Under the covers

So the combined forces of Ops and Edit gather round the big red button to launch the new site and......

Nothing happens! Some last minute glitch sees us switch back to the old site for 5 minutes and then all systems go and we are live!

Immediately Edit start to fidget in their seats wondering how long they have to stay before they can head to the pub, Ops furiously fixing broken images and fine tuning the performance.

8:55pm, Edit can't wait any longer and disappear to Davy's for a well earned beer. Ops continue fixing....

So, 9am, about 3-4 hours work to get through before we all put our fingers in our ears and hit the big red button. All seems calm so far, a collective no-entry sign hangs over the Operations area as everyone gets down to the final list of P1 bugs...

The big decision point and despite the best efforts of the combined Ops and Edit teams, we have to revert to Plan B. With the prospect of another 3-4 hours work before being ready to launch and the tiredness of a long weekend behind us, we are unanimous in our view to launch tomorrow afternoon.

A mixture of disappointment and relief combined, everyone knows it's the right decision and finish off for the day so as to be ready bright and early tomorrow morning. Should be an easy day tomorrow....

So the data is safely migrated thanks to the IPD team in Singapore and we've spent all day tidying and cleaning and sprucing up the site ready for launch.

Of course, like all construction projects, there are some areas that are not quite finished yet and plenty of "snagging" going on as is the technical term I believe.

Still a long way to go, lots of pre launch bugs to fix and several Go/No Go discussions to look forward to tomorrow. The team are either crashed out and saving their energy for tomorrow or pushing on into the night depending on their personal preferences.

The guys in Singapore will be back at work in 4-5 hours so the time difference is being used to it's best advantage. Until tomorrow....

The big countdown begins now. After nearly nine months of design, development and beta testing, the new site is ready for launch. Ahead of us lies a long weekend of data migration, editorial slog, bug fixing and pizza's.

This is without doubt the biggest project we've ever undertaken here at CNET. We have redesigned sites many times before but nothing on this scale. Not only have we redesigned and re-structured the site, we have completely re-built the content management system to bring user generated content and social networking functionality to the fore.

The data team in Singapore are just about to start the process of migrating all the content and user data from the old CMS to the new. Then we can start our part and with a following wind we should be ready to go live on Monday....