Community Downtime - 6/12/2018

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of our technical team, the planned changes earlier in the week were not actually completed and it means we will be taking the Community down again this evening so the work can be completed.

The site will be offline between midnight tonight (Thursday 6th December) and 10am tomorrow (Friday 7th December).

Part of the work taking place is actually to move the RSPB Community from the United States, where it is currently hosted, to within the EU. We are aware than some of you have had concerns about where the content is stored and this move will be able to address some of those concerns. Following this move there will be no RSPB Community content or services hosted outside of the EU.

Other than the change of location the terms will remain unchanged and there will not be any need to re-accept them as the core service is not changing.

We’re sorry for the interruption to your community experience again tonight, this is part of a larger plan to improve the services we give all of our digital supporters.

Many thanks for your patience and understanding.

  • Is there any chance of sorting the issues raised recently at the same time?

  • Thank you for the heads up, Elliott.

    Part of the work taking place is actually to move the RSPB Community from the United States, where it is currently hosted, to within the EU.

    Given that we will be leaving the EU (or not) on 29th March 2019 should we still be concerned?Smile

  • Hi,

    We are currently working on a plan to deliver improvements across the whole website, including the many suggestions for Community, since we made the software change in November. We are working with our Community partner to see what can and cannot be delivered quickly and what will require longer time to develop.

    As I'm sure you'll appreciate there are lots of things that need to be delivered across the site to ensure we continue to improve the experience for all our supporters. We do have limitations on our resources, especially in the run up to large campaigns like Big Garden Birdwatch, but I am committed to ensure we deliver further improvements to our Community experience, especially as we have recently invested in a software upgrade (after many years of not being able to do anything with it). This is very much the first phase of a continuous improvement plan.

    As soon as we have a timescale for changes to be made I will ensure that we share this. In the meantime please continue to share ideas and suggestions on any aspect of the community as we are reviewing the comments and always adding these to our ever-growing list.

    Many thanks again,

    Elliott

  • Thanks for the update Elliott,   I second TeeJay's comments about how Brexit (or no Brexit)  will affect (or not) this community forum, depending on what transpires following March 29th 2019.     When you say hosting moved to within the EU from the States, can you be more specific ?

    Presumably, this downtime is only working on moving the network host (service provider ?)  to within EU and not further improvements to the platform, if so, are there likely to be any further updates on the ongoing improvements/layout  to this forum in the near future ?

  • I second TeeJay's comments about how Brexit (or no Brexit)  will affect (or not) this community forum, depending on what transpires following March 29th

    If you think the forum has got problems, we've got a interview date of march 2020 to apply for our residents permits from the French authorities! Well, this is France & nothing happens quickly here! LOL

  • Given that we will be leaving the EU (or not) on 29th March 2019 should we still be concerned?

    Doesn't matter in the medium term, UK data laws are aligned with those across the EU, but are different in the US. It gets complicated if a UK company hosts UK data in the US, which is doubtless a significant driver to the data shift.

  • Hi, with regard to the comments about the Brexit impact, my limited understanding is that this will depend on whether the UK continues to follow the GDPR post Brexit. I don't know the answer to that as, like the RSPB upgrade, I am trying very hard not to think about Brexit in the hope it goes away. Yours, the political correspondent Slight smile Ian

  • Doesn't matter in the medium term, UK data laws are aligned with those across the EU, but are different in the US. It gets complicated if a UK company hosts UK data in the US, which is doubtless a significant driver to the data shift.

    Agreed Joe (see also my post below about GDPR), we must have been typing our replies at the same time. Ian

  • Looks like we're back, how did it go Elliott?

  • Morning everyone,

    I'm very pleased to say that we had a successful evening and managed to complete the purpose of the downtime. Thank you for your patience and sorry for having to take the Community offline for a second time this week.

    In response to a few of the other questions asked on this thread:

    1. EU/UK/Brexit - We are not expecting to need to move the servers again following the outcome of Brexit, but if this position changes for any reason, we will of course let you know.

    2. All the other changes that have been requested on the various threads are currently being fully reviewed with our Digital Experience team and Community partner, alongside all the other requests for changes, development and improvements for the whole RSPB website. Once a plan is confirmed we will share this.

    Many thanks and I'm sure we'll be speaking again soon.

    Elliott.