| Just a reminder: Don't make any changes to your group for at least a week after an upgrade. That means don't add or remove pages in your group, make changes to custom pages, try to fix glitches etc. Doing so can result in the group not operating properly. MSN usually does major upgrades in June and October, but the work on improving groups goes on year round. MSN makes their decisions on what to change in groups based on feedback from groups users, observation about what their competitors are doing, and having new technology to implement. An upgrade starts with ideas. MSN usually changes the appearance of groups at least once a year to keep them fresh and modern looking. Perhaps there are software conflicts, or security issues for MSN or users that need to be addressed. The design of groups may need to be modified to keep up with technological advances. Basically a design team has to sit down and look at all of these issues and more when they decide to create a new upgrade for groups. Once they've got their ideas in focus, then the ideas have to be translated into a language that the computers understand so they can carry out the changes. MSN groups are made up of millions of lines of programming code. An upgrade means that there is more code that has to be inserted into the existing code. Also the existing code has to be modified to work with the new code. This is the point where errors are most likely to creep in. An example of that would be a couple of years ago when all of our emoticons disappeared. The server where the emoticons were stored was to be taken offline and the emoticons transferred to a new server. Unfortunately, the programmers missed a few places in the existing code where they should have changed the link to tell the computers where to look for the emoticons. As a result, the computers kept looking for the old server which no longer had the emoticons stored on it. All we saw when we wanted to add an emoticon to a post was an empty box with a red x in it. In the weeks prior to an upgrade, MSN will start doing maintenance and preparation work on the servers. As users, we will notice things like pictures temporarily disappearing replaced with red x's, MSN seeming to load slowly, some pages not loading properly, or sometimes even difficulty getting into groups. When you see things like this happening, the best thing to do is to back up existing pages that are important to you onto your hard drive, and hold off on making any major changes to your group. When the upgrade actually takes place, MSN takes the servers where groups are stored offline. The techs will then do any necessary remaining maintenance on them, install any new hardware that needs to be installed, and load the new programming. Then they will test the new software internally on their systems to make sure it is working. Once the testing is done, they cross their fingers and hold their breath, and bring the servers back online. Hopefully the system won't crash as millions of users around the world,who have been impatiently waiting for hours to get into their groups, rush to see what's been done. For the next few days the system will be unstable as the techs work to integrate the upgraded groups into the MSN network. There will be server crashes as software conflicts are discovered and repaired. Other servers will be overloaded as they take up the slack for the ones that are down. This is where it's important not to make changes to your group during this time. In the past we've seen where group managers have made changes during this time and have lost their work due to server crashes. Sometimes when they make changes, their group stops functioning properly altogether - pages turn black, don't show up at all, won't open, can't make changes, etc. Other times managers have tried to repair a glitch they've noticed after the upgrade only to find that MSN repaired the glitch afterwards causing the manager's repair to become a glitch. Basically, MSN expects that there will be problems after an upgrade and they will fix them as they become aware of them. But they need the time to be able to do the work properly. So if we're patient and hold off on making changes, then our groups tend to work better in the long run. As a personal example, Smokey and I have never had a problem with any of the groups we've created and managed (too many to count now, lol!). But we have encountered many people online who always seem to have problems - and these are usually the eager beavers who just can't wait to start changing everything around as soon as they can get into their groups after an upgrade. My philosophy is - better to be safe than sorry, lol. | 
