Under Construction Theme

Yep, Atlas Quest is under construction! Most of the time, you’ll only see this ‘theme’ when Atlas Quest goes down for an update—often called the Next Big Update (NBU). Typically, what distinguishes a ‘big’ update from other updates is that whatever it is being updated requires some downtime for AQ. If you happen to catch AQ during this sort of downtime, you’ll also get the clue for the Under Construction letterbox. The only time this clue is available is when AQ is down for maintenance, so it might be worth a visit to visit if you know ahead of time when downtime is scheduled. =)

This theme I created because I’m migrating AQ to a nice, shiny new server. Our old one in Northern Virginia ran of disk space, and rather than try to keep that server going, we’re upgrading to shiny new digs in Los Angeles. The main problem is that our new server must be rebuilt from scratch, so it’s going to take awhile. And because the IP address is changing, even after the new server is back up, it might take time for the new IP address to propagate to your part of the web. Hopefully, this should not take more than a few hours, but last time this happened, some people reported not being able to access Atlas Quest for as long as a week! That’s definitely a worst-case scenario, but as a result, I wanted to give people plenty of warning about this downtime.

Kelsung suggested a downtime theme involving police tape, biohazard warnings, and radiation warnings all over the page. But let’s face is, AQ isn’t toxic! =) However, I rather liked the idea of an ‘under construction’ theme and thus, this theme was born.

Now, some of you might think this is an elaborate April Fool’s joke. Good for you! But really, if you plan to go boxing during this ‘scheduled’ downtime, do you really want to take that chance? Print your clues! You know, just in case.... ;o)