The world needs a new hero. The world needs… Mr Yearbook Man! Coming soon to a screen near you.

Yesterday at 10.40am, Jamey, my fellow web developer, accidentally deleted out the entire database holding all our yearbooks online – photos, entries, pages, users… everything. Suddenly anyone trying to access the website would have seen a blank error page, not knowing the full extent of the problem. I found out about 20 seconds later when Jamey said “oh God… no!” or something to that effect, with his head buried in his hands.

Jamey’s unplugging of the office server so as to plug in a cheese toastie machine a week earlier became trivial in comparison.

Oh no… had we really just lost everything? If we had, the business would have pretty much been ruined. Our hundreds of schools, tens of thousands of users creating yearbooks with us this year would have to go back to square one in creating their books, and more likely they’d jump ship to our competitors, demanding deposits back.

Luckily – and diligently – we keep backups.

15 minutes later and the website was back online, seemingly as though nothing had ever happened. Regrettably, however, any and all data added and changes made since 2am that morning had irretrievably been lost. We really are very sorry about this, but we’re also very fortunate that this only affected approximately 30 users.

Anyone logging into the website in the few hours after the data lost saw a message explaining the problem and linking them to this blog. We communicated the problem honestly and transparently without hiding anything.

We’ve immediately implemented some new policies to ensure this never happens again, and also to ensure that if something similar does somehow happen, that the damage done is an absolute minimum.

So how safe is your data with us?

By safe here, I mean what’s the chance of something similar to the above happening with the end result being that your whole yearbook with us is deleted, all that work lost, and you  have to start again from scratch?

Virtually nil.

As above, we keep backups. Every night, at around 2am when everyone’s fast asleep, our server backs up the database and all uploaded files and photos onto a separate physical disk on the server. So if the first disk blew up, there’d be a backup. Or if Jamey deleted the database again, there’s a backup.

But we go further. What if the whole server blew up, or the location the server’s in was burgled and the server was stolen? Right after backing everything up to the second disk, our office server connects to the main server and backs everything up to itself as well. So your data is now in three places: the live disk on the main server, a backup disk on the main server, and a disk on the office server.

But we go further. Say the office burns down the same night the server hosting facility burns down. Or say a virus makes its way onto the main server and also onto our office server. What then? Well, (almost) every day Nicola and David alternately carry portable USB hard drives with them to work. They plug them in, and everything gets backed up onto these drives. They then take them home with them at night.

Oh, and your data is also safe if you accidentally delete it with us. When you delete something like a photo or even your whole yearbook in our database, we don’t actually delete it straight away. We just mark it as deleted and then wait a while before properly deleting it. So if you change your mind in the meantime we can easily get it back

So worst case scenario, the office and main server blow up, Nic or David just bring their hard drive in and we get back up and running from there. At most we’d lose three days of data (after a weekend) and the site would be down for maybe half a day.

How safe are your files if making your own pages on your computer?

If you’re making the yearbook completely yourself offline, for example in Word or Publisher or using one of the software solutions our competitors sell, then how safe is your data? What’s the chance of your losing all that hard work?

Unfortunately, unless you’re extremely diligent with backups, your data is nowhere near as safe as it is with us. Your hard drive could (and they do, oh yes they do) stop working at any time. Your computer could be stolen. Your computer could get a virus. You could accidentally delete a file.

How safe is your data with our competitors?

Ask them. If you’re using a different yearbook company and they have an online system, ask them what their backup policy is. The last thing you want is to put so much hard work into your yearbook only to find it disappears just like that.

NOTE: I’ll do another blog post soon talking about how safe your data is with us in terms of privacy and data security. This post was just about the likelihood of losing all that data!

Due to user error, we lost some data this morning. Any changes made to yearbooks this morning between 2am and 10.45am will have been lost. We apologies for the obvious inconvenience caused and will keep you informed as this progresses.

No data entered before 2am this morning should have been affected. However, all data entered after 2am this morning and 10.45am this morning will have been irretrievably lost and will need to be re-entered. This includes photo and file uploads and user entries.

We’ve been trialling for a while now the concept of visiting schools (and other groups) around the country and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Our customers (and potential customers) really value being able to ask questions to us face-to-face, as well as flicking through our yearbooks and getting a feel for them in their hands.

If you’d like to arrange a visit with us, just get in touch saying that a visit is what you’d like. Pratik will then arrange a date and time to visit you asap. Be aware though… this is turning out to be hugely popular so you may have to wait a few days or even weeks until Pratik is able to see you. In the meantime, you can of course request a yearbook information pack or get started with a no-obligation online yearbook now.

A testimonial hot-off-the-press from a yearbook we’ve just finished for a group of engineers studying at Imperial College in London:

“I have been nothing but impressed by the service offered by AllYearbooks. AllYearbooks offer a professional and personal service that has ultimately lead to a high quaility yearbook. The online service allows for all the information within the yearbook to be captured easily, whilst allowing for almost complete customisation of the content.The people who work at AllYearbooks are always happy to help and will strive to resolve even the smallest issue that you may have with the yearbooks. The photo pages and poll results pages generated by AllYearBooks.co.uk are fantastic and the layout and information on the personal pages can be easily collected and fully customised. I would highly recommend AllYearbooks for anyone wishing to produce a yearbook and would not hesitate in using their service again in the future. AllYearBooks.co.uk turn what could be a potentially stressful and time consuming process into a easy, stress-free and enjoyable experience.”

Thanks Imperial! We hope you enjoy your yearbooks for years to come

It is the new year and now is a great time to get started on your yearbook, before revising for exams starts to take over. The more of your book you can get done now the easier the whole process will be.

