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As to getting the goods: I'm downloading 2 PDFs right now and both the personalization (actually took about 60 seconds) and connecting issues (was able to connect on Chrome for the first PDF, had to copy link to IE for the second, but it connected fairly quickly on IE) are much better. Download speed is still painful, but this is a much less frustrating experience.
Wow! I hadn't checked for a while, and things had seemed to be slowing down. But right now, you guys just went over 64,000 bundles! Congrats!
Another post in my series of questionable advice offered on circumstantial evidence and my own experiences so... purely biased guesswork. Just recently, I was able to download 2 more PDFs after having no luck for hours (just clicking the same download link periodically). Both files downloaded at a good clip too! (guessing something like 100 MB/5 mins?). But now I'm back in "page refresh" land. This along with many folks talking about being able to download a few files (2-3) and then running into issues makes me think we all would have a more productive experience by just taking a break for a few hours if you're having no luck downloading, especially if you just downloaded a couple files. One reasonable theory here is that each account is allotted a limited amount of storage for downloads and you need to wait for your previous downloads to timeout (as mentioned above, timeout varies with load but tends to be a few hours). However, there are the posts that seem to indicate some folks have never been able to download anything. I'm not sure what to say, that hasn't been my experience.
So, correct me if I'm wrong (as I'm very new here), when you want to download a file, you go to My Downloads and then click on the file name. What should I do then? Nothing seems to happen. No messages, no download. However, when I log out and back in the "date last downloaded" says "Today". But I don't have anything downloaded anywhere. What am I doing wrong? You're not doing anything wrong. It seems like things may have gotten a bit worse in the last couple of hours. Perhaps more people waking up and trying to download. After reading a few of the latest posts, I decided to try to download one more PDF to see if my "method" was still working, and although I did see a "personalizing" message a while ago, I haven't been sent to the downloading page yet. Interestingly, if I click on a previously downloaded file, it goes straight to the download page. I wonder if we've hit a storage limit somewhere. It would be nice to get an update from Paizo about the current state of things.
You may have to wait to get the "Personalizing..." message now. Which *seems* slightly different from yesterday. So, just choose a single PDF you want and click its download link. If you don't get the message, wait 5 minutes and click again. When you do get the message, wait 10 minutes and click again. At this point the page may just refresh again, removing the message and possibly even logging you out of your download page. But don't worry, your file personalization is "in the queue" and you just clicked before it was available. Wait another 5 minutes and click again. You should eventually get to a auto-download page. Let it auto-start the download, and let that download finish before you attempt another. This method has worked for me for the 3 PDFs I wanted and I can wait for the rest. --- BTW, these PDFs are very nice! Easy on the eyes, fast to load (YMMV), and the key concept links in the Core Rulebook are super helpful. Kudos Paizo!
Another suggestion (since I have been able to start and download and noticed that the available bandwidth is also being crushed): you might want to block access to an account's download page (thereby blocking further personalization/downloads) while that account is in the process of downloading a file. Which should limit downloads to one file at-a-time per account. But only if you're confident you can definitely determine that an account is currently downloading a file and only if all downloads are using the same "pipe". With something like that in place everyone should have a better chance to get the file they'd like to look at right now pretty quickly and then they can come back later for others.
I'm a little surprised, but it seems Paizo never learned the lesson: If you don't prepare for the "hug o' death", you'll pay with PR. For all you folks waiting to get your likely very, very cheap PDFs: try to be patient. Eventually either Paizo will put up a better solution, or the HB campaign will end, the crush will ease and their current personalization solution will be sufficient again (until the next crush). Of course, that means you may need to wait for 12+ days at this point. But hey, anticipation can be nice, no? --- If anyone at Paizo is reading this, I would suggest the following "fix" which seems like it should help and seems fairly easy to implement. Create a separate, very light server process/script that implements a queue system (backed by a database, JSON file, etc). When a customer clicks a product download link, record whatever is needed to personalize a PDF (account ID, name, product ID, whatever) as a record and add it to the queue UNLESS a matching record already exists OR the personalized PDF is being processed or is ready for download, in which case ignore the request. Then DISABLE the download link for that product until the personalization is finished. Modify your current personalization system to read from the new queue and process records one at a time first in, first out, restoring the download link which now points to the completed PDF. If you have multiple personalization systems running, just have them all pull from the same queue. A possible issue with a system like this: storage space for all these personalized PDFs. However, storage is pretty cheap these days so that may not be a big deal. If it is, you could send out emails once a day to everyone with at least 1 finished but not-yet-downloaded PDF telling them to: "Please download your PDFs within 48 hours or they will have to be regenerated." |
