Nevadaappeal.com system problems

The Nevada Appeal website continues to experience intermittent problems since the server software was upgraded last week.

There are times when you will not be able to see the site at all, and some of the pages will appear to have old stories on them.

Everybody who can work on fixing the problem is busy sorting out these gremlins. It's rather frustrating on all fronts.

After viewing the comments from my last post on our system problems, I think I need to provide a more detailed explanation of our web system.

Most of what you see on the website is served up by a content management system called Publicus, produced by a company named Saxotech. It is the same software used by many other newspapers, including our friends to the north, the Reno Gazzette-Journal.

Our particular system is a hosted solution, with the servers being operated by Saxotech at a remote location. The downside of this is that we are sometimes at their mercy in terms of fixing problems. We were told the software upgrade that happened last week would not affect our operations, but obviously that was not so.

Also let me note that we will continue to discuss websites issues in this space. We were preparing the re-launch this blog under a new name, The Appeal Blog, in a couple of weeks, but the system problems forced our hand. We hope it will be a helpful feature to explain to you just how the site operates, and how we can make it better. At the top of my list for the next post will be explaining how our comment system operates.

Thanks for your patience.