An Explanation of Our Down Time Lately

It’s not often we get a chance to fill the public and our users in on what’s happening around here.

You may have noticed in the past week that we were down frequently and we ourselves were scratching our heads.

IndexWa.org was never intended to be a popular website. We figured on 1,000-5,000 hits a month and it would be a piece of cake to run.

Now we are NOT complaining, we are just filling you in. Something happened at about the 3 year mark of IndexWa.org and we began getting 35-75,000 hits a month and on two occasions we exceeded 140,000 hits.

We are on a shared server with we don’t know how many other websites (a guess would be 20) and we all draw from the same CPU (hopefully this is not too technical). Then, because we were pigs, we began having outages here and there. Five minutes a day, 10 minutes here, 15-20 there and it began to take a toll on our nerves as we want to be up 24/7, especially in the summer and winter months. Most Hosts guarantee a 99% up time which is reasonable.

So, to save money (our donors have paid for everything this past year and we THANK YOU), we moved our site from the single CPU to a GRID. The grid is a single CPU shared by others but if things get busy, it pulls ACROSS THE GRID to a bay of 20-30 other servers that are not as busy, thereby lowering our down time significantly and saving us a TON of money without having to opt for a VDed (Virtual Dedicated Server, a server just for us).

Between Wednesday and Saturday of last week we were down a LOT. We had 72 notices in my email box over those few days notifying us of down time anywhere from 5 minutes to 28 minutes. BAD. How can that be we inquired.

Since we do not review our Stats every day I figured it was time to take a peek. OH MY GOSH. From January 1, 2011 up to this writing, we have served up 984,890 Sever Requests and 326,847 Requests for pages. In just the past 7 days we have served up 56,505 Requests for pages and 93,201 Requests to the server. These are HUGE numbers for a small town site that we thought would never gain in popularity. The scary part is, TI’S STILL GROWING!! (Not complaining).

All of the above said, we may have to go to a VDed after all but it costs $$$ and we can’t do it without donations. This is an expense we never expected. If we continue to have downtime (in large amounts), that is the choice we will have to make. I just don’t know how long I will be able to support it out of my own pocked.

We are not going to go away or just pack up. That is not our style and I personally am committed to this project (which has turned into a job, but a fun job). We have met a lot of nice folks inside and outside of town and we have dedicated people whom donate to us in small amounts yearly and THEY are the ones that have made this site possible. We have had a couple of larger donors also and you know who you are and we promised to keep it silent (not your names but your donation amount).

Only time will tell if we need to go VDed. Hopefully that is not too soon. A friend of ours told us we can always sell blood. What a sense of humor.

We thank EVERYBODY who has made our site such a success. It actually chokes me up some time when I think about it.

We KNOW everything will work out. It always has thanks to you and my wife and I don’t mind eating beans and bread for a few days a year to keep it rolling.

Again, we THANK YOU for everything.

Ed & Dottie

How Many Signatures Did We Collect?

How many Electronic Signatures did we collect on the petition for High Speed to Index, WA?

We collect a total of 35 of which 3 were spammer and 5 people did not confirm or refused to confirm by clicking on the email that was sent to them. We emailed folks 2 times to no avail.

So, it was a grand total of 27 LEGAL and legitimate signatures which we will proudly bring to the Town Council Meeting tonight.

Thanks to every who participated!!!

Forums STILL Down

Yup, they are still down. Still awaiting the ok from the host. They really messed us up this time.

One good thing though, they DID finally get our files transferred correctly after they had goofed that one up.

We are unable to access our Ad Server (which we can reinstall if they goof that one up) but the forums we can’t just go throw it out there again…It’s not that easy. We will lose over 100 hours of work if they are inept at this one.

72 Hours Possibly Before Complete

Well, when we started the migration of the databases, it was a 72 hour project. The forums are still down so after 45 minutes on the phone with tech support, it turns out THEY made a mistake during the transfer of the Forums and it will be up within 72 HOURS AGAIN!!!

If it were not for our donors on this site, we would have been gone as all this cost money. So far about 85 bucks!!!! Arrrrrrrgggghhhh..

Sorry and thanks for allowing me to vent.

*OH THE HUMANITY*

It’s getting better

It appears that the blog is up and running finally. Slight speed increase. Forums are still down.

Still waiting.

Forums Down and Blog Too Periodically

As stated in previous posts, in the forums at least, due to the move of our database(s) to a more robust server the forums are currently down.

They’ve been down since 9:52pm PST 01.08.11. Please be patient. It’ll be worth it as you will notice a difference in speed (at least those on dial-up will) !!

Hiatus

Dang, I was going to take a 2-3 day break as I have been working very hard on the forums and the rest of the site to give you a better experience.

We have been experiencing only a 93% up time and we should be at 99-99.9% so I made a call and a transfer is in affect as I type.

This transfer of databases will take 24-72 hours and we will have some down time now and again during the process.

I’ll take a break when this is complete. I’ll let you know when everything is done and when I won’t be available. I just need a few days to gather thoughts and rest a bit.

Thanks for allowing me to vent and share.

Online High Speed Petition

We have put up a High Speed Petition for the town of Index that we want to get delivered to Frontier Communications soon.

Click on the top right on the menu to sign PLEASE.

Sign The Petition

Happy New Year 2011

-From our family to yours-
We SINCERELY wish you a Happy New Year!

May 2011 prove to be the best year of your life.
We thank you for being a part of our lives and
allowing us to be a part of yours.

Forums: Subscribing & Unsubscribing From Topics or Forums

We have set up a tutorial on how to Forums: Subscribing & Unsubscribing From Topics or Forums.

The topic is in our forums as we can’t post to the Forum and Blog or Goggle may ding us for duplicate postings.

You may read the article HERE.

It’s a good read and we have incorporated some photos to make it easier for you. You must have an account on our forums to be able to read the whole article.