The extensive press coverage of the site has gotten to the point where it looks like next week we may have to have the "lite" version of the BF site for the entire week next week. Weekends are less busy, so we should be fine having the full BF site up this weekend.
Therefore, I would advise anyone who hasn't already done a shopping list and wants to make one, that you do it now and print it out before Monday. And for those who already have your list created, I would advise that you save/print it sometime over the weekend, just to be safe.
Pretty much all the ads are going to be out by Monday, so this shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience as there won't be that many items added. We're still working on getting the shopping lists working next week, but with so many people adding/removing items from their lists at the same time, it really is a drain on the server.
I'm pretty confident that you will be able to at least retrieve an existing list through Friday of next week, but as for adding/changing items, it's not guaranteed that the functionality will be available - we're working on it but we wanted to let you know either way. Therefore to be safe, save and/or print your list over the weekend, and we'll do our best to make sure as much functionality is available next week. We still are hoping to do the online e-mail alerts for items on your shopping lists starting Thanksgiving Day.
And we promise, next year we shouldn't have any of these issues. This stuff took us by surprise this year but it won't happen again