The new site is build on using WordPress, the blogging platform that is increasingly being used to build whole applications, such as our new site.

Let us know what you think about the new site, and what additional information you’d like to see on it.

Once we had identified the cause of the problem we could reload the deleted table on one server,  check the system for data integrity, switch all the new logins to that one server and test.

At 14:32 this process was complete and all users could start logging in again.

At 15:40 the other servers were synchronised and we started spreading the logins across the multiple boxes.

During this time we had about 20 calls and emails from users who could not log in, although of course more could have been affected.

We are going to change the permissions on the database to stop developers dropping tables, and the developer involved has been sentenced to cleaning the toilets for a week!

Our apologies again to all the users who were affected.

Looks like it started 13:40 UK time, it was fixed 15:00.

Customers that were already logged in were unaffected.

Autopsy soon, but all should be ok now.

About 200 users have now upgraded to Premium Edition so they can have more users, storage or features.

Looks like people like the idea of a free CRM system that is easy to use but has all the functionality you need to manage your customers, prospects and sales pipeline!

We won the award in 2008, came second in 2009, and won it back again in 2010. Will we keep our crown in 2011? We’ll know on 18th October at the award ceremony.

Thanks again to all our customers who voted for us.

“Cloud computing is more than just a passing trend or a buzz phrase – it is a new way of delivering business advantage,” said John Paterson, CEO of Really Simple Systems. “Using our cloud solutions, our customers have been able to avoid expensive and cumbersome hardware and software that would never have been able to keep up with their changing needs. They have the ability to scale the resources we use, as we need them, without having to factor in costly overheads, making them more agile and flexible as a result.”

EuroCloud is a European network gathering SaaS and cloud computing communities from 27 European countries, including vendors and industry experts.

Simply by having a link on your web site you can earn a substantial commission.

The Really Simple Systems Affiliate Programme allows you to earn commision on the visitors you refer to our web site when they sign up for a CRM subscription.

• You get 10% commission on all customers you refer to us, just by adding a simple link from your site.
• You can track the number of clicks and sign-ups though our Affiliate system.
• We provide you with all the linking code and images.
• We handle all the pre and post sales support and delivery of the CRM system.
• You’ll be offering your visitors a world beating CRM system.

More details and sign up on the Affiliate Login page.

The good news is that our failover /replication worked perfectly, so no data was lost and users could just log in again and continue working.

This evening we’ve turned on some more servers and smartened up the load balancing so things should run smoothly again tomorrow.

It is a strange fact that servers never seem to degrade slowly: one minute they are fine, the next minute they slip into a death spiral with no warning. We’ve been signing up a lot of new users in the last few months, we had new servers racked and standing by ready to go but the suddeness of the extra load took us by suprise.

So our apologies to those users that were inconvenienced, we are working hard here to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

This is mainly driven by our Free Edition that we launched back in October last year – we’re getting about 1,000 users a month signing up for this entry level CRM system.

Free Edition is a two user Sales system for up to 100 Accounts, perfect for startups and small companies new to CRM.

Maybe you know somebody who would benefit from this great offer?