Authorize.net is down

[earth-friendly]

Authorize.net is down. Apparently, there was a fire in their datacenter.
Here's a small story about it:
Credit Card Processing Company Authorize.net Knocked Offline - Holiday weekend catches major card processing company unprepared... - dslreports.com
Their website is completely down, and they don't answer their phones.
Does anyone have any more information?
I don't know if they are going to be able to get back up anytime soon, and all my credit card transactions are timing out.
Any suggestions on how to get an account with a new payment processor really quickly, and set things up with them? Any other suggestions on what to do?
Help!!!!!

[michael_s]

Tons of info on twitter #authorizenet

Also see this:
#hashtags - authorize.net

[earth-friendly]

What does one do on your site, in a situation like this?
I could set the "down for maintenance", but then people couldn't see the contents of my site. What I'd like to do, is to have a message that prints on the top of every page, explaining the situation, giving my phone #, and linking them to my blog for more info.
Is there a simple way to do this?

Thanks!
-Lori-

[michael_s]

Just switch to paypal for the duration of the problem. Paypal modules are already integrated into osCMax, so turn off Authorizenet and turn on Paypal IPN.

If you don't already have a Paypal account, get one here: http://bit.ly/ofjiX

Takes just a few minutes to set up and you can be back in business in no time.

[earth-friendly]

Thanks! That's a great idea. I'm also wondering, though, for future issues, if I have a message that I'd like to put at the top of every page (for example: "I'm going away on vacation on December 20--get your orders in now")--
Is there a good way to do this?

Thanks!
-Lori-

[michael_s]

Just edit main_page.tpl.php in your template directory and put the text in there. It will show on every page, or if you just want it on the main page, put it in Define Mainpage in the admin panel.

[earth-friendly]

Thanks for the info!
Sadly, my osCMax website is not yet live, and I'm still using my old, old website So I wasn't able to quickly install the paypal module while authorize.net was down. I'm busily testing everything in my osCMax site, and getting all my product info up to date. I hope to be up soon! I can't wait until I get to have all these great features available!

Example: I have the "verified by authorize.net" box on my site. During the outage, this was timing out and causing my pages to take forever to load. On my old, old site, I had to go in and comment out that code. On my oscmax site: I just went into the admin and with one click, the box was inactive! osCMax rocks!!