A Sunny Commune - Cheng's Blog

Stranger still: Panther's a CDN, like Akamai is. So that side's contracted out, and I wouldn't trust that "PWS" -- I bet the "P" stands for "Panther". (Besides, it says "Linux", too...)

Anyhow, I happened to see your screenshot on Bloglines' imagewall, and Webkinz is kind of an inside joke with my wife and I because I nearly applied there for a senior sysadmin position a couple months ago. I guess I'm glad I'm not working Christmas Day :-) But for what it's worth, that job posting (on Workopolis, no longer available) made them out to be a pretty straightforward Linux/Apache/PHP shop.

Merry Christmas -- I hope they get things sorted out so your daughter can get her chihuahua's adoption finished up soon!

Posted by Rich on December 25, 2007 at 01:16 PM EST #

I am from Panther Express CDN - who serves some content on behalf of Webkinz.com. I wanted to clarify some questions or points that were unclear:

PWS stands for Panther Web Server which is our own cache-server built completely in-house by the Panther team - it is NOT a web-server (per se), and it is certainly NOT any variation of a Microsoft product. As you guys pointed out, our software runs on Linux and we are a CDN that is distributed network with more than 45 locations worldwide.

Webkinz does not run PWS, they run their own webservers. When a client goes to www.webkinz.com the DNS is CNAME'd to Panther's network (which serves up an IP based on your location and current network performance) and we then serve the webpage to the user. One part of this equation though is the back-end communication with the Webkinz servers for things like data retrieval for un-cachable data (first fetch, etc), authentication,certain js files, etc. Panther serves images and flash files within the game and on the splash page for Webkinz.

We are currently working with the very dedicated Webkinz team to alleviate the bottleneck that comes with the massive surge of new account traffic. And FWIW, I currently can get into webkinz fine to play with our pet, so keep trying :-).

Are you coming from the UK ChengFeng? If you have an IP address we can dig into the problem a bit more.

Hope this helps clear up some questions and thanks for your patience. Feel free to email me with any questions regarding Panther or CDN's (or this post).

Happy Holidays!

Jason Evans
Director of Operations
Panther Express CDN

Posted by Jason Evans on December 25, 2007 at 04:24 PM EST #

Ah, thanks for the follow-up Jason!

Posted by Andy on December 25, 2007 at 04:53 PM EST #

Just something else I noticed. I did read the note from the Panther folks but the versioning number system is remarkably similar to Apache's (i.e it exactly the same). :-)

Posted by Scott on December 25, 2007 at 05:27 PM EST #

Does anyone know when new users can set up accounts(estimated time?). I completely understand traffic issues and can just imagine how many excited kids are out there around the world wanting desperatley to explore the webkinz world. I am just curious to know the time-frame of when new members can get on site. Its such a great idea. My two children are so anxious to adopt their pets.
Thanks for any response:) Merry Christmas!

Posted by abaker on December 25, 2007 at 10:16 PM EST #

RW has it spot on. I can't believe the people behind Webkinz couldn't have planned appropriately to handle the "large volume of traffic" that was absolutely guaranteed to occur on Xmas day and days following. I think Webkinz is a pathetic story of cynicism and bad management.
The marketing geniuses at Webkinz seem to have followed a three-step plan for getting rich at the expense of kids and their gullible parents:
Step 1: Spend money creating media hype about a blended virtual/real product, targeting kids too young to be jaded about cyberspace;
Step 2: Contract with Chinese sweatshops to crank out millions of plush pets for pennies apiece, and sell them for absurd prices on the strength of the media hype;
Step 3: Retire on a tropical island with few mirrors, so you can avoid facing your own greed-warped visage.
On the upside, maybe millions of kids will spend a little less time on the Internet now, and a little more time doing things like reading books and playing with toys that actually encourage independent thought.

Posted by hrangil on December 26, 2007 at 11:55 AM EST #

What exactly do you mean by "level"? We use a combination of many Tier1 and Tier2 ISP upstreams with multiple 10G ports at most locations. Panther certainly isn't capacity limited.

Posted by Jason Evans on December 27, 2007 at 09:54 AM EST #

Terrible...how can you rip people off right this ?.
Thousands of kids will give up on this novelty before next week if they don't fix the problem.

