New host up and running...

Well, as promised, the contract with our old hosting provider, who will not be named again, or mentioned again after this paragraph, has been terminated. The site is now up and running on new servers, and everything is working great.

We've got some new features that will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

• Our bar search will now provide a more accurate distance on search results.
• The Blog has been given a facelift
• The Bar Search page will be getting a facelift
• Bar owner pages will begin to be promoted in January
• Location based ad serving should become available by the end of January
• The Event Calendar should be in beta testing by February.

Look for all this and more as we get ready to usher in 2008!

The Last Straw with Lunarpages®

On 9/11/2007, roughly one day after LetzGoOut.com was launched, our soon-to-be former web hosting provider, Lunarpages®, disabled the site. The reason for this was that, in its initial launch, the site needed to build its search catalog, and LunarPages® found that act to be too resource intensive.

Rather than call my cell phone, which they do have on file, they sent an email to a yahoo account that I had when I first set up hosting of my first site with them a few years back, and had since informed them, on several occasions, that I do not use that address anymore.

The whole ordeal could have been handled over the phone in one call in less than 10 minutes, but instead, took about 18 hours, countless support tickets sent back and forth with absolutely no assistance whatsoever in explaining what the issue with my site was. At the time, I had no idea what the offending script was, and they not only could not tell me, but refused to let me back onto the site until I could confirm that this script would not run again when they did let me in.

After talking to several different support people (notice the ommission of the word "tech" as I feel it would be inappropriate to categorize these people as such), and several conversations with support managers, I was finally able to get the name of the script that had run, and was able to convince them that if they were to let me on to my site, I could disable the script permenantly. I could work around this without impacting the user experience of the site. By 9/12, the site was running again, and continued to do so for the next 97 days.

Then, on the morning of 12/18, the site went down again. There was no phone call. There was no email. Not even to the yahoo address that I told them not to use anymore, but that was still recieving their monthly newsletter and billing notifications.

After submitting a support ticket, a process that requires logging on with a username and password, I was told that they didn't have any information about why my site was down, but I would need to provide username and credit card information (last 4 digits) before they would share information with me as it became available.

Fast forward about 2 hours. I am thanked for confirming who I was, and am told that there is still no known reason for the site being down.

In light of the fact that there is no reason for the site being down, I make the obvious request that they reenable it.

Three hours later, and after several phone calls yielding similar lack of information or attempt to resolve, I am forwarded an email that they claim was sent to me explaining the issue. I read it. It is dated 9/11/2007. The site had been taken down because of something that had been resolved 97 days earlier.

I have since confirmed that the script HAS NOT run since. Not even once. It was purely an error on their part. Several hours later when I was finally able to pin a supervisor down on the phone to actually get the issue resolved, one of their support supervisors did confirm this. No compensation was offered, and the explaination as to why it happened in the first place, as well as why it took close to 8 hours to get to the point of figuring out the problem and getting it resolved. The only consolation offered was that the admin from September was no longer with the company. That didn't offer any consolation whatsoever, as HE actually had reason for doing what he did, though the notification sent was to the wrong address and action taken was extreme.

The only other thing offered to attempt to rectify the issue here was to provide a direcet phone extension to this supervisor, should any such issue arrise again. He assured me that if he did not answer, I could leave a voicemail and he would return my call immediately.

Fifteen minutes later, it did.

That's right. After a mere fifteen (15) minutes, the site was taken offline by them again. Exact same symptoms.

I called the number.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

No answer, no voicemail. Nothing.

The support ticket that followed that was answered about 6 hours later from somebody in Faisalbad, Pakistan stating that he didn't know what database was at fault, so he reenabled all of them. Amazingly, this course of action actually fixed the problem.

When I tried to ask WHY it happened again, he cited the reason for the disabling as the issue that was resolved 97 days earlier, and took the position that the reason for this was actually my fault, not theirs.

This will be the last entry I make to this site as hosted on Lunarpages®. The site will be relocated to a new, reliable, and competent host by the week's end. It had been intended to house the site here as it grew, and scale to a higher level hosting plan as traffic built up. It is clear now that this host will not be appropriate as this site reaches its potential.

That is all that LetzGoOut.com wants for Christmas.

Hope you all get what you want as well this holiday season.

Brian Davey
President, LetzGoOut.com

WE HAVE LIFTOFF!

www.LetzGoOut.com is now live! After many late nights and many hours of development, LetzGoOut, Phase I is now live, and Phase II is close behind.

Phase I is basically just the core foundation of this site - the user registration, the basic bar listing search, and a few other fun features to keep the site moving. The real cool stuff is coming in Phase II.

Plans for Phase II center around the event calendar. With this, bar owners and bar entertainment (bands, dj's, etc) can list events so you can see what's going on on any given night. Additionally, not much has been done for the site's apperance so far. Pretty much all of the time has been devoted to functionality. So, Phase II will also look into a facelift for the site. Your input is, as always, encouraged.

