More Customer Support and More Developers Join the IndieCommerce Team
The additional funds that were recently approved by the ABA board to expedite the migration to IndieCommerce 2.0 have resulted in:
- Two new customer support representatives. Say hello to Yunis Simon and Peter Bentivegna. Their primary tasks are all related to assisting stores with their migration scheduling and moving stores as quickly as possible through the migration process.
- We now have a total of eight developers working on core 2.0 features as well as site migrations. We are seeing a tremendous increase in the amount of code being produced for advanced features which has allowed us to address the migration requirements of larger stores that need these on their IC 2.0 websites.
A few other migration related items for you…
- Our emphasis is on migrating our current IndieCommerce 1.0 stores as quickly as possible.
- Our developers are concentrating on completing the core features that stores need to run their websites. For stores on 2.0 who are looking for additional features that may not be on our list of core features, please ask us if they are under development. If they are not, we will consider your request for future development following the completion of the migration.
- If you are on 1.0, we are still putting time and resources into keeping everything humming along on your Indiecommerce 1.0 website. Although our priority is to move everyone from 1.0 to 2.0 as quickly as possible, we also have dedicated personnel just working on IC 1.0 related issues and will also continue to support requests from stores regarding work on existing IC 1.0 Websites.
Be sure to check out the IndieCommerce blog for the latest updates and news related to the 2.0 migration.
Recent Error Messages on IndieCommerce 1.0
Over the past two weeks we’ve received reports from some stores regarding “Internal Server Errors” occurring while bookstore staff are working on administrative tasks on their IC 1.0 websites. We are investigating the cause and adding additional monitoring to the platform to help us pinpoint the cause. We will keep you updated as our investigation progresses. If your store is on the IC 1.0 platform and you experience one of these time out issues, please email [email protected] and include as much detailed information about what you were doing on the website when the incident occurred.
Malicious Bot Activity on IndieCommerce 1.0 and 2.0
An internet bot is a software application that runs automated tasks over the internet. We first started seeing the impact of increased bot activity on 2.0 earlier this year. This increase is not unique to the IC platform. Bot activity now represents nearly 50% of all internet traffic and AI bots are “making things worse”.
While bots can perform useful tasks, their misuse can significantly disrupt website operations. In several cases we’ve seen bots attempting to extract massive amounts of publicly accessible data from IC stores at a rate that was not manageable for our system to sustain. This resulted in us having to manually block their activity.
The architecture of the IC 1.0 and 2.0 platforms are entirely different. They can react quite differently to similar problems. How we then address those problems will vary depending on which platform is being impacted. Over the past year as the bot activity on 2.0 escalated, it started to cause problems that were unique to that platform. We initiated some changes a few weeks ago and stores on 2.0 have reported that the outages they were experiencing have subsided. Malicious bot activity on 1.0 was not as prevalent as it was on 2.0 until recently and we are now reviewing ways to minimize their impact on the 1.0 platform.
More Help For Your Store’s Migration to 2.0
As you can see, there is a tremendous amount of work being done to expedite your bookstore’s migration to 2.0. The migration speed has increased and a tremendous amount of work is getting done very quickly. To help stores keep up with the pace of migration, we are initiating weekly webinars to help your store learn about the new platform. These new webinars cover:
- Tuesday 3pm-4pm EST - “Getting Started With Your IC 2.0 website”
For registration & details click here.
- Wednesday 3pm to 4pm EST - “Fulfillment and Ecommerce Configuration” For registration & details click here.
- Thursday 3pm to 4pm EST - “Order Processing”
For registration & details click here.
If you are currently migrating from IndieCommerce 1.0 to IC 2.0 or if you are new to IC, these sessions are for you. As always if you have any questions, please email [email protected]