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Bloodied but unbowed

The last few weeks have, as they say, been a bit mixed.

The problems at the shop have taken a lot of effort to resolve but we think we are there now.

None of the small fixes did the job and so we had to upgrade our connexion to PayPal to their Immediate Notification system which doesn't depend on the customer doing what they are told and coming straight back to our site after they have made their payment.

That change went in fairly smoothly but there was a bit of fiddly work to do on defining order status levels in response to the messages that come back from PayPal.

Then came the real pig - download control. We went for the heavy duty option right from the get go but somewhere along the way a small change crept in to the configuration of one or two key directories on the site and the system was broken. But of course we first had to work through all the software eliminating problems before we got down to something so close to the physical layer. The trouble is that in a logical environment it is much harder to spot the loose connexion which has been causing all the problems.

So we are back on the air again properly now.

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