I apologize to my readers for the site being mostly inaccessible for the past 24 hours. The Israeli Channel 10 TV news program ran a story about my Gideon Sa’ar post and it apparently caused a massive server load. This caused Hostgator, my web host, to suspend my site. I didn’t find out about this till 90 minutes after it happened. Even after explaining the cause of the overload and that the end of the program would cause an end of the overload, my host denied me access to my site for six hours and didn’t finally lift the suspension into a few minutes ago, 26 hours after the site was restricted.
This is a perfect example of a web host enslaved to its protocols (they maintained that a plugin was caused the server overload because that has happened to other customers) and unwilling to listen to a customer explaining the real circumstances of a situation and reacting flexibly and accordingly.
I know some of you had access and many others did not for which I apologize. You might want to take this into account the next time you have to choose a web host (though frankly I haven’t found a single one I’ve liked and I’ve used a number).
If you or anyone you know is still having trouble accessing the site, please let me know.
No Problem, Richard.
I’m happy the site is back. I thought it might have been was
one of Bibi’s Goons who did this, after reading your “Jewish
Peddler” article. lol
Kudos for you for bringing Tikkun Olam back to life!.
It was thanks to Channel 10’s news show & a bone-headed web host.
Most frustrating experience. Are you planning to remain with this host, and if so, why?
Mostly because I haven’t found one I like better (and that tells you a lot about the quality of my previous hosts). I’ve even considered buy a server and learning how to host my own site on it. But that may be beyond my technical abilities, at least for now.
Yeah, may the Lord help you on that one. I sympathize. But then again, maybe there’s that 15 year old down the street with an extra 15 minutes or so…
Good to see you back!
Why don’t you become your own host ?
all you need is a computer, I connection (cable offer great speeds), and some technical knowledge.
I’ve thought of buying a server, but I don’t really know much about this technicallly & I’d have to study up a great deal.
It’s not that complicated.
I Would recommend a Linux based server. Windows systems are easier to operate, but Linux is free.
Linux Apache and WP of course. Shouldn’t take you more then a week to build a server.
For me, this was the first time that site content, even google cache, was rendered completely inaccessible due to “abusive” behavior linked to my IP address……”access forbidden” msgs.
I would think that the msgs generated by a server overload would reflect that reality rather than baseless accusatory fingers pointed at the user.
Strange.
My experience exactly that momentarily gave me a guilty conscience. Had I somewhere along the line committed some sort of no-no?
My screen said ‘due to DOS attack’ and ‘may be connected with abusive spam from your IP-address in the past’.
I wondered whether DOS was a new codeword for the IDF 🙂
It wasn’t a DOS attack as far as my host thinks. It was a spike in traffic caused by the Channel 10 news show exacerbated by one of my plugins which uses a lot of bandwidth when there’s high traffic. Because of the high server load they disabled my site. A pain in the tuches esp. since my web host handled the whole situation poorly & communicated miserably with me.
Well I don’t understand, I mean how do the news sites which are always busy, manage to stay online even though they are getting higher traffic?
I suspect it may be more than a traffic spike.
It could be those 2 guys from the idf intelligence whom you banned:)
“Well I don’t understand, I mean how do the news sites which are always busy, manage to stay online even though they are getting higher traffic?”
Back up servers.
Zahalnik spooks have far more “important” targets, like that schwarma-truck driver in Jerusalem they are convinced is head of Hamas….
The big sites are on dedicated servers which can handle higher traffic volume. I don’t want to say too much about my server set up since this is information some may use for ill, but I don’t have the capacity or finances to have that sort of setup.
Richard,
How about using blogger or wordpress as a back up then.Isn’t there any way everything, articles and comments can be mirrored there? Or wordpress?
No need for hysteria.
Just like anything else, you get what you pay.
You pay for certain bandwidth (traffic) and when you use more traffic, they stop it according to your contract.
You want more traffic, pay more.
Very simple.
This is what happens when you use standard shared hosting. You are on a server with hundreds of other sites. When you get a spike in traffic everything slows down for everybody and so the host company automatically shuts you down. The next level up is a virtual private server (VPS) which functions like a dedicated server but has more resources allotted to it. Such a server will help you better handle spikes and most start at between $25-$50 a month. Dedicated servers start for as low as $99 a month and are even more robust.The best solution by far is a cloud whereby you use only what you pay for. Sudden spikes are dealt with easily but may prove to be expensive if they happen often. In all instances you should use a Linux/Apache/MySQL (LAMP) combo especially if you are using WordPress which is designed to use that out of the box. Also these set ups have graphical user interfaces which make day to day running of the servers super easy. Finally, getting a dedicated service plan helps with all more complex issues.
A shared hosting account usually starts at about $5 a month. A more robust solution starts at $50-$100 more and can cost even more than that – it’s not difficult to do basic upgrades to your server and pay $500 a month! Luckily these sorts of crashes dont happen that often.
Yr. generalizations may generally be accurate but don’t reflect the particulars of my experience w my host. I actually for a time did try a VPN server w. my host. It cost a huge amount (it may’ve been $99/mo.) & didn’t offer me nearly the amount of bandwidth I needed for my blog. So my site was shut down longer on the VPN server than it was on the shared server. The key thing with VPN is you not only need the VPN but you need to pay extra for bandwidth, which would’ve brought prices up even higher. I simply don’t have the assets to do that much as I’d like to.