If you are not sure how you want your book to look yet, you can always try a few things out. Our site is really flexible so you can change almost everything you do. For example changing your profile page layout, colours, adding and deleting photos and lots more.  If you already have some ideas for how you want your book to look but don’t know where to start, either pop them in an email to us or give us a ring. We’ll be happy to talk them through with you:-)

Christmas Day. A day to open copious presents, eat masses of food and watch The Queen on TV. And, it would appear, to work on your yearbooks. Editors from the following schools were dedicated enough to their yearbooks to login yesterday, on Christmas Day:

Cathkin High School
High School For Girls Gloucester
Haverstock Class of ‘05
St.Bartholomews
The Woodroffe school
Harlaw Academy 2010
North Berwick High School
Langley Grammar Sixth Form 2010
Elgin Academy
Sturminster Newton High School Year Book 2010
Kirkham Grammar Yearbook 2010

It’s our hundredth blog post!

It’s also the week of the birth of Jake’s second baby, a wee lady-tike. Let’s dedicate this post to her. In response to his request for name suggestions I think she should be called Alice. May she tumble down many rabbit holes.

However, I’m not going to talk at length on the baby-making side of things. This is a family site…

Instead, in order to drag out this late night blog post I will comment on what a number of people have been coming back to us about – namely, how cheap our books are, if we make them any cheaper, and if they can make them any cheaper?!?

Clearly people are feeling the pinch, and this concern is very close to our hearts as well. Jake just recently explained a part of his logic for our name – AllYearbooks – that we’re gunning to provide good quality yearbooks to all who want them. That means keeping the price down.

First of all, let me assure you that we do our best. We work to very high standards of book production, and in order to keep our prices low, we keep our margins low. We don’t make so much per yearbook order, and live off a reputation that keeps us growing and keeps people coming back.

But our prices can only go so low, and the 10%  discounts we have at the moment can’t run all year, which leaves you with the big question: How do I make my yearbook cheap enough for everyone in the year to get one?

We’ve talked about this before, but it can always stand a rehashing. So, two tips:

TIP ONE: sells lots of yearbooks!

Ordering more yearbooks can bring the price down dramatically. I’m not suggesting you order books you don’t need – although we almost always get people wanting extras once they have been handed out – but make it clear to everyone that the more people who order books, the cheaper they will be.

Get promoting among the students:

• Put up posters – in common areas or in the halls (with permission of course). Our poster is online, or you can make your own
• Ask people what they want, and then give it to them. Students will be more interested if they feel represented in the yearbook plans
• Get everyone involved. Whether they plan at first to buy a book or not, everyone should be online filling in profiles. Again, it makes them closer to the resulting product
• Get everyone even more involved! Don’t only get them onto the site. Hold competitions for cover designs, articles, art pages, poems. Let them see their work in print
• Talk people into it. At the end of the day, you believe you’re making something cool that everyone will want. Just explain that and why

TIP TWO: raise extra funds.

Between our prices and a good large order you now have a book that isn’t expensive, but there will be some people strapped for cash in their last year. You want everyone to be able to get a book, so get some extra money to bring down the price for all.

• Sales. Boot-sales, cake sales, sales for anything you have spare or can make cheap. It all goes into the pot, and parents and students will be happy to help
• Events. Run, jog, cycle for money. Have a football marathon where players come on and go off and you keep it up all day. Whatever will be fun but tough
• Sponsorship. Local businesses might want an advert in your yearbook or a card handed out with the handout. A takeaway or sandwich bar will get plenty of goodwill amongst students who might be out and about and in need of a snack

Raise a hundred pounds, or a few hundred, and suddenly your yearbooks are that bit cheaper and some more people want to splash out on one.

Anyway, that’s what’s on the breeze – the recession is still alive people, and cheap is in. And there’s my excuse for a post to announce Jake’s new baby, without even getting his permission

During a visit to a customer this week we were horrified to hear that there’s a big yearbook company out there – one of our main competitors – trying to sell yearbooks which easily fall apart. As our customer rightly said, the yearbooks were “completely crap”.

We’ve spent a lot of time and research making our yearbooks as hardy as possible. Whether they’re paperback or hardback, our yearbooks are made to last the years, keeping your memories intact for whenever you feel like reading them.

Custom pages are such an amazing way of making your yearbook more exciting and more personal. Making them on your own software and uploading to the All pages section is easy – figuring out what to put in is often less easy.

For tips on making and uploading, scroll back and you’ll find Nic’s older post that tell you everything you need to know. This is just ideas, and nothing else
You can have as many or as few custom pages as you want and they will all be full colour. They don’t cost you any extra (we wouldn’t charge you for being creative). Of course they count towards your total page number, but the website can help you to keep track and keep on budget.

And ideas?

Be creative about it. Involve the other students – not just editors; open it up to the whole year. hold competitions for pages to go in, or just get a discussion going over inventive ideas. Here are some of our favourites from previous yearbooks.

• Ask the Head or Head of Year to write an introduction
• Get the yearbook committee to write a “Thank you and Goodbye” for the end of the book
• Put some message/signature pages in at the back.  This is a great way of making the book up to an even number of pages.  Either design your own or add them from the templates in All pages.
• Put a school or year photo in as one full page
• Ask someone to draw some pictures or cartoons
• Get together some quotes or funny things people have said
• Ask someone to write a diary for a school trip
• Include poems and stories people have written
• News of the year
• Adverts for local shops and businesses
• Reviews of a play or sports events

Finally, don’t forget the pages we make for you, in with the overall price!

• Make use of the online polls.  Set your own polls questions and get everyone to vote. Then have us make an awards page, or make your own.
• Create folders in the Photo gallery, have all the members upload, and give us something to make collages for you. It all make the book even better