Anyone else having a problem with CMD's servers? They have been down since Thursday night. Every time I have logged in to upload photos to my new site, it won't allow me to connect. I'm talking 20 different times over the past 48 hours.

I've tried both PC and Mac's in my house -- and a bunch of different internet platforms. They're all working normally, but CMD's backend site is down. I've emailed and called them and gotten no response.

Anyone else using CMD having a problem with this? I don't know how a company can stay in business if their servers are down this often. And I certainly wouldn't trust them to host my website now.

Please let me know if this is happening to you.
Thanks,
Aaron

They're upgrading everyone to the new admin panel. If your bookmark was to a page that ended /login.php change it to /index.php and I would bet you can get in.

(yes they need to let everyone know this)

My site has been down a few times the last couple of weeks. I emailed them on Saturday to tell them and ask them why it keeps happening and what a surprise, they still haven't emailed me back. I love my site, but am so frustrated with the customer service. It's horrible.

CMD emailed me back about some SPAM bug that got into their servers -- and how their technicians couldn't figure it out for 3 days. No one did call me back after I complained though. If it takes them 3 days to figure out the problem, I'd be terrified to host my site on their site.

I have to say, despite the raving reviews from OpenSource members, my experience with CMD in the past 7 days has been a NIGHTMARE. And yes, I've only been with them for a week. They pride themselves on having easy and simple-to-use drag & drop websites, but these are the most problematic and aggravating templates I've EVER used.

You want my review point blank? Run away from these guys. I'd rather pay twice as much to have a set up that actually works -- and one whose server isn't down for 3 straight days. If you're considering getting a Creative Motion Design site, REconsider.
I'm writing this to spare someone the misery I've experienced using their system for just 1 week.

Some basic problems I'm having -- while still building my site:

1. First thing's first: I couldn't even log in to my backpage for 3 days. Like I mentioned above, their server was completely down.

2. Their uploads don't work properly -- and it takes me about 5 times as long to go in and manually switch the order because their system doesn't recognize images being labeled in a proper #1, 2, 3 sequence.

3. They tell you that you can easily drag and drop the photos into the right order (if they happen to get in the wrong order *for some reason*), but that option doesn't work on either Safari or Firefox. When you do actually drag the photo, it completely disappears from your screen.

4. Once you FINALLY get your photos to the page and you go to a live view, the pages don't even load. The bar just sits there half-loaded, and after a few minutes you give up. This has happened to me over a dozen times. I then have to delete all the images and start all over. And then you pray that it works the second time around, which it usually does.

What should take me 20 minutes is now taking me almost 2 hours. And that's only one page on my site. I'll have to do this 10 times over. No more CMD for me.

Anyone have a suggestion for who else to use that's reasonably priced?
Thanks,
Aaron

I've been super frustrated lately too! I'm switching to a different company as soon as I have the moola. I asked them to put my stat counter code on my splash page so I got more information about where people were coming from, etc. and after 2 weeks they finally got it switched. Now it doesn't work at all. I haven't had any stats for about 5 weeks and it annoys me soooo badly! I kept emailing them and when dear old Anna sent me an email that said that 'this is the code that is installed on your page and it should be working' I really wanted to strangle someone. So that was it. It should be working but it's not, so tough luck. Honestly, this is pretty much the way it's always been with them. I can't wait to switch. For all of their awesome qualities, and how easy it is to use their websites, the customer service is crap and I can't deal with it anymore.

Sorry for the rant. I feel better now. Don't you?

I have been having problems too, and didn't know about it until someone told me. I wrote customer service on Saturday and the owner replied a few hours later apologizing and said they are working on it. Customer service has always been prety responsive for me. I never have a problem loading images though when it isn't down. Are you sure that you are saving the images correctly and following all of the directions?

By the way, congratulations Matt. I saw on their blog that you won a web site from them.

They got back to me today and acknowledged the problems that were in the *process* of being resolved. So yes, I had been doing things correctly on my end. It's all in their hands now.

Aaron

Let me first say that it takes a good company to admit when they've made a mistake, and the customer service team over at CMD did just that. They stayed on the phone with me until it was worked out, and they refunded part of my fees because of the errors on their part.

So yes, I had a lot of problems during the beginning with CMD, but based on how they treated me, I would recommend them. It's important that I correct my initial statements above, because most other companies would just ignore their mistakes; CMD didn't.

Aaron

I have a CMD site but I host with Godaddy...I suggest that you host with another vendor...I have neevr been down.

Greetings one and all.

This is Jeremy from CreativeMotionDesign. I just wanted to talk about some of the issues that took place in May with our services.

Yes, we WERE experiencing some server probs. We switched to Verio in January to upgrade our server and its capabilities. The problems stemmed from the Spam Assassin we used for all email accounts and its pull on the CPU power allotted to our database on the server. When people were attacking us with spam it was pulling power from the database that houses the sites and putting it towards the assassin causing the database to crash. This happened 5 times in a 13 day span in May. Truly, this was top priority for us, as any down time is unacceptable. Most of the time it was caught immediately and the database was reset immediately rendering the sites down for a few seconds only. A few times it was not caught until we were notified by clients. We do apologize for this and it was a focal point for us to work on until it was solved. After running countless tests and having Verio run many as well we determined the best solution was to disengage Spam Assassin and use a different spam filter. Since the switch we have had no site down times and we can sleep again at night J.



