Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

FactCheck Upgrades Service

10.08.2004

Well, we never expected that to happen!

As nearly everybody now knows, Vice President Cheney's reference to "factcheck.com" at the debate Oct. 5 touched off an avalanche of publicity and new visitors to our site. Our University of Pennsylvania server was overwhelmed. The number of visitors during the 24 hours after the debate reached five times our previous peak volume, and we have no idea how many tried to get on the site and failed.

We have now contracted with Boot Networks, a California company, to handle the hosting of FactCheck.org. The switchover began Thursday, Oct. 7. The content of the site will of course remain under the control of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, as always.

Visitors should notice that pages now load much more quickly. We are assured that visitors should be able to reach the site even at times of unusually high volume.

However, some features will be unavailable for a time. The "search" function is temporarily disabled, as is the "e-mail to a friend" feature. Streaming video of TV ads is not available. We are working to restore all these features as quickly as possible. In the meantime, our core content should be fully available.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience as we work through these "growing pains."

--Brooks Jackson

Director, FactCheck.org

_____

Please visit http://www.factcheck.org/miscreports.aspx?docid=274 to view this announcement in full.