Congratulations. You guys broke the site launcher. My new site won’t launch.

  • Unknown's avatar
    awlrbx · Member ·

    The blog that I’m trying to launch is a semi-private one intended for a limited audience. Do not ask me to post its url here. If I were to do that, the blog would lose its generally private character, destroying the entire point of creating it. If somebody at Automattic would like me to email in the url, I can do that, but a public display of it would be absolutely, deal breakingly out of the question.

    I clicked on the button for launching the site. Right now, on the screen saying “launch your site,” I see a blue line reaching across the screen underneath the words “your site will be live, shortly.”

    It has now been 15 minutes. Hoe, pray tell, does Automattic define the word “shortly”? I mean, seriously – 15 minutes to launch a blog? I hope that we can all agree that this is a failure to launch.

    Will this get fixed? Yes or no? Can I have a way of sending in any information that you need (like the url) so you can see what you broke, and so that you can, indeep, see that it won’t launch? Also, could you guys please have enough class to refrain from playing the usual help desk stalling games. You know, like asking

    “could you please tell us exactly what you did, step by step”

    or even better

    “could you download this piece of software, which will make an animation of what you did on the screen, and set it to the theme music from Titanic, for our enjoyment.”

    When you do that, you’re not being helpful and you’re not trying. You’re just trying to drag out the process of asking for help, until the user gives up out of exasperation, allowing you to bypass the need to fix that which is broken. I know of no other line of work in which the help desk gets to get away with that kind of behavior, and I’ve long wondered why the people in IT get a special dispensation to do so.

    This is basic functionality. If Automattic can’t keep it running, then Automattic has lost all credibility as a hosting service. This either gets addressed, quickly and with a minimum of BS, or this will be the moment that your company jumped the shark. Take this seriously, or get used to the joys of long term unemployment.

    Am I getting through to you? Because right now, you’re reminding me of a bunch of companies that don’t exist any more, right at the moment when they made that one misstep that sealed their fate. For your sake, I hope you’re hearing this. If you mess this up, I’ll have to cut and paste and sending new blog somewhere else, and that will be a nuisance for me, but you guys will end up on the street.

    Am I getting through to you?

  • staff-porcupine · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    I’m so sorry to hear that you have run into an issue with launching your website. Thank you for taking the time to reach out to us to report this.

    I have sent an email to your WordPress.com account email. We would really appreciate it if you could reply to it so we can investigate this for you.

    When you do that, you’re not being helpful and you’re not trying. You’re just trying to drag out the process of asking for help, until the user gives up out of exasperation, allowing you to bypass the need to fix that which is broken. I know of no other line of work in which the help desk gets to get away with that kind of behavior, and I’ve long wondered why the people in IT get a special dispensation to do so.

    I do understand that when we request such detailed information it may sound as if we are hiding behind this request, but please rest assured that this is quite the opposite.

    When reporting issues to us, it is very helpful when users share as much details as possible because this helps us with understanding exactly how and when the issue is occurring. This also reduces the need of exchanging more messages as we can gather all the information we need right from the start.

    IT issues can be complex and difficult to investigate and replicate, given the number of variating factors: browser versions, operating systems, networks, devices, setups, are just a few of the things that explain why an issue occurs in one specific situation. Knowing as much as possible from the start will help us with replicating the exact environment the user is working on and track down new bugs or unexpected behaviors.

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