Latest Updates - Last change 08/09/09
Phishing warning - 08/09/09 15:30
It has come to our attention that phishing emails are being sent to users purporting to be official and requesting you to open an attachment. We do NOT send attachments to users. Please be aware of this threat and immediately delete any similar emails you receive. Sample text from one of the emails is shown below:
"Your e-mail account was used to send a huge amount of unsolicited spam messages during the recent week. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and confirm the attached document so you will not run into any future problems with the online service. If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to cancel your membership."
These emails are NOT from dublin.ie but from a third party masquerading as such. Addresses used by them include: admin@dublin.ie, mail@dublin.ie, service@dublin.ie If you have any queries, please contact us at support@dublin.ie.
Anthony - dublin.ie team
Email System Outage
22/07/09 11:30
We believe we've finally resolved all issues arising out of the outage on the 3rd of July. We had a follow on issue with user Address Books which was fixed yesterday evening. Rest assured that we're sitting down with our hosting providers over the next week to ensure that something like this cannot occur again. We thank you for sticking with us through the past few weeks and if you are still experiencing any difficulties, please let us know through the helpdesk and we'll resolve it as soon as we can.
04/07/09 20:02
We've restored the database and mail is now flowing in and out of the email system. If you see are experiencing any further issues, please contact our helpdesk at: support@dublin.ie. We sincerely apologise for this lengthy outage are putting plans in place to ensure an outage of its kind never happens again.
04/07/09 11:02
Email files are still copying across from the old server. The transfer is taking as long as it is due to the amount of them involved, there are many millions. We hope to have it back in operation by this afternoon.
03/07/09 18:57
We're currently copying all of the email from the old server to a newer server but this process will take a number of hours, probably finishing in the middle of the night. We're monitoring it as we go and will post an update again when we have more news.
03/07/09 17:12
We wish to advise that work is still continuing on efforts to restore the e-mail system. The problem which occurred has proven to be considerably more complex than at first thought and it has been necessary to rebuild the hardware on which the system operates. This is a complicated process which has taken most of today to configure and is not yet complete. We appreciate that users have been unable to access e-mail for more than 24 hours and we accept that this is an unacceptable situation. We sincerely apologise for this situation and stress that the repair work will continue until the system is restored
03/07/09 16:27
The new server is being prepared at the moment. Work will be ongoing tonight and through the weekend to ensure the availability of email as soon as possible. We apologise again for the inconvenience.
As you know, our email system started to experience problems yesterday (02/07) at around 1:30pm. As we worked with our hosting providers to find out what was wrong remotely, the server in question shut down and wouldn't allow us in. As our systems are not hosted within Dublin City Council's offices, we sent an engineer on site to troubleshoot and he was able to bring the server back to working order around (7:15pm) last night.
This morning at approx 9:15am this morning the server again showed signs of instability. As we troubleshooted the problem over the last few hours we were in a position to have everything returned to normal but again suffered hardware problems. At 12:10pm made the decision to switch the server out completely and are preparing a new one to take its place. This will take us a few hours to do as there are millions of files to be moved. We will update the login and mydublin.ie pages as we have updates.
We are acutely aware of how critical an issue this is for users. We sincerely apologise and assure you that we are doing all within our power to have the issue resolved as soon as we possibly can.
Anthony - dublin.ie team
Sitebuilder changes - 31/03/09
Some users may have noticied that we've removed the ability to create new websites in Sitebuilder. We've done so for a number of reasons. Sitebuilder has always been blighted with a number of consistent bugs (browser compatibility, editor uploading issues etc).
Over the past week we've been planning how the dublin.ie goes forward and a re-development of Sitebuilder, in some form, will form part of the strategy. As such we felt that it was best to remove the functionality now rather than have people learn an old and buggy system which will be changing. All existing sites are still available to edit and we will keep you informed as to future developments.
As a stop-gap we'd suggest using webs.com, which is a free site building tool.
Anthony - dublin.ie team
Maintenance Window - 27/01/09
A quick heads up in advance of Friday, 30th January (8pm-12am). The machines which power dublin.ie, including the email system, are moving location within the data centre. That means they need to be shut down and powered back up again. The whole process should take no more than 30 minutes and will happen somewhere between 8pm-12am. We can't give a more accurate time at the moment as it involves more machines than just our own. Please bear with us and we'll update you when we have more information.
Anthony - dublin.ie Team
Problems with pages taking too long to load - 07/10/08
Just after lunch today we experienced a problem with pages being very slow to load. We tracked it down to a news feed we bring in from an external site. We've had to remove every reference to it for the moment and are looking at how we can improve it for the future. If you have any issues please contact us through the helpdesk.
