Forum Problems – We are working on it.
UPDATE – You are seeing this page because we are in the process of getting the move accomplished.
Once again we are experiencing an outage of the TSP forum, this time the primary site and the podcast are not effected. The simple reality is we have grown to a level where we are adversely effecting the fellow customers on the shared hosting service. HostGator is a great company and has served us well for a long time and if you think about how big TSP is and how we stream 20,000 plus audio files a day you can really see they are not a lightweight by any stretch.
So we are now faced with moving two sites survivalpodcast.net (MSB and audio server) and thesurvivalpodcast.com (main site and forum) over to a fully dedicated solution. I have already located the host we will be using and we will have gobs of bandwidth beyond our monthly needs for a long time to come, we will have a gig up-link port and a smoking server with tons of processing power and RAM.
They also offer a support package I will be purchasing with a guaranteed response time of 5 minutes or less to all emergencies 24x7x365.
Of course I am at the homestead in Arkansas right now and running on my ATT wireless access stick. This is no time to be making a move like this so here is what we are going to do going forward.
1. The forum admin team is working on getting a caching solution in place on the forum as a get by. Hopefully hostgator will then turn our forum back on and we can get it back up for about a week.
2. Monday when I return to Arlington the first order of business after I cut the days show will be coming up with a migration plan with the new host.
3. Sometime next week the new host will begin the migration, the forum will go into maintenance mode and the site may be unavailable at times, though not likely it could happen so I am letting you know.
4. Once the migration is complete I will redirect the domains and when that propagates internet wide (about 24 hours) we will be back in business at full tilt.
This is going to cost more (of course right?) but I think the investment is warranted. The upside is huge.
With dual processors, a dedicated box, a gig up-link and massive RAM everything you do at TSP will be faster for you, especially downloads of the show at peak times.
We will have a dedicated tech support team that will be ultra responsive to any problems and no matter who your host is there will be problems.
I would like to point out yet again that I don’t have anything negative to say about HostGator, they are a wonderful host. We are just to a point where they sell say vans and SUVs and we need a couple buses to accommodate all our people.
I will continue to recommend them to bloggers and site owners for many years. The challenges of a site like TSP are unique and we are simply at a point where we need a higher level of performance and service than they provide.
Which host did you go with Jack? Hopefully it’s a virtualized solution so that scaling up resources (disk, processor, RAM) as needed is seamless and doesn’t affect uptime. I feel your pain on the migration, that’s never fun!
@Brandon this will be our new home. http://www.100tb.com/ As for expanding with a dedicated solution it should amount to adding to the stack.
Additionally we will be good to go for a LONG time with this solution.
Migrations and upgrades suck but it is just part of growing and this type of business.
I guess this is a really bad time for you to have to deal with this. But at the same time, what an absolute coup for TSP, to have grown so much it needs a new host!
Who would have thought two and a half years ago that TSP would be growing so much that a move like this would be warranted. Just goes to show that you are making a difference! Keep it UP!
I hope you are wrong, Jack. I hope you need even more bandwidth soon. That’ll mean you’ve converted even more grasshoppers into ants, giving the ants a bit more breathing room – fewer grasshoppers knocking on OUR doors.
It’s a GOOD problem to have, either way 🙂
Keep up the great work!
Glad you got it under control, shared hosting is great until they start killing off your processes for using too much RAM.
I have managed quite a few different VPS solutions as well as managed an entire managed hosting solution for over 100 websites, email services and beyond. If you ever need an extra opinion or anything just let me know.
Oh and btw at least you are not Amazon Web Services, or one of the many startups that thought it was a magic bullet.
Thumbs up to our TSPF Admins for working weekends.
Oops I mean “volunteering” weekends.
😉
I want to personally thank all of the TSPF Admins for everything you do for the forum. I know this is a real headache. I am looking forward to the dedicated server.
Thanks to Jack and the TSP Forum Admins and Mods for all of the hard work!
I know how hard all of this stuff can be. On a personal level I have run a small (message board) community for years and dealt with a migration and two upgrades, coordinating several different vendors.
On a professional level, I work for a software company that provides software (and hosts) some of the largest online communities on the internet (and we do this to power communities for many global brands that all of you would recognize). The work to keep them up and running (and also to Moderate them) requires a lot.
Huge props to Jack and the TSP volunteers that are making this happen over the weekend. Your work is greatly appreciated by this Ant (and MSB member).
I hope it was dreamhost you chose…!!
@Mike, Dreamhost can not even begin to handle what we need, not even close.
Great work Jack. This is a good problem to have.
Also, thanks to all the mods for your help! We appreciate all the hard work. Can’t wait till things are better again.
Hi Jack,
I just made my first Biltong. 5th day in and it is black looking. So I cut into a piece to test and it is darn good. My question is the thicker pieces (which I have already cut) are slightly dark dark red in some centers and I am wondering does this still need to dry before storing…AND…what is the best manner to store these babies?
Thank you. Mags.
This is only a test. If this had been an actual comment, you would have been directed to reformat your server.