I bought one for my daughter and haven't been able to log in once in a week...Not only on Xmas day.

Shame on Ganz for selling these toys without having a proper equipment/server ready.

Posted by WebNoKinz on December 27, 2007 at 02:41 PM EST #

Cheng,

I'd love to know how to turn email notification of comments *off*, now that this has sort of become Webkinz-complaint central! :-)

(Hopefully posting another comment with the box unchecked will do it. If not, could you please hit that switch for me?)

Posted by Rich on December 27, 2007 at 03:01 PM EST #

my children each got webkins for xmas. however for 2 days i keep getting logged of or we just get error messages: can not log on to webkinz right now try later.

what is up?

Posted by RACHEL on December 27, 2007 at 07:28 PM EST #

My boys have had WebKinz since August this year, and the web performance has usually been good. My youngest son received a new WebKinz for Christmas. We encountered the server error during the Adoption, and since have not been able to do anything but login. I submitted a request for Support assistance, and received an automated email that I can expect help in 1-3 working days!!!

Ganz should have been prepared for this level of activity. I am very disappointed (not to mention my 5-year-old!) and I won't be recommending WebKinz to anyone anymore.

Posted by SadSanta on December 28, 2007 at 04:36 PM EST #

My daughter received 2 Webkinz for Christmas, and we were able to get through the adoption with little difficulty, but have been restricted (on our computer, as well as my parents') to just the Arcade, Employment Office, Kinzville Academy, and the shops. Every time we try to load "my room", DiceKinz, the Tournament Arena, and other pages, we are automatically logged out.

I tried updating the Flash Player (and any other similar program I could think of), and we still get the same error. It is ludicrous that we cannot contact customer support and get a response (I received the auto-reply, but never was actually contacted within the 1-3 business days the auto-response stated...actually, I never was contacted at all). And, I definitely don't have any server issues. The room is one of the biggest parts of this "toy", and yet we are unable to get to it! Very frustrating...hope someone can provide some real feedback soon.

All the best...

Posted by Carolyn on January 04, 2008 at 04:42 PM EST #

My daughter also has a webkinz, that she got for Christmas, and it still doesn't have a room. This is very frustrating for her!

Posted by Casey on January 05, 2008 at 01:23 PM EST #

Im in the toy business 25 years...the company is terrible..they dont care what you people think..honestly..and the reps are the worst to work with...they dont care either..they have made there millions already...but good news Ty Warner is going to make Beanie Babies an online pet...I always thought they were soft and cuddly more anyway..and he's just one guy..that invented them...not a company that makes you buy other things from them that you cant sell in your toy store..well off to Toy Fair in Feb..hope to find out more about the beanie babies

Posted by 205.188.117.130 on January 15, 2008 at 12:36 PM EST #

Interesting post ! but I don't think the blame should be on a personal web server for a Windows client OS.

Posted by Ice road on February 14, 2008 at 04:11 AM EST #

The Webkinz website is a horror! Tried to use "Contact Us" to report stuck items and other problems and encountered an entirely different problem: When we registered, we entered a 5 character Username, and it fulfilled the 4+ character requirement. We use this name to log on each time. However, when we attempt to contact them thru their format, we get an error message that the Username must be 6 or more characters! So there is no way we can use their system. It took DAYS to locate an e-mail address other than what they offer on their site. Now they just don't bother to answer the e-mail. Have you noticed some of the errors in the Quizzy area? In one of the Math sections, where the answer is to be "equation", the math problem given as an example is 5+2=10. Um...not the last time I learned it! There are several others of similar error. It's a very frustrating website, indeed!

Posted by Tunia on April 23, 2008 at 03:48 AM EDT #

Hello, you all Webkinz fans, I’m the Co-owner of webkinz, and if your tired of not having a enough money, the owner of webkinz told me a great solution for you. All your old codes that just lay there in your room can make you kinz cash, just email me at webkinz_smithd@yahoo.com and send your old codes, but make sure you give your username or i wont know what account to give the kinz cash to. Each code is worth 1000 kinz cash, so if you have 5 code you will get 5000 kinz cash.
Sincerley,
Mr.Smith

Posted by Daniel Smith on November 06, 2008 at 11:02 PM EST #

you have the wrong code

Posted by Javannah on December 25, 2008 at 02:01 PM EST #