Over the years, traffic to XWord Info increased substantially to the point where we outgrew our old web server.
So, in March 2014, we got our friends together to help us move into more spacious quarters. It cost us a few boxes of pizza and a couple of cases of beer, but this website is now faster and more reliable.
XWord Info used to reside on a single web server. It's a complex site with lots of data and the ability to do sophisticated real-time queries against that data. One web server is fine if the traffic is light, but as we became more popular, we stretched the limits of our original architecture.
We now use Azure-based cloud technology. A load balancer splits the traffic between two separate clouds, and each cloud can quickly spin up new virtual servers on demand during periods of high activity. We still won't be 100% reliable, but we should be much closer.
Most things look and work exactly as before. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, a few things got broken during the move.
The biggest problem is that all the 45,000 (!) puzzles that were uploaded for analysis or for sharing have been lost.
The other problem is that old links that used the constructor ID parameter "cid" now probably point to the wrong place. This syntax was retired years ago but it's possible some rusty old links on other sites may now be incorrect.
Right. Sorry about that. There didn't turn out to be any easy way to port them over. If you want to keep letting people solve your puzzles online, you need to upload them again and generate new links. Again, our apologies. :(
Yes. We were able to successfully transfer all account data, all the Shortz-era and pre-Shortz and Variety puzzles, and all the special fix-ups we did to make the gimmick puzzles look right.
It's possible we missed something. if you find anything awry.