Windows Phone 7 Series website collapses under weight of traffic

The Windows Phone 7 Series website is currently titsup less than a day since Microsoft launched its iPhone-competing gadget. We asked the company what had gone wrong, but at time of writing Microsoft hadn't got back to us with comment. The website has one simple message that reads "Service Unavailable". Microsoft baptised …

[IT specialist]

Microsoft's back end collapsed

The Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7S) website must have been running on a Windows server, which is why it collapsed and fell down in a heap. Can't trust anything these days.

The 'Service Unavailable' sign was probably there to give people a taste of what the Windows Phone 7 Series services will be like.

[andy 103]

Really?

Looks like it's running fine to me.

[Jacqui Smith's DVD Collection!]

Windows 7 phone?

Given the success/relief of win7, doesn't it make sense to call it the 'Windows 7 Phone series' giving some consistency to their product naming.

MS do so badly with marketing, design and communication, it's a shame, they could do great things...

[Lionel Baden]

works for mee too

none

[Mike Peachey]

Because it's running Windows of course..

Perhaps if they weren't serving the site from a Windows server it might have stayed up a little longer..

[Andy Jones]

Simple

It runs on IIS and more than 15 people have tried accessing it. Obviously it cannot handle the traffic.

/Mines the one with the Apache headdress in the pocket.

[Adrian Jones]

Hmm,

Wonder if it hadn't, there'd be a story about the lack of interest?

I had a poke around there yesterday, but was somewhat surprised that the site couldn't calculate my age accurately from my date of birth.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoud have gone to Apacheservers

Well... That's IIS for ya.

[Bassey]

No fecking clue

I went to the website - which is working fine. Decided to sign-up for the "Backstage" service. I'm at work but used my home email address. TWO HOURS later the confirmation email turns up on my Windows Mobile phone (nothing to do with my Exchange server or the connection. It just took them that long to send it out).

"Thanks for registering. To confirm your registration just click here or paste the URL below into your browser"

Tapped here. Opens up in Pocket Internet Explorer.

"We're sorry. We don't currently support your browser. Please complete the registration process from your desktop".

So, the sign-up process for Windows Mobile doesn't support Windows Mobile.

Fucking Muppets!

[Bilgepipe]

Fail.

"So, the sign-up process for Windows Mobile doesn't support Windows Mobile."

I loled. Epic, epic fail, of the kind only Microsoft can truly excel.

I can't wait for Windows Mobile Series Pocket Phone 7 CE, or whatever the latest hastily rebadged title is. It's gonna be a hoot.

[Dr. Funk.]

give the VLSC fiasco

this surprises me not one jot

[Gabor Laszlo]

Working now...

I scripted wget to check it every 5 seconds. Wonder how long it will stand up to that :D

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm psychic!

I knew the content of 3/4 of the comments before reading them.

I like Linux but the Linux fanbois are worse than the Apple fanbois... and that is quite an achievement!

[Number6]

Freedom

At least the Linux fanbois let you do what you want with the system. If you want to taint the kernel then you're free to do it. They might not help if you've got problems, but they won't stop you doing your own thing.

[Bilgepipe]

@Freedom

Yawn. Next please.

[Gene Cash]

Oh please.

If the Linux guys rolled out a site to much marketing fanfare, and it went tits-up too, we'd be poking just as much fun at Apache and Redhat or whoever.

If you're a large corporation and your product dies in such a public fashion, people *should* be taking the stick to you!

Putting up a website with sufficient resources is apparently rocket science, however.

[OffBeatMammal]

Should have used Azure

doesn't that scale nicely ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh

Sounds like an MS PR stunt. What happened Steve, didn't want to do "Windows Mobile 7" parties?

[Giles Jones]

Apache

Why does Apache = Linux?!?! it is available for Windows as well ya know.

[Anonymous Coward]

they're feigning massive interest

Nobody was coming to the site, so some marketing dork got a wise idea. .oO(Hey let's unplug the server, and then leak it to the press that demand is so huge that our servers got slagged.)

[Steve Evans]

Hmmm...

My thoughts exactly...

As the old marketing man says, there is no such thing as bad publicity... Although Toyota might have just disproved than!

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps M$ should try...

running their busier with Apache on OpenBSD

[James Loughner]

No Moon

Site does not work with Moonlight. GUess they don't want us Linux users to come back.

[dylan 4]

if what you mean by "it works" is...

...displaying an "Install Silverlight" button at the top of a blank page, then yes, "it works".

I wonder what proportion of potential customers might be browsing to this site from locked-down corporate environments where they don't have admin rights to install add-ons like silverlight?

Is writing some content that's visible using IE7 alone really that much to ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is a FAIL anyway

Only microsoft could present its new mobile technology platform on a site which doesn't render if you don't have Silverlight installed.

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm

But is it heavy traffic, or a DoS attack?

[Annwyn]

Not just the one Microsoft site...

Hotmail also had the same message for a short time yesterday evening GMT - hmmm...

[Tony Paulazzo]

What's in a name?

>the clunky name of Windows Phone 7 Series<

WinPhone7 - much better!.