Apple Developer Website is Down

It is never a good sign when you visit a website and see “We’ll be back soon” at the top of the page. Sometimes, it can mean that the site is going through normally scheduled maintenance and truly will be back online in a little while. Not so with the Apple Developer website!

To clarify, the website (at the time I am writing this blog) actually does say “We’ll be back soon”. It also says that it was taken down on Thursday, July 18, 2013. When will it return? At the moment, that is unknown. The situation is undoubtedly causing frustration for developers who need to access the website.

Here are some key points of the message that currently sits on the Apple Developer website:

Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email address may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.

It goes on to say that they are going to be completely overhauling their developer systems, including updating their server software and rebuilding the entire database. If you are a developer who needs that website, all you can do is be patient and wait for the overhauling to be completed.

On the positive side of things, Apple says that if you are a developer, and your program membership was set to expire while this overhaul is happening, not to worry. They will extend your membership and your app will remain on the App Store.