OnlinePhim.net Blog

Alright, even though we post an update about tvb series being down almost a week ago to various social networks, many people still contacting us about this problem. Apparently not everyone is using those services, or even bother clicking on those links to see the updates, so we’re stating it here … again.

The problem is only relating to new tvb series on OD only. (You can thanks tvb international for that.) Older videos, and those on OP are unaffected … at least, for now.

Again, videos are posted by volunteers and fans. It’s up to them to determine what and when to update. Our staffs will only help out when we have some time. So if you want videos to be updated faster, please consider helping them out. If not, please be patient and check the status updates. Those videos will be updated in due time.

Update: Most new tvb series are fixed. The rest will updated in time.

In an ongoing effort to better connect with our viewers, we have taken another step with our social experiment. Although we have have a myspace account for over 2 years, it never really take off. Many have also suggested that we create a facebook account so that they can befriend us, which we have procrastinated … until now.

We started using Google Friend Connect as a test to see if people would join the site, even though we don’t require people to sign up to view the videos at all. We believe that the reason that the FC work wells is because it’s more integrated with the site, making it more useful to our viewers then simply just add a link to it.

As you might have noticed, we have added 4 new icons below the FC member badge on the front page. Since most of our members are using at least one of those services, we will be using them to push out our updates. It’s a feature that lots of people have been asking for, and now you can get real time video updates through your favorite network. You can also discuss and share with other members as well.

We’ve sent out a first wave of friend requests to Facebook and Mypace. Myspace has less options, so the list was smaller. We’ll continue to send out requests from time to time.  If you didn’t receive a request, you can just add us directly. We’ll be using both public and personal profiles on FB until we reach the “friend limit”, then we’ll be using the public one only. I think they currently limit it to 5000 friends, so that will take a while. Remember, you can always reject our requests or remove us later on if you wish … there’s no hard feeling … we promise

Update 5/9/2009: We have now added a option to leave comment using Facebook. Now you can use either Google FC or Facebook to leave comments for the videos.

OK, so technically it’s not quite a week yet, but to some of you it might feel that it’s been much longer. Anyway, it seems that we’re quickly reaching the limit of what our system can handle. We will not make the jump to another system like we did before because, quite frankly, we can barely afford this one now. We will have to have to do that eventually, but that a problem for another day.

Currently, we are working hard to figure out the best course of action. At the moment, there are 2 choices. One is to transfer videos to another service. However, since we have hundreds of thousands of videos, this will a very time consuming process. Two, is continue researching and testing possible solutions. This will also take time. Yet, if it works, the majority of the videos will back up and running without any problem. This is our preferred method, but if we can’t find a suitable solution by Friday, we’ll start transferring some of the newer videos to another service so that you guys can have something to watch over the weekend. Yes, we’re that considerate. Though, we doubt anyone really care.

Most of our staffs are having personal matters that require much attention, so the process has been slow. We know we have some very loyal members (and some very demanding ones, too), but constantly emailing us about the same problem won’t get it resolve any quicker. Please bare with us as we try to make through this.

Update (3/30/2009): After working on the problem for the last 10 days, we can finally say the problem is fixed; at least for now. (Man, I should’ve gotten paid for this ). Anyway, enjoy … ’til the problem pops up again.

Update (4/2/2009): We’ve further tweaked the system to provide better loading time for the videos. Unfortunately, this puts our system in a more vulnerable state, so the next time it goes down, it will be down much longer … if not permanently.