TAG :: Toronto Area Geocachers » 2011 » May

Geocaching.com is gearing up for a site update tomorrow. The site will be getting a new look and feel, with lots of changes visible on the main screen. There is a video posted on Latitude47, Groundspeak’s official blog, that shows what to expect.

From the Geocaching Forums, some lackeys are giving some small details about the planned outage:

Colin said:

Geocaching.com will be going offline for 4-6 hours for a site update on Wednesday, May 04, 2011 at approximately 9am PDT (GMT -7). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

In an effort to keep people informed, here are some more details about the planned outage:

Estimated start time is 9 AM PST
Will be down:

  • Geocaching.com
  • Waymarking.com
  • Wherigo.com
  • Internal Groundspeak Admin tools
  • User Voice: unless you are already logged in – User Voice itself will be up, but you won’t be able to login with Geocaching.com
  • All API
  • Notifications
  • Pocket Queries

Will be up:

  • Knowledge Books
  • Forums will be operational

And, MissJenn added more detail about the involvement of the hamsters in the process (this was also in the weekly mailer):

… You may or may not be aware that Groundspeak’s servers are powered by hamsters.* We are adding several additional hamsters to the mix**, which should fix website service issues. Groundspeak products will go offline around 9 am Pacific Daylight Time (UTC/GMT -7 hours). We are not sure how long it will take to complete the upgrade; we estimate 4 to 6 hours, but it may be more or less. We will be providing updates on the 4th via Facebook and Twitter. When the Groundspeak products come back online, Geocaching.com will have an updated look and thewebsite performance will be improved.

*Our servers are not powered by hamsters
**Upgrading our database server

The short message here, is if you’re planning on geocaching tomorrow – generate and download your pocket queries now. The site will be out from noon to about 6pm Toronto time. You won’t be able to use the iPhone or Android apps either, unless you download a Pocket Query to your device and log with Field Notes instead of logs.