GoranGrooves partners with AVID: When opportunity comes crashing your door.

[gorangrooves]

Not a joke or a clickbait. My little GoranGrooves brand is in legally binding contract with the tech behemoth AVID. Yesterday was the GoranGrooves day, and what started as an exciting, peaceful morning had literally left me in tears by the late afternoon, looking for the nearest rock to crawl under.

I've been working for the last 3 months without a single day off, right through the holidays, to try to wrap up v2.0 of Handy Drums, at least for the NAMM and Avid partnership, which was coinciding at the same time. As part of the Avid promo, we are giving away Studio Standard to their entire subscriber base (200k licenses). We postponed the launch because of NAMM, and yesterday was the big day.

The day prior, in anticipation of the traffic increase, I boosted the server to 16x Premium Intel CPUs with 64GB RAM. You would expect that to handle anything. Then, the crowds came crashing into my door.

I could see the traffic, which didn't seem like too much, but I could tell only a small number of people were redeeming the rewards. Then, emails started coming in. I couldn't access the admin of the website. Horror and panic kicked in.

For a couple of hours, I worked with an IT buddy to remedy the situation by turning off a grid plugin that normally displays all of our products in many locations throughout the website. The server specs are both overkill (utilizing not more than 25% CPU and only 8% RAM), and yet not enough, it seems. So, the situation is ongoing. Things are moving, just not in the way we would like them to. Can't really do much until the storm passes.

We are all used to dealing with bugs and issues when developing software. It is a completely different beast when you are trying to resolve something in real time as hundreds of people are surging your way.

The moral of the story? Not sure. Perhaps be careful what you wish for? You can never be too prepared?

[DanH]

@gorangrooves all will be well in the end mate! Until then just hang in there

[gorangrooves]

@DanH Thanks, buddy!

[Christoph Hart]

@gorangrooves congrats on the deal and don‘t be too hard on yourself, servers are annoying…

[ulrik]

@gorangrooves congratulations to the deal!

[gorangrooves]

@ulrik @Christoph-Hart Thank you so much, guys. Things seem to be chugging along ok. What was going to be a pinnacle was a really, really low moment for me. I need a couple of days off. Enjoy your weekend, guys!

[Matt_SF]

Bravo for the deal! Be proud of you and don't be too hard on yourself. Next time you'll be ready

[gorangrooves]

@Matt_SF thanks, bro!

[CyberGen]

@gorangrooves I saw the avid post on instagram a couple times. Congrats!

[gorangrooves]

@RastaChess thank you!

[Dan Korneff]

Congrats!
Server issues are annoying, but now you're set for major traffic.

[Lindon]

@gorangrooves - yeah well done - its no easy road working with those behemoth companies, I hope it works out for you.

[gorangrooves]

@Lindon @Dan-Korneff Thank you, guys!

Well, here is the update.

The initial patch we did by turning off the problematic Essential Grid plugin (that displayed all products) helped things, but didn't fully solve them. As some people couldn't redeem their rewards, they contacted Avid, who got in touch with us .

Our developer/ IT buddy, Irving, dig deeper and figured out that Smart Coupons for WooCommerce plugin was running these insane search loops through the database, creating tens of thousands of queries on every page. Fortunately, he was able to fix the plugin, and the website started to fly after that. I emailed our entire list to come and click around the website, creating the same kind of traffic we had with Avid, and everything is loading fast.

I think I finally know the moral of the story. As we grow and are exposed to better and bigger opportunities, it becomes more and more critical to have a team (as small as a single additional person) of experts whom we can call upon and rely on in emergencies. The only reason why this is not the biggest failure of my life to be told to my descendants for ages to come is that I was fortunate to know Irving, who came to my rescue in a very critical and vulnerable moment.

I hope my scary experience and the lesson learned comes in useful to you too.

[d.healey]

@gorangrooves said in GoranGrooves partners with AVID: When opportunity comes crashing your door.:

Smart Coupons for WooCommerce plugin

Glad you got it sorted! Badly coded plugins are such a pain. Have you let the develoeprs know about it?

[gorangrooves]

@d-healey Thank you.

Have you let the develoeprs know about it?

Not yet, but I certainly will. It is not a cheap plugin either ($120), and they want that amount every year to get updates and support. Insane.

[d.healey]

@gorangrooves said in GoranGrooves partners with AVID: When opportunity comes crashing your door.:

Insane.

I had some custom work done on a licensing plugin and it works great, but they released an update last year and didn't include these extras and haven't sent me an updated version with the changes. So now I'm stuck on an old version. I'm very tempted to fork their premium version, implement the changes myself, and put it on github for all to enjoy.

[gorangrooves]

@d-healey Yeah, I have a customized discount plugin that I hired a developer to customize. The original plugin was updated, and I am stuck with the slightly older customized version. I am tempted to compare the two to see if there is a way I could implement the changes, since the developer I originally hired couldn't be bothered.

[d.healey]

@gorangrooves Maybe this will be useful - https://winmerge.org/

[gorangrooves]

@d-healey Thank you!

[CyberGen]

@gorangrooves it’d be interesting to hear how the partnership with avid came about