Fri, Jul 22), 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 eliminate 503/502 timeout errors.
This is the first of five phases of improvements aimed at website performance. The next is identifying views that can benefit from optimization to increase their load speed. Once identified, we'll prioritize them and schedule the remaining phases.
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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.