No, not by paying us! We want to hear any suggestions for updates, feature requests, ways to improve the site or anything else you've been thinking about. We're getting ready to gear up for some major upgrades to ClearCheckbook for its one year anniversary on May 20th.

Version 2 of the site is going to bring some big changes. There will be some layout upgrades and visual tweaks, the javascript that handles most of the actions on ClearCheckbook will be majorly overhauled and the code running the site is going to get updated too. After these updates you'll notice a huge improvement of load times.

We've also got some big new features planned for release around May 20th as well. We know you'll be excited to see those. Also, stay tuned for a blog post some time near the early-middle part of April asking for some beta testers for these new features. We're going to open a limited beta for some of you to get a months head start on testing out these new features and new version of the site!

So please, if there's anything you've been wishing was a feature on the site or you think something would work better if it was handled differently, please let us know by sending us an email with the Contact Us form. It doesn't matter how big or small the request is, we just want our inbox filled with them so we can look them all over. We won't promise to add all the features and requests, but we will read them all and implement the most requested / best ones.

Thanks for making the site great!

That's right. ClearCheckbook just surpassed $100,000,000 in transactions today. Right now we're nearing 2,900 active members (meaning they've verified their account and have added entries to the site) and are at almost 170,000 entries.

I'm glad to see the site growing so well. If there's anything else we can do to make the site better for you, let us know in the comments or by using the Contact Us form at the bottom of each page.

February has been an interesting and exciting month with ClearCheckbook. At the beginning of the month we started out with around 1,750 active users and 28 days later we're almost at 2,700 active users. We reached and passed the 150,000 entry mark and are getting almost 1,000 new entries every day.

February has also brought some much requested additions to the site. We introduced a way to add new categories and accounts on the Add Entry page. This makes it much easier to add accounts and categories on the fly. The Accounts Overview has also been added to the accounts page. Now you can see an listing of all your accounts and their balances quickly and easily. If you don't want to see it, simply hide it (and to get it back, just click the show button and it will reload automatically). The Help section was also added this month. Now everyone has a quick and easy way to find out how to use the different sections of the site. There are around 80 questions, so pretty much anything you might have a question about should be listed there.

As shown by the statistics I gave earlier, the site has been growing incredibly fast... almost 1,000 new active members this month alone! With that increased traffic came some inevitable growing pains. As witnessed by those using the site the night of February 27th, our site finally became too large for our old web host and they shut us down. As we've said in the two previous posts (here and here) we spent several hours scrambling to get everything back up and running with as little downtime as possible. We basically had the rug pulled out from under us while carrying a tray full of crystal glasses. There were a few bumps along the way, but I think we did a pretty good job with what we had to work with.

This morning we finally moved the site to its permanent home on a new server that's solely for us. The SSL certificate has been replaced with a newer one and will no longer be giving the warnings you were seeing during our transition period.

Thanks to everyone who's sticking with us. Seeing your encouraging words in the blog posts and in emails regarding last night's hiccups reaffirms my belief that we're offering a great service to everyone and you're completely awesome!

Continue to tell your friends about the site, blog about us, and spread the word and keep the site growing. The bigger the site gets, the better it gets. Anyone who's been with us from the beginning can tell you this. If you have any suggestions for improvements on the site, please feel free to use the comments here or the Contact Us form to let us know.

Thanks!

ClearCheckbook.com has finally found its new permanent home on a brand new server. Those of you who experienced all the problems during the last 24 hours will be glad to know that pretty much all of those issues have been resolved now (We're in the process of getting a new SSL Certificate so you won't be prompted to accept it each time you visit the site).

Why did we have to get a new server?
ClearCheckbook grew far faster than we had anticipated. While using a shared hosting plan was ideal at the time, we quickly outgrew our welcome as the site was drawing a lot of traffic.

Things finally got really heavy yesterday as we were featured on DumbLittleMan and our traffic shot out the roof again. Our host pulled the plug on us and said we're using way too much bandwidth and processor power for a shared hosting plan.

Without any warning we were suddenly without a website. We scrambled for a few hours to get everything moved to a temporary location while we made plans to upgrade to a permanent server.

After a few more bumps, the transition to our new server has been completed.

What's this mean for the site?
Well, this means great things for ClearCheckbook! Here are some of the things we can now do with the powerful new server:

• SMS or AIM you reminders from the reminders system


• Give you a lot more statistics in the reports


• Improve load times across the entire site


• Add greater functionality to Checkbot


• Plus much more...

Stay tuned for updates and new features as we produce them.

What we're working on now:
The most pressing issue right now is the new SSL Certificate. This should be up and working within a day or two.

I want to extend a personal thanks for everyone for sticking through this rollercoaster. When we were planning the natural evolution of the site, we didn't account for such quick growth and were forced to act fast and update the servers in order to keep the site alive.

Thanks again everyone!
-Brandon O'Brien

Where to begin... I might as well start from the beginning so you'll know where we're coming from with this.

What happened:
Back in September we were hosted on a really bad host that had horrible down time. Back then, we had about 300 members using the site. We got featured on LifeHacker.com and our traffic blew up overnight. Unfortunately, the server also blew up (not literally, figuratively) so we were forced to switch servers and spend hours making sure the transition was painless. We finally got settled into our new server and things were going great.

Over the next 6 months our traffic grew very fast as we approached 2,600 active members. This afternoon, ClearCheckbook was featured on the "Tips for Life" blog DumbLittleMan.blogspot.com and our traffic shot out the roof. In keeping with tradition, our new host couldn't handle the traffic and shut us down... literally. They simply pulled the plug on our site and said "you've outgrown a shared hosting plan."

By now I've grown livid as I can't stop thinking about everyone who is now trying to access their finances and is getting strange errors and is unable to do so.

Acting quickly, I contacted a friend who has a Virtual Private Server (VPS) that we could set up shop on for a week or so until we can buy a new dedicated server. So over the last 4 hours, we've been scrambling to transfer everything over to the new server, test everything to ensure it's working properly on the new site, set up email accounts, make sure CheckBot is still active, etc.

What we're waiting on now is for the DNS servers to update so everyone will see the site on the new server.

Lingering Issues:
Because our old host abandoned us and our dedicated IP address, the SSL certificate isn't working properly. We set up a new certificate, but it's going to ask you to accept it before you can use the site. Please know that your information is still being encrypted and is completely secure.

Reports are taking a lot longer than usual to generate. If you don't need to generate your reports right now, please hold off for a while until we get a few more things situated. (CSR 342 students, please be patient when generating your reports. There were a few issues with them earlier, but right now expect to wait upwards of 2 minutes... just be patient :) )

What's next?
Over the next week or two, we will be searching out a new Dedicated Server plan. This means we will be the only site on the entire server and means you will see an extreme improvement in load times.

Buying a Dedicated Server is not cheap, so we're doing our research on finding the right one for the right price. If anyone knows of a great host, please post about it in the comments.


Again, I can't express how sorry I am that this had to happen again. I give you my word that once we're on our own server, things will be soooooo much better.

Thanks for sticking with us!
-Brandon O'Brien