Customer Support. We really believe in making our customer service team the best in the biz. We realize this is not something accomplished over night, and have always looked for ways to better the overall experience for clients. We try and provide 12 hours of customer support M-F, so our clients world-wide can get us on the phone at some point during their business day. To remedy some of the issues of the past, we have implemented a ticketing system that helps streamline clients and their issues as well as helps the customer support team to better assist the clients in a more complete and rapid pace. As we do offer custom design work, put out new products and allow clients to host elsewhere we are going to run into some snares. From time to time, problems arise that do take us a bit of time to identify and fix as they are unforeseen and completely new to our customer support and tech teams. Our goal is to try and inform the clients accurately about the situation and try to quickly remedy the issue.

We really feel with our customizable product line and an ever improving customer support experience we can offer clients an overall quality product. We sincerely apologize for and inconveniences you may have experienced with CMD. We happily welcome any feedback as this really helps us evolve and if you ever have any problems with customer support with CMD please contact me personally.





Regards,

Jeremy Fields



Creative Motion Design - Stay Original

www.creativemotiondesign.com

sales: 1-888-228-0399 ext #1

direct: 1-704-837-0100

I would also like to add that I was having some issues and CMD took care of them very quickly. I also spent a LONG time on the phone with Jeremy today working through some of the "we were having growing pains" talk, some of the "where do we go from here" ideas, etc. and I have to say that I still believe CMD is the coolest web design company out there. They have taken care of every need we have and we couldn't be happier with them.

Some ideas we're tossing around with CMD:

* Availability calendar online so your clients can check if you're available.
* Album layout similar to pageflip - that program we use to show soft album pages/allow flipping back & forth, etc. for multiple sized albums, custom to you!
* NEW multi-song music player (this one's new but available now!)

And quite possibly more. If you have other "ideas" for CMD sites let me (or of course Jeremy) know - I will be passing on some ideas to them soon.

(I don't work for CMD although with my loyalty to their awesome sites/team and the way I rave about them, I should. LOL)

Thanks for the information Jeremy - I know people like knowing what's going on and just so I've put it out there publicly, I hope that when you do have the unexpected downtimes, you can let people know via the blog so we can pass the word on to other clients so nobody freaks out or panics!

Thanks
M

Wow. I must've been really hormonal when I wrote my last post. Thankfully I've had the baby since then.

Compared to the other website design companies out there I think that CMD is one of the much better ones. I enjoy my site very mcuh and love that I can change it whenever I feel like it. However, the issues with customer service have always been a bit of a pain for me. I hope that part of CMD improves. If it does they will be pretty much unbeatable. For now I'm wishing I were rich so that I could get a new site.

Whoa - CMD actually posted in this thread! And they were professional about it too.

I'm not really surprised - I've been eyeing a site from them for a while now.
And with Jeremy posting from CMD to explain the problems, I am sold.

CMD - when I am ready, you'll be hearing from me!

Hey Johnny, they do a great job as far as I am concerned.
Thanks for posting Jeremy.
That rocks!

I am using CMD too. I did have trouble in May like everyone else, but I feel CMD handled it very well. I emailed them about the trouble and they responded with what was going on. I understand that things like this happen every once in a while. I have been with CMD for about a year and a half, and I have not had trouble like this before. I think I remember one other time my site was down for a couple hours.

I am very impressed with CMD customer support. They always respond within a few hours of my email.

I forgot to mention my favorite thing about CMD. When a customer service rep wasn't working out, she was let go. They make changes and they are SO trying to be the best out there without getting too big too quickly.

(we chatted about WPPI - they didn't do the show because they know they aren't ready for that growth and basically booking 100 new clients is great for income but suck if you get behind and can't rock)

I just have to say that the new customer service person has been right on top of everything. I appreciate that CMD has taken steps to make things the best they can be! Cause now it's a lot better.

Layla? LAYLA ROCKS!!!!

Layla is exactly what a great customer service person should be! She's fast, she knows what to do, she's aggressive, she follows up and she gets things done! I'm LOVIN having Layla at CMD!!!

M

I agree. Her response time is phenomenal, and she's always incredibly friendly. CMD is trying very hard, and I truly respect that. Regardless of their problems before, they've come back full force and on a mission to please their customers.

Yes, Layla! She kicks butt.

I ran across this great thread today and would like to ask if anyone that uses CMD is having the same problem as I am ever since CMD had server problems.

When a client sends an e-mail to our CMD web address it is timed five hours after they send it. For example: You send me an e-mail at 2:33 pm today. I receive it within a minute. However the time it shows as being sent is 7:33pm today.

I have talked to Customer Service at CMD and she checked on it and was told it was because the e-mail server is in a diffrent time zone. What? How does yahoo, gmail, .mac and every other email server handle it. Theirs works.

I emailed Jeremy Fields and he said he has not ever heard of such and would get back to me.

Has anyone else come across this problem with CMD?