A status page — announcements for known issues

[DNin01]

In case we have bugs caused by us or by updates upstream, we could report known issues on our website through a "Status" page. It could list which addons aren't working properly and why, and it could also answer frequent questions and explain what could make addons stop working properly.

This could reduce the number of repetitive feedback messages we receive, make people feel better when there are problems, and make our community, especially those who like to follow along with software development stories, feel more connected to us.

For maximum benefit, we should link to this page from Scratch Addons somehow or add an announcement system.

[WorldLanguages]

This suggestion is superior to our current approach of using 'presend warnings'.

[Hans5958]

Ideally, this status page should be on a different website (see githubstatus.com, discordstatus.com, etc), as it would be useless when the website is down and we have nothing to report on, though depending on our scale, we may not need those.

Alternatively, the blog could be used to announce significant bugs (see this blog post for Internet Archive. Added with the mentioned "announcement system", there's no need for a page solely for status reporting.

Also, I was wondering to have the announcement on the website quite prominent, maybe as big as what I did on the top of 2023.place-atlas.stefanocoding.me, or as the announcement of the new version on Astro.

[Secret-chest]

We have no services that need to be up.

[DNin01]

Ideally, this status page should be on a different website

Our website is static so separating the status onto a different site wouldn't do anything for us, right? For example, if GitHub Pages goes down, then every site hosted on GitHub Pages would go down. Creating another GitHub Pages site would still be putting all our eggs in one basket, other than it being a separate development project.

[GrahamSH-LLK]

Ideally, this status page should be on a different website

Our website is static so separating the status onto a different site wouldn't do anything for us, right? For example, if GitHub Pages goes down, then every site hosted on GitHub Pages would go down. Creating another GitHub Pages site would still be putting all our eggs in one basket, other than it being a separate development project.

Plus, our main service isn't scratchaddons.com, unlike those other services.

[Hans5958]

Ideally, this status page should be on a different website

Our website is static so separating the status onto a different site wouldn't do anything for us, right? For example, if GitHub Pages goes down, then every site hosted on GitHub Pages would go down. Creating another GitHub Pages site would still be putting all our eggs in one basket, other than it being a separate development project.

When I'm saying "website", I'm not necessarily just talking a static website, or in the same "basket". I was actually something of a "status page" or a "uptime check" service. Statuspage, Status.io, Uptime Robot, Better Stack, that kind of stuff. If you want to self host it, an idea would be hosting it beside the analytics server. You could make it static if you don't want the overhead.

I just realise something: something simple as a GitHub issue or a Twitter post would be just fine, and it's not important on where do you put the updates.

As long as people know where to look at (GitHub issues? Twitter? The blog? Somewhere else?), anything could work. What's important is to let people know where to look at. For example, having an announcement system is one, which directs people to where updates will be. At least for those who don't get it, they still know where to look at.

[DNin01]

When I'm saying "website", I'm not necessarily just talking a static website, or in the same "basket". I was actually something of a "uptime check" website. Statuspage, Uptime Robot, Better Stack, that kind of stuff.

Why would we need an uptime checker?

[Hans5958]

I don't know what is the correct name, probably "status page providers", but I know at least one browser extension that uses it.

[GrahamSH-LLK]

I don't know what is the correct name, probably "status page providers", but I know at least one browser extension that uses it.

Because they have an API and database to support a 'addon' store