Hello onMason users!

It’s been a while, I know, but I come with good news! The onMason site has been upgraded to a newer version of WordPress-MU. Things should be running faster and more smoothly now.

Unfortunately, with every upgrade, there’s the chance of an unexpected error coming from the system. Please keep an eye out for us and report any errors you encounter via the comments on this post or by filing a support ticket.

We’ve only encountered one error thus far: Userthemes, which allows users who have requested the ability to edit their themes to do so, seems to have reacted oddly with the latest upgrade. It may list an excessive number of themes copied to your account and it may not give you access to the edit page in UserThemes. We are aware of this difficulty and working quickly to resolve it.

Thanks for your patience and understanding,

-Aram Zucker-Scharff

Hello all,

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the recent downtime. The issue was not with onMason but with an impossible-to-anticipate server hardware fault.

The problem was within the server’s RAID, which is a set of redundant hard drives designed to automatically duplicate file systems and spread out data to minimize loss. That set of HDDs is governed by their own set of hardware and software and I believe it was the governing mechanisms which were experiencing issues. Because the method by which the HDDs are accessed has been malfunctioning, there was a problem keeping them active or reaching them in order to transfer the data. However, the server host transfered onMason to an entirely new set of hardware.

The server seems to be working fine now. However, due to frequent problems with the current host and communications issues, the Office of Student Media is now in the process of seeking out a new server host.

Now, on to the good news! podPress, the best podcasting plugin out there, has finally upgraded to work with the latest version of WordPress. We are very very happy to install this as an option to activate as a plugin. If you are already using the Blubrry plugin, we’d recommend you carefully consider what would happen when you switch and make sure that all the info is properly ported over. If you are not using any of the plugins but are intrested in making a podcast, podPress makes it easy, so activate it in your plugin page today!

-Aram
onMason Admin

Hello onMason users,

We’ve spend the time over the break thinking up new ways to improve onMason and considering how to make the platform better than ever.

We know that there has been some confusion with system downtime last semester and we have reviewed the problems and we do not anticipate them happening again. However, we are constantly testing and reviewing and we hope soon to take measures to make onMason even faster. In addition, we’re talking with ITU and DoIT to create a monitoring system for the site as well as insure that your support questions will always make their way to us.

If you’d like to help support onMason, don’t forget to tell folks about the platform, how you use it, and its importance. Pass along the info to DoIT, your department, your professors or your friends so that we can all work together to make onMason better.

As you may have noticed, some of our functionality is still down after the last update, we’re working on getting everything back in tip-top shape, but in case we don’t know, don’t forget to report all errors that you encounter. Keep an eye on this blog, we’ll be creating a page to document known issues and solutions soon.

Stay tuned to this blog to hear about more upgrades and further progress.

– The onMason Team

Hello onMason users,

As you are aware, the onMason system has been experiencing some unexpected downtime over the last few days. We’ve been able to track the problem down to issues with our server’s firewall, which have proved temporarily resolvable.

The team at the Office of Student Media has been working hard to find the cause of the problem, however, we have not isolated the exact issue that has been causing the repeated periods of downtime.

Due to continuing problems with our server firewall, there may be further downtime until the system regains full stability.

In order to remain updated on the situation, we advise you to check our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/onmason. We are also working with DoIT and Learning Support Services to have outage alerts visible on other Mason sites as well as help provide you with a point of contact for any questions you might have. You should e-mail the onMason team with any questions at gmustudentmedia@gmail.com.

Remember the onMason platform is maintained by The Office of Student Media at GMU. ITU does not support the platform and will not be able to answer most questions you have. If you have any issues with the system while it is running, please file a support ticket. If you need to contact someone while the system is down use the e-mail above.

We will keep you notified as we resolve the issue.

– The onMason Team

The onMason platform has been upgraded to WPMU2.8+. At this time we are seeing some plugin issues which are undergoing repair. We anticipate full functionality returning to the site by the end of the week.

If you experience any problems, it appears our Support plugin is currently malfunctioning. Please leave a comment on this post and we will respond to you as soon as we can.

EDIT: The Support plugin is now working. Please direct any questions or bug reports to that area in your backend.

We are currently transitioning from WPMU2.7 to 2.8. You may notice some errors and decreased functionality (like on this blog) as we prepare the site for the upgrade. Do not be alarmed.

As you may have noticed there were a number of duplicate themes in our theme directory, as well as templates that were not working or previewing correctly. Some of these duplicate themes were being maintained for testing purposes, while others were there in error.

However, theme issues should now be resolved. There should no longer be any visible theme errors or duplicate themes. If you see any, please report the errors via the support tab in your backend.

All media uploads should once again be working as normal.

Today onMason administrators have completed the following essential system repairs.

1. You can now logout without any error from the site front page (onMason.com)
2. You can now upload media to your site and link it without encountering any errors.
3. Your User Avatar (if assigned) will now properly echo on the onMason front page when you sign in. This means that your user avatar will be visible on sign-in.