The other cool thing planned in Phase II is the barebones version of the site. This will be a stripped down version of the site, designed specifically for use on cell phones.

Keep coming back often. LetzGoOut is out now, and there's still a lot of places it's gonna go!

Beta 2 up, full version draws closer.

It's getting exciting at LGO headquarters. The site is starting to come together nicely. Everything is starting to fall into place, and the site is beginning to take shape. The foundation of the site is basically set, and the fun is now beginning. In the next couple of weeks, the schedule module will be built, and that's when the fun starts for you! For the bar owners, your free advertising will begin at this point, and for the bar hoppers, your hopping is about to get a whole lot better, as you will now be able to figure out exactly where you want to hop.

The feedback module is now fully functional, meaning when you post something, I get an email right away. Whether you're a bar owner wondering how to get listed here, or a bar hopper with an idea of something missing on this site (I may be working on it, but if I'm not, now's the time to tell me!), you are encouraged to use this feature.

Moving ahead faster than expected...

After seeing a slow start in development of this site, things are quite rapidly taking off. In my first blog post, I stated that the first live beta would be up by Labor Day weekend. The next day, http://beta.letzgoout.com was live - about 2 weeks ahead of schedule - with registration, message boards and blog functionality.

There is now a chance that there may even be bar entry and search functionality as soon as Labor Day weekend - functionality originally slated to be complete by mid-September.

So, you're reading this blog. I assume this means one of three things. It isn't mid-September yet, and you're wondering when this stuff's gonna be ready, you're a fan of the site and want to know more about what's going on here, you just got home from a bar and are almost ready to pass out and just need a little something to put you over the top, or you're bored.

If it's the second, you're in luck. That's what I'm about to talk about here.

This project began initially to serve two purposes. Believe it or not, one of its first intentions was to drive traffic to my other business, MG Apparel. The idea was that this site could probably generate a decent amount of traffic, and perhaps give MGA a bit of a boost.

The other intention was to fill a tremendous deficiency I saw in the internet – a lack of a decent site listing what was going on at the local bars. Basically, too many times, I’ve tried to figure out what was going on that night and either ended up settling for the usual local bar, bar hopping aimlessly looking for something cool, or just saying “f” it and staying home. There really wasn’t a decent site out there that you could go to and say, ok, what’s going on within a 20 mile radius of me?

I thought to myself, hey, I’m a programmer… My real 9-5 job is spent primarily developing content driven websites for a publishing company. I could totally build this. And why the heck hasn’t somebody else done this yet? Or, really, why hasn’t somebody done a decent job of this yet?

And so was the beginning of NJBarz.com. NJBarz.com? Wait… that isn’t what I’m looking at… That’s what you’re thinking, right? Yeah, well, I had plans to build this to list bars in New Jersey, where I am currently located. If that worked as well as I hoped it would, next was going to be CTClubz.com – another name I have registered, but not deployed.

It was quickly determined that this was stupid – I had plans to expand, and by design, I was limiting myself to a few locations. After a bit of brainstorming and research, LetzGoOut was decided upon as the new name for this portal. And here it is.

As I’m sure you’ll notice as it first starts off, the site appears to be just for North Jersey. Well, that’s where I am, and that’s where promotion is starting. As it grows, I am hoping this will be the premier bar listing site in every state from here to Alaska.

Ok, well, if you’re still reading, you should either be eager to see the calendar feature come to life, filled in on the history lesson you were looking for, totally ready to pass out, or now more bored than you thought a human possibly could be.

I guess my work is done here.

If you have anything you’d like to say, be sure to check out the feedback module on the home page, or drop an email to info@letzgoout.com. I’d love to hear it.

It's ALIVE!!!

http://beta.letzgoout.com is up and running!

This is a huge step here.

In the next couple of weeks, registration configurations will be set up allowing for either bars or bar patrons to sign up for this site. From there, bars will soon be able to start scheduling events, and patrons will be able to start searching them, and then the fun really begins!

This calls for a drink!

And so it begins...

So, here it goes... LetzGoOut.com is in production, and I'm hoping to see a live version of this site by the end of labor day weekend. Of course, if it doesn't hit by then, I can edit this entry and make it look like I hit my target perfectly.

This site is going to have a lot going on when it's up and running. I'm encouraging any and all bars to list - all for free - and list any and all events planned. The more I can get on here, the more the users will have to chose from, and the more the users have to chose from, the more they'll come back, meaning more potential customers for the bars.

Of course, there will likely be a premium listing membership in phase two, but when or if that happens, a free listing option will always exist. The more content listed, the better this site will be, and the best way to ensure that is to always keep listing free.

If you have any ideas to make it better, I'll always be interested to hear them. The feedback page will be up soon, so check back.