Site News & Announcements

Important: Email Server Hardware Upgrade

Season's Greetings, Members!

This email contains important information about hardware upgrades to our email
server scheduled for Thursday, December 18th beginning around noon. Please
read this email in it's entirety (even if you read the pre-nouncement). A link to
this will be provided from email accounts while the upgrade is underway. For
current information and updates, please see: "Site News & Announcements" 


:: The World's Best "Job" ::
Writers are getting paid to write about:   white sand Caribbean
beaches, wildlife sanctuaries in Borneo, Indian Ocean hideaways,
Rome, Paris, London... If you ever dreamed about the romantic life of
a travel writer, here's an unusual opportunity to get your first assignment.

                   * * http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing * *
                   Please support our Sponsor and visit their site today!



:: Upgrades To Our Email Server Hardware ::
It is time to upgrade our email server's two year old hardware to new. The
processors in our new server are approximately 4 times faster than the current
one! As our active member base continues to grow steadily, keeping up to date
with our resources is extremely important.

Hardware Upgrade Scheduled For:
Thursday - December 18th, 2003 - Beginning @ Approx. Noon

We expect no loss of email, new or old, while making this upgrade.
After the upgrade, you will not experience any changes to the interface or
the email system, including folders and address books.

Moving the email server's 90+ Gigs of data will take between 12 and 24 hours to
complete in full. That will mean some downtime for email services on Writing.Com.
Downtime will be short for the most active members. We'll be transferring
accounts individually with an automated process that will move the most recently
active accounts first. As the mail for each is ready, the account will be re-opened.

Very Important Information:
Please note that when we move to the new server, we will begin to pay more
strict attention to the amount of email space members are using. Due to technical
limitations, we have not been able to automatically enforce the email limits. With
the server upgrade, that problem will be corrected.

Please note that this isn't something new. The limits have always been publicly
listed and we're now able to acknowledge them. We have kept our pricing for
email membership level stable over the past two years; this "bug fix" will enable
us to do that for a third year in a row!


Service Upgrade for ALL Membership levels!
We are increasing the email limits for ALL membership levels. Following are
the OLD limits followed by the NEW limits.

The OLD email limits were: (whichever comes first)
         Free Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 250 Messages
         Basic Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 250 Messages
         Upgraded Members: 16 Megs (16,384 kb) / 2,500 Messages
         Premium Members: 16 Megs (16,384 kb) / 2,500 Messages

The NEW email limits are: (whichever comes first)
         Free Members: 4 Megs (4,128 kb) / 500 Messages
         Basic Members: 10 Megs (10,240 kb) / 1,250 Messages
         Upgraded Members: 20 Megs (20,480 kb) / 2,500 Messages
         Premium Members: 40 Megs (40,960 kb) / 5,000 Messages

For complete details on what each membership level offers, please see:

Compare Free and Paid Membership Benefits  [E] #688627 Compare different features and benefits of the various membership levels at Writing.Com. by Writing.Com Support

         
You can view your total email usage by going to your email box and clicking
"Folder Summary". Note that for members with larger amounts of mail, this may
take a little while to load. The mail system will display your total in "kb".

If you are over the quota limit for your membership level, some of your email may
not be transferred to the new server. Unfortunately, we are not able to guarantee
the order in which email will be transferred, however, we will make all attempts to
transfer newest email first.

For those members over their quota, we have decided to offer burned CD's for your
old email. For $40 US, we will zip your entire email directory and burn it to CD. The
$40 charge includes USPS postage to anywhere in the US. Please contact me via email if
you wish to order this service. This option will only be available for 2 weeks.
         

Please note: To best support all Writing.Com members, we will be creating
the means to provide additional email space for a fee in the future. We do not
have an ETA on when that service will be offered, but moving to the new email
server is a step in the right direction!


We greatly appreciate your understanding and patience throughout the
upgrade process. Migrating to a new email server is one of the "once-every-
couple-of-years" time consuming things that must be done to keep Writing.Com
online and stable for us all to use and enjoy.


This upgrade preceeds some very exciting site upgrades planned for the end of
this year and the coming new one. I look forward to completing it so that we can
move on to the next things on our todo list and get back to creating new options
and features to you all, our members!

Thank you for your time!
~~SM (and SMs)


And now, some "standard" reminders:


:: New Costumicon Subscription Period! ::
Costumicons subscriptions are available for purchase! This month features our
special Holiday section with costumicons themed for the Winter season, Chanukah,
Christmas and much more. There's even one for the Humbugs of our community.
In total, there are more than 500 different icons to choose from! A round of
applause to The StoryMistress for building such a vast selection. This
subscription period will continue until January 3, 2004.
         http://www.stories.com/main/my_account.php?action=ea_form&type=costumicon


:: Extension For Grandfathered Free Accounts ::
On May 15th we announced some changes to our Free Membership, including
a reduction in items to a maximum of 5. For full details please see:
         "Important Changes To Our Membership Plans" 
The grace period has been extended and will expire January 1st, 2004. At that
time, Free members with more than 5 items will have items over this limit purged.

:: ** Please Remember To Update Email Addresses! ** ::
If you are still using your OLD @Stories.Com email address anywhere, this is a
reminder that email service for @Stories.Com addresses will end on 12/31/03. If
other services have your email address in the @Stories.Com form, your time to
update them is running out.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 And don't forget to visit our sponsor:
                     http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/writing
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for your continued support of Writing.Com!
  ~~ The StoryMistress and
         The StoryMaster

FORUM

Technical Support Forum  (13+) Members help other members with technical questions and problems using Writing.Com! #303715 by Writing.Com Support