Thoughts On The Vocal Outage: October 2025
And It Was Dealt With Well
Introduction
Just a few observations on the current lack of Vocal
Down
SO AWS has caused Vocal and Blue Sky to go down. Although this stops us from publishing on Vocal, it does not stop us from writing and creating.
I am writing this on Google Docs, which gives me a backup if I need it. Of course, no one can see this until I publish. I could publish on my blog, but then it is likely only robots would actually βseeβ it.
We should all have alternate editors to Vocal for times like these.
I do like how easy it is to insert multimedia into the Vocal editor, but you donβt have fonts, colour and indentation, but it is generally a robust editor. My main issue with it is the pointless autosave, which has lost me a few sentences which I then have to retype.
Currently, I am trawling Facebook for artwork for my forthcoming stories. Maybe I will use some for this one when AWS (which I think stands for Amazon Web Services) returns. I donβt know if their insurance covers this. but Vocal should give us a small refund based on what we pay per day and the average number of reads we get, so I would get about 66c, but that is very unlikely.
One very good thing is that for the first time, Vocal emailed members with the state of play. See the examples below:
This is a most welcome action from Vocal. We know that these situations happen, and these actions show care for your subscribers.
Thank you for that, Vocal. The Status Site is showing the state of play as well. You should bookmark this, as it was working during the downtime:
Conclusion
Thanks for reading, and I would love to know how you spent your time that you would normally spend Vocalising
I included Los Lobos' cover of Ritchie Valens' "C'mon Let's Go" from the "La Bamba" soundtrack, because we are back up and running.
About the Creator
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Comments (16)
Hi Mike - Interesting schpiel..! I was recently hacked badly. My fault I fell for the scammers scheme. Had to replace everything - bank accounts/credit cards, etc. Went to iCloud and a strong virus protector; I'd recommend that to all. *I was even rejected from Facebook - "Broke Rules..!" btw; Richie 'Valens'~zuela park is nearby our home. Best, j.k.in.l.a.
Wooohooooo congratulations on your Leaderboard placement! ππππππ
Thanks for the information. I was on the song shout, shout, knock yourself out
Thanks, I saw the e-mail/
Me too. Spent time on other things while waiting.
I just continued on as normal. Got work done, wrote a new poem (which I posted on here as soon as I was able), wondered why all the technology around me was trying to take a downturnβ¦you know, the usual. At least Vocal also extended the Parallel Lives Challenge deadline in response to this outage. I donβt think that Iβll necessarily be taking advantage of that, but itβs good of them to have made sure that everyone still had enough time to get their entries in.
Read your piece on Facebook about what happened yesterday. Couldn't get back on Vocal over here till evening. Posted a few ideas on Facebook.
I will have to check my email to see if I also got those emails from vocal. My email fills up quickly with ads from any website I've ever seen so I tend to avoid it π π I was genuinely upset by Vocal being down. I had a whole day to myself yesterday to read and I couldn't see anything. I did however scroll Facebook and read about other people's thoughts on it being gone and when it came back, I did a little poking around. There's this ad I see constantly on Facebook about vocals challenges. I opened up the comments and saw so many people upset that the challenges are only for plus members. That led me to a reddit thread where former vocal members were talking about how much vocal has changed and how there's hardly interaction anymore. I can't help but agree. I was going through some of my older stuff and J had lots of comments and hearts from people that I don't really see not just on my own work but others as well). I see so many people publishing things that have 0 likes or comments and it's crazy because this used to be such a hopping place. People were always interacting with eachothers content. Seems there's a surplus of AI Generated content and a lack of human connection and I find that a little disappointing. I love the prompts of the challenges but I loved the community that used to be here more. Not sure if it's enough to make me delete my vocal account (yet) but it is a thought that crossed my mind. π€·
I spent mine watching paranormal ghosthunting on you tube me and hubbyπ¦π¦π¦
Thanks for your observations mate! Honestly I was quite surprised at how quickly it was sorted out because there are still some sites that are down across the internet.
Your observations about Vocal life are always salutary, Mikeydred. I agree: Vocal communicated with all of us promptly and clearly about the nature and origins of this disruption, and things were back in order in a short time. As compared to past crises, this one was handled rather dexterously.
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Your saying what I was thinking, the email certainly helped letting us know. I used the time writing out a new article (I still use pen and paper). Thankyou for sharing xx
Very useful as always Mike. I have bookmarked it as I thought it was me.
I really liked your reminder that true writers keep writing, even when the platforms go down! This is exactly what I was doing. I write all my stories in Word, so I had plenty of things to work on.
I write sometime on my notebook. I have lost save story when I try to write on my android phone. Did you know grammarly store your stories as well? Most website depend on Amazon web services. Maybe someday, there will be more web services available to choice from.