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UPDATE - Scheduled Website Maintenance for ACAT - Mid February 2014

UPDATE 24th January, 2014

In the course of our preparation for the migration of the site we have decided to carry out some significant additional improvements / snag- and bug-fixing that have been on the maintenance list before we switch over to the new website hosting. This will mean the new site will run more smoothly and reliably on the new hosting package. As a result we have postponed the migration until mid-February. We will post the revised date for the migration here as soon as the works have been completed.

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During mid February 2014 (date tbc) the ACAT website will be unavailable while we carry out scheduled maintenance to the website.

We apologise in advance for any inconvenience that this may cause you.

We have designed the maintenance to cause minimum disruption, but some outage is likely and unavoidable. We will notify everyone as soon as we have a date and again as soon as the site is fully operational again.

Here's a brief explanation of what we're doing and why...

Why we're making these changes...

We have experienced several significant problems with the current hosting providers for the ACAT website in the past year, notably with not providing reliable email services as well as there being several significant unexplained website outages, some of which you may have experienced yourself. 

We have spent the end of 2013 undertaking extensive research to find a different hosting solution that will serve the needs of the Association better; giving us more control over the technical performance of the hosting, removing conflicts due to competition with other websites hosted on the same server, speeding up the site's overall performance, and providing us with an upgrade path that is simple to navigate should we need it in future.

In addition to these fundamental benefits of migration we also have the technical advantage of being able to optimise the hosting environment to meet ACAT's particular blend of hosting needs. The current hosting environment is kind of "vanilla"; trying to hit some kind of middle ground that will please everyone. In reality it pleases no one very much. With the new hosting we can control the technical performance of the server to put all the available processing resources into delivering the ACAT website, and leave out any of the unnecessary features that the current hosting company has put in to please the masses. Again this means the website will be better served by the hosting environment, and will work better.

Whilst most of this may be "technical gibber", the reality is that we expect the change to allow us to give ACAT members a better service through;

• a faster and more reliable website
• more reliable and faster email communication from the Administrators and Course and Event Organisers
• a better platform for developing more effective services for Members and the public on the ACAT website

We will keep everyone posted as the project plan is carried out, and hope that we can minimise any disruption to you and the many thousands of people who access the ACAT website every year.

Published by Jon Sloper on 30th Dec 2013

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