Community Support Brings Back OnlySimchas.com

HACKENSACK, NJ - January 6, 2003 - When its server crashed last Monday and they discovered that the database was unrecoverable, the designers of OnlySimchas.com faced a tough dilemma. Should they rebuild the site or call it quits?

Three years of programming, sweat and tears had resulted in a website more popular than anyone could have imagined. It was home to over 6,000 digital photo galleries of joyous occasions ranging from births to bar mitzvahs, from engagements to weddings. It was also the destination for over 40,000 registered users (many more unregistered), who combined to view over 5 million pages monthly. E-mails from as far away as South America, Belgium, Sweden and Israel have flooded the team beseeching them not to abandon this endeavor.

Certainly the question was most difficult for Dov Katz, the team's technical genius. His hours of daily site maintenance are usually performed during the hours that common folk are usually fast asleep. His early morning tasks regularly involve performance testing, monitoring user registration, and functional problem solving. His wife Shira uses her evening quiet time to select and prepare cover photos for the day's new uploads. "Those hours could have been put to other use, or sleep," Shira explained, "but Dov felt he had an obligation to the community."

"When I read the e-mails of encouragement and thought about the people who really look to us to uplift their day," says Dov as his fingers type furiously and he stares into two adjacent computer monitors, "I remembered how much reward there is for this type of work. " One of the many hundreds of e-mails from avid viewers writes, "Keep up the good work. Everything happens for a reason: you just need to hold on long enough to find out what it is."

And so, OnlySimchas.com was reinstated this Monday morning, thanks to the tireless efforts of Dov Katz and the rest of team OnlySimchas, strengthened by the tremendous support from the global Jewish community. "I'm confident that over the next few days our users will repost their pictures, listings, Mazel Tov wishes and re-register," says Yossi Markovitz, "that's just the kind of user loyalty we have." Adds Doron Katz, "The site has been a fantastic experience since the beginning. From the moment it went down, I knew we had no choice but to bring it back. We still have great plans for the site's future growth. But for now we may just need to send Dov on a short vacation!"