Something is wrong at WordPress.com / CNN.com

Update: The problem is now fixed, seems to be caused by a redirection error.

Many of the (CNN) VIP sites at WordPress.com are redirecting to: http://superfantastically.com/. It includes politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com, popwatch.ew.com, tech.fortune.cnn.com and many others…

$ curl -D – http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:35:41 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: close
Vary: Cookie
Location: http://superfantastically.com/
Content-Length: 0

$ curl -D – http://popwatch.ew.com/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:36:28 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: close
Vary: Cookie
Location: http://superfantastically.com/
Content-Length: 0


We are not sure what is going on, but on Twitter lots of people are complaining too: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=superfantastically.com

Update: Now it is showing the following error:

Ouch!

Sorry, but we messed up. We are working on the issue and trying to resolve it as quickly as possible. Please check back in a few minutes.

Update:Paul Kim from Automattic was kind enough to comment below:

Hey folks – I work for Automattic. Around 9:53AM CST this morning, while troubleshooting an issue, one of our developers accidentally pointed all mapped domains on WordPress.com to their test site. We quickly became aware of the problem and replaced the test site with an error message, since some site owners were concerned that their sites had been compromised. We then began the process of restoring good data from our backups. By 10:48AM CST, all data had been restored and we had cleared various caches which may have been polluted with bad data. There was never a risk to the content associated with any site on WordPress.com, or any security compromise. Instead, it was an important mapping table that was accidentally overwritten during debugging. We apologize for the problems and are looking into ways to prevent this type of issue from happening in the future.

6 comments
  1. I work for Automattic. Around 9:53AM CST this morning, while troubleshooting an issue, one of our developers accidentally pointed all mapped domains on WordPress.com to their test site. We quickly became aware of the problem and replaced the test site with an error message, since some site owners were concerned that their sites had been compromised. We then began the process of restoring good data from our backups. By 10:48AM CST, all data had been restored and we had cleared various caches which may have been polluted with bad data. There was never a risk to the content associated with any site on WordPress.com, or any security compromise. Instead, it was an important mapping table that was accidentally overwritten during debugging. We apologize for the problems and are looking into ways to prevent this type of issue from happening in the future.

      1. Hi. Barry with Automattic here. I would recommend clearing your browser cache. If that doesn’t work, it is possible an intermediate proxy is caching the redirect. The problem has been resolved on the WordPress.com side for a few hours. I just tested again with your site and it works fine for me.

Comments are closed.

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