N E W S     B L O G

FEBRUARY 2010
Yeah, the chat was running very nice for several weeks now on our new server. Sadly there are some jalous idiots out there who hacked our mainserver and brought it down with ddos attacks. It needed a Day to fix that. Also from that Time I had to install more cencored words. Just because Apple comes really hard removing Apps from iTunes that act too much sexual. I am sure you understand. 90% from our Users like to chat normal, for sure funny, but not only sexual. And better some cencored words than the app removed, right :)

JANUARY 2010
The first days in the new year started fine and I really was in good mood. Than from around the 5th it came sure we can not handle all that traffic just on a shared host. In the Night it jumped up to 140 Users simultaneously and we came in the same trouble again. I was feed up with all that upgrades an talked with my new web hoster what we could do. There where two options: Two increase again another package where we would get more CPU Time and Memory or to switch to another Server Software called NGinx (before I always used famous Apache). I had no experience with NGinx and started to research. It looks that it can handle much more hits/s with lower resources than apache. But will that also work with the chat, what if not? Just a few hours waiting brought me to acting, again users came refused. As mentioned I dont like to loose one user (if they are kind, funny and intelligent :) ... Now I ordered the ultimate Page and also decided to go upgrade now whatever it needs to feel safe for a while. The ultimate VPS Package worked better, but we had still a lot of IO-Problems because of so many read/writes to the hard disk. Once in the morning the server just stop working. Can you imagine my frustration after all that work. Next Step... Now we switched to NGinx with the help of my web hoster it came done very fast and he really helped me a lot. I guess I made em crazy with my support tickets :) I am very glad they continued to help me as good as possible. NGinx made already a big improvement, the CPU itself went down from 1 to 0.3 Usage and we had now some resources. To make it short. The I/O Problem still have been there. Now I got advised we could handle all in Ram with a half hour backup to the disk. But the VPS had problems with that technology of SHM so we did the last step. My/Our own dedicated Server! The first Hours we had still some problems with the new IP Address and all that moving from the rooms without as less downtime as possible. Finally since today 14. January it looks working fine and still with a lot of resources for more users. Also today I started to publish this Blog so you can see some work behind the scenes and share our progress.

DECEMBER 2009
I bought my first iPhone and it was clear to offer an "Chat World" app in the iTunes Market. The first days I did thought the android market would have more interest, but again big surprise: most new users are chatters with an iPod. Now also the chat had around 50 - 80 Users simultaneously and the next problem appeared. Also my new web hoster did not shut down our chat, but each user on top of a traffic from 80 hits/s came refused. I thought I have to till. More Money to invest and that fast, I was not interested even to disappoint one user with a stupid message "Connection refused". It was Christmas Time and really hard to switch all my traffic to a new Server. I bought an additional Server (now really my first VPS) and once we switched it looks fine, but just half an hour the server crashed totally. I came nearly in panic and did not know what to do. Many Users left the Chat and I thought all is over. I did reverted all the Files to my old Provider and just hoped to find some help soon. He was so nice to add some additional Memory and gave me a bigger package for a test trial. That helped in the first.

NOVEMBER 2009
More Rooms.... needed also some more overview for myself and my users. For example: How many Users are in a room? That came a small new feature. Finally I had so much rooms and it started to made sense to make one application that includes all that separate rooms. "Chat - World" came born and offered in the Android Market. Also a new feature to invite Friends direct from the chat. *** I got a warning from my long partnered web hoster that I generate too much traffic (around 40 Users at the same time generate around 30-60 Hits per Seconds on the server) and have to by a VPS (Virtual Server) that can handle more traffic or they would switch off my chat system. Wooh, I had to do something. Also there was nearly no income I looked for a new Provider and found one in the US that made me feeling ok. I got a small package, but with unlimited traffic and disc space. Lets see how it works.

OCTOBER 2009
Several Users wrote me to create Chat applications for specific topics and minorities. Like Gay, Christianity, Black Ppl, Buddhists etc. My users called and I did my best. The users chatting at the same time came rising and I was quiet happy. Just a few rooms made me quiet a lot of headache. I got some stupid racist comments and negative feedback. Also I was unable to moderate all rooms by myself i started to add some voluntary moderators for some rooms. That was ok for a while. But its really hard work to moderate a job and you need not just enthusiastic you also need some maturity. Several rooms i let unmoderated and just keep looking how it develop.

SEPTEMBER 2009
Not to bad for my first mobile chat app we come to around 25 Users at the same time chatting in the 'New York - Chat". To get some more ppl I developed around 20 more android applications for US - Cities. Here I just looked again where most of my users came from and added some big cities to attract more.

JULY 2009
I already developed hundred of Web Pages and came into the mobile Market with my first Smartphone (Android G1) in March 2009. I personally was never a big chatter, but i did know several from my friends are and I thought about to make them a nice simple chat room for their mobiles. So i researched in my old statistics where most of my users came from and was surprised how my ppl came from New York to visit my web pages and installed my apps. That made me developing my first "only Chat" Application for mobiles called "New York - Chat" on Android.

Keep your good Vibes and enjoy ...
Yours Chris