01/4/16: PLEASE SEE Tree Update! FOR UPDATED INFORMATION REGARDING THE TREES AND WHEN THEY WILL BE OPENED

Hey, everyone! We are still working on the trees, but I wanted to let everyone know that at this point I expect them to be ready by Monday or Tuesday. We're really sorry about the inconvenience, and we want to make sure everything is right before we put it out there this time! I also wanted to go ahead and answer some questions I've seen asked a lot.

How did this happen in the first place? Basically, it happened because I am a dumb-dumb. I got put in charge of opening up the trees this year, and I managed to completely forget that the present-giving mechanism changed when we switched from stockings to trees. So I set up the old stocking opening script with this year's Melody-given gifts, and told another staff member how to run it when the time came.

Why did some gifts get duped? Unfortunately, the page takes a long time to process, and it timed out instead of loading all the way. So it got refreshed twice. The thing about that is that your browser timing out on a request doesn't actually stop the server from continuing to run the PHP code. So for about the lowest 1,000 userids who received gifts under their tree, their gifts were given out via the old stocking code. And since it was processing three times at the same time, many gifts were doubled or even tripled.

Why has it taken so long to open trees? When the gifts were handed out with the old stocking code, the database row for each gift was deleted as each gift was given out. That means we have two records left of those gifts. The first, primary record was our most recent backup. But since our most recent backup had been from December 20, that left four to five days of gifts that weren't in that backup. So we have been and are working on recovering gifts from those five days from the item logs of items that were handed out via the stocking code on Christmas day.

Does that mean everyone's gifts are missing after the 20th? No. If you did not receive any events saying your stocking was opened and you received gifts, you are not affected. Your gifts were never deleted from the database, and we combined the backup table from December 20 with the table of unaffected gifts.

But for those affected, are we going to lose gifts? No. We are restoring all of your gifts to your trees. It's just taking so long because we want to make sure we get it right!

There are items I gifted to my friends that aren't showing on my Gifts Given page! Yes, if you gifted anything to affected users after the most recent backup and before the old stocking code was run, those items will still be given to the user you gifted it to. But, unfortunately, since the gift row was deleted from the database, and our logs simply say the item that was given, along with when and where, we are not able to recover the information about who gave those gifts. See here for updated information :)

What about the gifts given while trees were still open after Christmas? All of those gifts are just fine and unaffected by any problems. :)

Regarding Melody We’ve gifted everyone that visited melody 28 days with the Melody Regular 2015 achievement. This was because people had issues visiting on the 25th, 30th, and 31st. We also plan on adding the items from those specific nights under everyone's trees.

Awesome! Thanks for the update :)

Thank you so much! You really are the best at everything ;)

Thank you for explaining what happened with the trees! :)

Thanks for the update and all the hard work!

Thanks for the update! I hope everything is going as best as can be expected and no problems occur when it does roll out. :)

I think a lot of people are curious about why precisely there wasn't a backup made for 5 days. What is the normal procedure during events for site back ups? I'm kind of concerned about this for the future, the glitch would have been a lot less suckage for gifters who will now show up as anonymous if proper precautions had been taken during a time of massive site traffic.

Also does this mean you aren't extending the December collections until the trees open?

grelca Thank you. I was wondering if I would get the melody achievement or not. I sure am glad that happened and that those items will be in our trees. Thank you for addressing our concerns. Sucks to be human sometimes. The plus side... we all are. Thanks for taking care of us.

I am concerned about whether during this whole uproar, if the secure info on the site was breached, aka the credit card info etc. Can you answer that? I've asked elsewhere but not received an answer.

thank you for the update!

Thank you so much for all of your hard work and for putting up with all of the complaining! <3

Read the last little paragraph bit :)

Thank you so much. You answered everything I needed to know. Also, thank you for the achievement! <3

- you made a mistake. Just means you're human (not dumb). This seems like a good solution for the issue. :) Thanks for the update. Thanks for all you do here.

Thank you for the update!

What should we do if we already received the items from those days and already got the achievement? Does this mean I should delete the items that I'd already received on those days? Already deleted the duplicated items from the 31st? But should I delete the extra achievement prize?

Thank you, by the way for the very thorough update on everything.

Thanks for the update guys,and thanks for all the work you put in too.Happy New Year to you all too. :) No worries we still love ya.Shit happens...........Hugs......... :)

Thanks for the update and all the hard work!

@ Laurey I read everything else but not that. XD Stupid eyes need to go to sleep. Thank you so much!! slinks away