Anthony - dublin.ie Team
General Update - 01/10/08
We're working on a number of different things at the moment including an expansion of the "Getting Started" project. We're looking to install Nintendo Wii's and other new technologies to assist older people engage with each other and learn. A couple of the newer bits have to remain under wraps for now but we'll be unveiling them in the months to come.
We've also been shortlisted�for two Irish Web Awards. We're in for the 'Best Council Website' and 'Best Government Website'. I'll be attending on the night myself along with another member of the team so it'll be great to meet more people from the industry.
Anthony - dublin.ie Team
Email System Update - 16/08/08
Ok, so tomorrow night (17th) we'll be switching the new email system in. Most of the changes are under the hood and the interface will remain largely the same. From 9pm to 12am users will not have access to the mail system so please bear with us as we make the change. We apologise for the inconvenience but we've picked a time that we feel will have the least impact.
This is most of the update that we had planned for February that didn't go ahead. We've been busy with other work in the meantime. :-) Thanks for your patience and please let us know if you experience any issues after the system comes back up.
- dublin.ie Team
Email�System Update�- 15/02/08
Early tomorrow morning�(16th) we'll begin to start an update to the email system. This will require shutting everything down from�1am to 3am. We apologise for the inconvenience but we've picked a time that we feel will have the least impact.
We may have to schedule additional time over the next week to complete the update but we are working behind the scenes to ensure this is minimal and outside of peak hours. The benefits to you will be a faster email system that we can continue to improve in the future. Thanks for your patience.
- dublin.ie Team
Email Problem - 24/08/07
Last night, 23rd August, our hosting provider switched the location of our machines within the data centre. This was a routine operation and the system appeared to be�fine but we discovered an issue this morning as mail was not loading properly for users. We investigated immediately and found that one of the mail partitions was not loading correctly and reset it. All mail returned for users at that point. If you are still experiencing problems, please contact our helpdeskwith your phone number and we'll fix it. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
- dublin.ie Team
Winners of Fairtrade Hampers announced - 15/03/07
We've picked the winners out of the dublin.ie hat for the Fairtrade Hampers. Congratulations to the winners.
- dublin.ie Team
Extra space for your email - 21/02/07
We made the decision earlier this morning to up the amount of email that each user can receive. The old limit imposed was 15Mb but we've decided to double that to 30Mb. We had a number of users approaching us about the size of the email accounts so we're happy to be able to offer more space now.
- dublin.ie Team
New addresses - 08/02/07
We've been hard at work lately updating the addressing scheme for the site. Basically this means that the addresses for the various zones are easier to remember. For example, www.dublin.ie/health.aspx?id=3248 becomes www.dublin.ie/health/home.htm. It makes it easier for users to understand and also helps search engines (like Google) to find out content faster. We also had a brief login problem today but its been resolved. Apologies for any inconvenience.
- dublin.ie Team
Holiday World Show 2007 ticket winners announced - 23/01/07
We've announced the�winners of the Holiday World Show 2007 tickets on this page. Congratulations to those who won.
- dublin.ie Team
Net Visionary Award win - 21/11/06
We won the award in the eGovernment category. :-)�Please read this page for more info
- dublin.ie Team
Getting there�- 14/11/06
Well it's been a while since we did an update so we thought we'd put you back in the picture as regards what we've been doing with the site. A lot of things are still under active development and we're slowly slotting all of the pieces into place but it does take time. To give you an idea here's a brief list:
- Sitebuilder: continuing work to drop in help guides plus make sure there are no bugs with the templates. If you come across any then please contact us and we'll do our best to fix them.
- Email System: We're looking at better integration between the site and the email system along with possibly more space for each account.
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- Polishing off features: We're committed to making sure that all areas of the site work intuitively and that's an ongoing job which takes quite a bit of time.
This�Thursday, 16th is the Net Visionary Awards so we'll do a fresh update�next Monday�that letting you know how we got on.
dublin.ie Team
Email System Upgrade - 12/10/06
On Thursday, 12th October from 7pm-11pm we will be applying an update to the email system. During this period access to emails will be curtailed however emails that have been sent to you will continue to arrive. We apologise for the inconvenience but these changes are necessary for the improvement of the email service.
dublin.ie Team
Login Issue 02/10/06
As many users have reported to our helpdesk, the dublin.ie login system experienced a license issue on 1st October. This meant that users were not able to login to access email and services. The issue has now been addressed by our developers who started work on the problem this morning. We did not anticipate being without logins for such a sustained period and have put measures in place to ensure this does not happen again.�Dublin.ie sincerely regrets any inconvenience caused and thanks you for your continued support during the site re-design.
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dublin.ie Team�
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