As you probably know I’ve just spent about 24 hours in Blogging Hell. My website host, GoToHellDaddy.com shut the site down because something was “causing the shared resources to be over-utilized”. They listed some php code which contained references to “comment_title and comment_author” along with other confusing but important (I’m sure) text that was causing the excessive CPU usage. My thought was that it was probably the Recent Comments widget that WAS on the right sidebar. I’ve removed it in the hopes that that will fix the problem. I guess we don’t really need that info if it was indeed the culprit that brought down B&P.
In the meantime I’ve been researching different webhosts just in case this continues to be a problem. If anyone has any suggestions of a good reliable host (that’s reasonable in cost) that can handle 20,000 – 30,000 hits a day without giving me these problems I’ll keep it in mind.
Again, I’m sorry for the downtime. Hopefully we’re back to normal. But….. in the event B&P disappears again it might take a few days to get up and running on a different host.
Jonco, glad you’re back. Sorry it’s been such a pain, and I am
sure it has been a pain for you. But your loyal following is still here.
As a small token of appreciation you’ve got a 12 pack coming.
Gary
Hi Jonco,
I use Dreamhost.com for my website. They offer unlimited webspace and bandwidth and so far their servers have been much faster than my previous hosts. I’ve only just switched to Dreamhost last month after having a nightmare with IXHosting but they came highly recommended via Lifehacker and so far things have been great. I will be moving my other sites to Dreamhosts in the near future.
Hey dude. I think I can help you out! I have a dedicated server with lots of spare capacity. Email me if you are interested!
All my fault, sorry.
I’m just so freakin glad ur back…..i need my daily dose of chuckles from you.
Who are you and why are you pretending to run a website???????????
Okay, I missed you too.
Kisses, Jonco. I missed you. Can’t believe they would just crunch you like that and I do like the sidebar to see who has the latest comments. Find someone who is much nicer to you.
I’m gonna buy you some more beer too for all your efforts but got to wait till payday. Got to buy T.P. again. XOXO
Gary,
Thanks for the 12 pack! I need it tonight.
KLAW, I think it might have been the clock. Perhaps the website was on Homer Time. Dunno.
use weebly.com you can pay or make a free one with .weebly.com/net/watever at the end.
try http://www.westhost.com I have an old friend that helps run the company. I don’t have a site so i can’t offer any expertise but it could be an alternative.
I was wondering what happened. I often get an error message here, but only when I go to read comments. I think you’d probably do well with Dreamhost, and if you sign up through an existing member, you should get a promotional discount to start with. My host is Squarespace, but I doubt they’d be affordable at your traffic level. Even with my paltry traffic, I have to store photos elsewhere.
Try http://www.bluehost.com. Bryan Ibbott over at coverville.com highly recommends it. His site rarely has issues and has large amounts of traffic
E-mail me if you need a referral to DH to get a discount Jonco. There’s a contact link on my front page under “Comments”.
Since most of us are probably aware of the old site, can you still use it for some updates or even just simply have an open mike when there’s downtime here? I visited there a couple times today just to see if you or anyone had anything to say.
Eh personally I use GoDaddy. They do have issues and I don’t deal with serious RSS feeds like you do, but at least they have relatively good 24hr customer service.
I didn’t realize what a B&P addict I was until I spent a looong time looking around the web for a cyber clue about where you might have disappeared to!
DAYUM I was about to go insane with no B&P I thought it was fuc*ing vista fuc*ing me again glad you are back ,hey Gary thats a good idea Im gonna do it too
I hope you find a place where you can re-install the Recent Comments box. I can’t believe how useful that was to see who posted recently, and even who was awake and on at the moment.
I agree about the recent comment thingy…it was very convenient
Jonco – as a (possibly pointless) suggestion, I wonder if expanding the recent comments thing and putting it on its own page (i.e. a link from the front page) might help. After all, as long as its on the front page every single one of your thousands of visitors has to make that query everytime they go to a new page – be it a comments page, the next page of the site, or even simply refreshing the front page. If you add that up it makes for a serious amount of bandwidth and processor activity.
If it was a dedicated page then people could still look at it should they want to (which I and many others do) but it wouldn’t be an automatic tax on your bandwidth every time you serve a page.
Just a thought.
Scott, I thought about the old site, but I didn’t think many people would be aware of it.
I could debate you on the “relatively good 24hr customer service.”… but I won’t.
On the Recent Comments thing… I didn’t realize many people actually used it. I don’t because I use the WordPress dashboard to read the comments. I’m not even sure that was the culprit, but the offending query looked like it might be related to the comments so that was a natural choice. It was an add-on and not part of WordPress or the theme I use. GoDaddy doesn’t give you much technical help at all. They won’t guide you in any way to figure out what the problem is. I’m not that knowledgeable in php or html to figure it out myself. They just tell you there is a problem and you have to figure out what that problem is and how to resolve it.
So, if there is a programmer out there who can tell me for sure what the offending code refers to I’d appreciate it.
I’m not a complete propellerhead but I know my way around HTML and I’m not scared of PHP so if you want to send me details of the error then I’ll be happy to have a look.
How bout a B&P poll: How many people loved and used the Recent Comments box?
Wowzers – With Maffu’s computer skills and Ronco’s looks, this could be bigger than a porn site!
Ronco? Any relation to K-Tel?
Maffu – I think it’s his twin bro ->
http://bitsandpieces.us/2009/04/10/traveling-with-the-president/
B&P was giving me so many problems as far as long time to load or even connect at all for a few months, until you got it back up yesterday. Whatever you changed seems to have eliminated all problems. However, I do miss the recent comments, but I can use the other comments thing up in the right corner just as well and it shows 20 comments rather than just 10.
Just a suggestion to help reduce bandwidth usage: Avoid using animating GIF files if they are hosted on your web host provider (like your watercycle story just a few up from this one: ). Animating GIFs rack up bandwidth usage nonstop as long as they’re on someone’s screen. All it takes is a couple of people leaving B&P up on their screen overnight and you accumulate lots of wasted bandwidth use.
Love your blog. Keep up the good work.
RICK
Rick, Good point. I never thought about that, but I guess you’re right. I’d hate to give them up entirely… hmmm….. what to do…what to do…..
I really miss the last comment section. It enabled you to see what posts
people were going crazy on and get in on the action. Really cool when DJ,
Scott, Gary, KLAW, tdc, infi, you know… where on a roll.
If you ever want to see Scott on a roll, you can always look at the TP holder in yout bathroom.
Jonco, animated gifs DO NOT keep loading. They load once, then the picture replays the animation over and over by itself. Want proof? Load up an animated gif, then disconnect your computer from the internet.
Anyhow, I use hostmonster.com for my own personal websites and for all of my employer’s websites. My employer used to be with godaddy.com and I agree that they suck balls! When I needed help with something on godaddy, I had to call a long-distance phone number to get help and then wait on hold.
With hostmonster, I once had a coding problem and found that not only could I chat with a rep live online (an actual rep, not a stupid computer program pretending to be a rep), I could call a 1-800 number and talk to a live rep. I’ve done both several times with questions and they’ve been able to help me on the first attempt every time. Anyhow, that coding problem I had, they just went in and solved it for me and then emailed me what they did to correct it. Now THAT is customer service. Not only is their service great, they also are super cheap with unlimited bandwidth, storage, emails, the whole works, etc.
Thanks Sander. Very helpful.