Scheduled Downtime: Email upgrades

I will be taking the server down at 9am ET (1pm GMT) tomorrow, March 20th. The purpose of the downtime is to upgrade the email system we have, to hopefully reduce how much gets bounced, as well as to run updates on the server. This won't necessarily help with the slow speed we've been having lately, but it can't hurt.

To address the speed issues as a secondary, I'm looking into solutions, but I'm not really sure what I should do about this, as it's a bit out of my wheelhouse. I'm looking at solutions. Once v2 (I know I say this a lot...) is complete, it'll definitely help with the speed, running on much newer technology, but in the mean time, I'm trying to learn how I can improve the database. Another option is to upgrade the server to the next tier, but that will double our costs. If anyone has DBA skills (specially MySQL or MongoDB) and wants to lend a hand or just give advice, feel free to reach out.

Downtime, spooky. :O

Not sure if it's any help, but I recently noticed that one of my mobile data operators stopped connecting to GamersPlane whatsoever, even when the site is definitely up and running. It tries to load, then after 30 seconds pops out a generic timeout error. It used to be able to connect before I think, but since a month ago or so it can't anymore. Not a big problem, but it's a little strange. (Admittedly might be a regional thing, but that usually gives different errors )

On the email topic, I had some weirdness with "Character Added" emails. If I add a character into my own game, the notification email is empty except for my address. Like, it's just a single line with the email address, no information about the game or the character, no usual design either. (And it also gets into spam because of it, probably.)

Thanks for the callout. I'll look into why that's happening. This update is for the server side stuff, but this is a good bug for me to look for a resolution to.

Do you know how long the downtime might be? Mostly curiousity, and I imagine it could fluctuate, but my brain likes guidelines :)

Unfortunately, I didn't have a good estimate. I would have said 30 minutes, and it took about 25. But it's back up!

Thanks a lot for your great work!