We’re proud to say that when we migrated our entire user base of more than a quarter of a million users over to a brand new platform this week, things went extremely well. And it wasn’t just about the users, but all their monitoring data ranging all the way back to 2007. Quite a lot, in other words.
We did it in just a few hours, but we planned this migration for months to make sure we would get it right.
Because let’s face it, migrations are scary. Migrating users between platforms is notoriously difficult to get right. There are a gazillion things that can go wrong. A big migration needs meticulous planning, or it’s a recipe for disaster. Proactive thinking is super important.
So we would like to extend a big official thank you to our development and operations team who worked so hard on making this as seamless a transition as it possibly could be. They also made sure we had no interruptions in monitoring, and no downtime. Needless to say, providing uninterrupted service is very important to us, and to our users, even during a big move like this.
More is new than meets the eye
Seen from the outside, this was “merely” the introduction of a new control panel with a radically different design. But the truth of the matter is that a ton of things behind the scenes are also new:
- Large parts of our backend infrastructure were changed.
- We have built and migrated to a completely new billing system.
- We changed our entire hosting platform.
- And a myriad of other behind-the-scenes changes.
So this migration was a much bigger project than you might think. It’s far from just a graphical overhaul. We migrated to what is essentially a brand new platform, not just a control panel.
Even the sun has spots
Yes, we have to admit there were some issues. We would have loved to tell you that we migrated all our users and not a single problem arose, but that wouldn’t be very truthful. Anyone telling you they migrated a large user base without a glitch is probably not telling you the whole truth. We would have been surprised if there hadn’t been a single hickup considering what a huge undertaking this was.
- We initially had some performance issues with the new control panel. We tracked down the problem and solved it within a few hours.
- We had missed a link for those who forgot their password. This was easily fixed, of course. We even made some quick design changes to the login page based on user feedback.
- A small portion of our users initially had some login problems, but this was quickly resolved.
And some other more minor details which were either fixed right away, or are being fixed as of this writing.
Now we want your feedback
The thing is, now that we have introduced this new platform to build upon, we have a ton of cool things we want to do with it. You can expect iterative improvements to the user experience, everything from small tweaks to major new features.
Over the past year, we have been ramping up our development team. We have hired some great minds to help us bring Pingdom to new heights, and they will give this a lot of love.
And here is the thing, we have one more great resource. YOU. We have a ton of intelligent, insightful users, and if you’re reading this you’re probably one of them.
Now is your chance to help us shape Pingdom into something you’ll love even more. We want your feedback.
You can do this mainly in two ways:
- Use the feedback widget you see to the left in the control panel.
- Email our support (support -at- pingdom.com). Our support guys are actually involved in the product development, so you’ll be speaking to people who really care about what you have to say.
Yes, we are on Twitter, but really, for detailed feedback, one of those two is your best course of action.
So, let us know what you think, what you want, what you like, what you don’t like. And don’t forget to tell us WHY you want something, why it’s the right thing to do. Be as detailed as you can, take screenshots if it’s relevant, feel free to send us sketches, etc.
Remember: constructive criticism = awesomeness. It helps us improve the product for everyone, and for you.
And finally, thank you so much for using Pingdom. We hope you will stay on the ride for a long time, because we promise, it’s going to be great.
Image credit: salajean / Shutterstock.com
