Well, I'm back from my travels, and tackling all the backlog in the rest of my life as well as the big problem of PlaymoDB. I'll do a little explaining here.
When the whole site went down April 1st, it was because the server it was on was actually crashing because of PlaymoDB, so they shut down the whole thing until I could fix the problem. It's a shared server that I pay for space on (like most hobby and small-business websites) so they had every right to do so. I worked with their tech support to identify that it was the set-pages and part-pages that were causing the most trouble, so I turned them off, and they re-instated the rest of the site. The remaining functions are still causing slowdowns, though. It may be suspended again at any time.
The cause of the overload is that the amount of data is growing well beyond what I wrote the original search functions to handle. I had no idea in 2004 that I'd someday have 30,000 parts and 3000 sets to deal with! Searching through this huge pile to show all the set inventories and part- and klicky-information is what's giving the server the heart-attack. The whole site has to be re-written to be more efficient - not a quick fix.
And here's my problem with this. I'm one person, with a full-time job and heavy family and community commitments that have nothing to do with PlaymoDB. I'm not a "they", I'm a "she". I might have a few hours to spend on it daily if nothing else takes priority. Moreover, I receive no income or other benefits from it except the goodwill of the users - indeed, I pay for the server out of my own pocket, but the TIME is what costs the most.
I can't see a big enough chunk of time in the near future to devote to re-writing PlaymoDB so it will be able to keep running. I might be able to do a little bit. I'm receiving dozens of emails and personal messages wondering when the site will be back, and I don't have anything to tell them. I had to consciously ignore the email on my very special trip last week to avoid the mess ruining the whole trip for me - if I can't maintain enough life balance to do that without PlaymoDB interfering, then it's PlaymoDB that I'll have to give up. It's as simple as that.
I've written to the Playmobil Company in hopes of starting discussion about them taking over my data repository - no more specifics than that, no idea how they might want to go about it, what form it will take, whether I'll stay involved past a certain time period, no details and no expectations at all at this point. Maybe they won't want anything to do with it, but since they do use it and benefit the most from it, they're the logical ones to take it over, so I hope some arrangements can be made. Don't pester Playmobil just yet with suggestions, demands or requests on my behalf - let them figure it out. I'll do my best to keep everyone informed, but, again... TIME. I just don't have enough of it.
I'd like to acknowledge and thank all the volunteers who have sent me loads of instruction plans, photos, inventories, corrections, comments over the years. It's been great working with you. But really? Thank each other. You've benefited yourselves, and thousands of visitors that never show their faces here or anywhere else, so much more than me. It's been fun for a long time. I hope I can continue to have fun with it - we'll just have to wait and see.
Cheers, Heather
