System Maintenance – September 21, 11AM EST

We are doing some maintenance on the Libsyn platform today at approximately 11AM EST.  We expect this to be a very short window of 5 minutes but may take up to 20 minutes.  During this time we will put the system into maintenance mode so you will be unable to login to your accounts.  All other parts of the system will continue to function as normal, including rss feeds, blog pages, media delivery and our html5-player.  We will update this post when the maintenance begins.

UPDATE 11:04 AM EST – We have started the maintenance and have disabled the ability to login.  We’ll update this post when we are finished.

UPDATE 11:34 AM EST – The maintenance has been completed at this time

2014 Winter Holiday

Our support team will have the day off tomorrow 12/25 and also New Years Day 1/1.  Between the 25th and 1st we’ll be working with a reduced support staff.  Please be understanding if ticket response times are higher than normal during that time.  Members of our admin team will be on-call to handle any urgent system-wide issues.

Heartbleed Information

What is Heartbleed?  It’s a vulnerability in certain versions of the OpenSSL software that is widely used across the internet to secure connections.  This bug was initially disclosed on April 7th, if you’d like to see more details on this bug please visit this site:  heartbleed.com.  After doing an audit of our servers we discovered that many were using one of the affected versions of OpenSSL.  All of our servers were updated with new fixed versions of OpenSSL by noon (EST) on April 8th.  In addition to getting the servers updated we’ve also replaced our SSL certificate with a new one and updated our API keys with the company we use to handle all of our billing.

Due to the nature of this vulnerability it’s extremely difficult to know if any of the affected servers were exploited.  At this time we’ve seen no evidence that any user information or data has been compromised.  As an extra precaution, we are recommending that users go ahead and update their passwords.  If you need help changing your password please see the below guides:

Podcast Hosting Customers:  http://support.libsyn.com/faqs/manage-your-account/

MyLibsyn Premium Subscription Customers:  http://support.libsyn.com/faqs/managing-your-mylibsyn-account/

Libsyn 4 Update and Storage Change

After spending several months in a “beta preview” state the Libsyn 4 interface is officially now in beta and starting on Monday, February 10th it will become the default interface. This means that upon logging in to your account you’ll be taken directly to the new Libsyn 4 interface. The feedback we’ve received from the 1200 or so of you that have used the interface has been very positive and we really appreciate it.  To coincide with making it the default interface you’ll see some new features in Libsyn 4 starting on Monday, most notably:  Tumblr On-Publish and a Quick Publish widget in the dashboard.

We have some fantastic KB articles up for Libsyn 4: Libsyn 4 FAQ and a new Libsyn Tutorial YouTube Channel: Libsyn Tutor YouTube Series

The ‘old’ Libsyn 3 interface will still be available to switch to and use if needed. Please be aware that the Libsyn 3 interface is being phased out and will removed later this year. We highly recommend that you start using the Libsyn 4 interface as soon as you can.

Last but not least we are changing the way our storage archive and quota reset process works.  Right now when you upload a file it will count against your quota for 30 days and while this has worked well for us it can be confusing to understand.  Starting on Monday your storage quota will now reset on the 1st of every month.  As a bonus we’ll be resetting every ones quota on Monday, February 10th to celebrate Libsyn 4 becoming the default interface.

iTunes Store Submission Holiday Downtime

We received the following notice from iTunes late yesterday night:

If you’ve recently started a new podcast and haven’t submitted it to iTunes yet you need to do that today or wait until the 27th.  Also during the 21st to 27th window changes to show level metadata (images, show title, show description, etc) and the release of new episodes will be delayed and slower than normal in showing up in the iTunes Store.