Struggling Today to Keep My Site Alive
I’m sure that many of you have probably noticed that I’ve been struggling with my server today. The site has been on the fritz, but I’m pleased to say that everything should be fine now.
When I woke up this morning at 5:10, I checked the site and read the recent comments. Then I headed out the door for work. Some time after 7:00, my server account was suspended. The message being flashed to the world simply told me to contact the billing department of my hosting company. In the world’s eyes, I was too lazy to pay my bill.
This, however, was not the case. All of my bills are current.
When I finally got a hold of support, they informed me that my server had been exceeding the CPU usage that it’s allowed for the shared hosting plan that I’m on. I finally convinced them to un-suspend my account so that I could make some changes.
I set out to create a solution but…
I ordered another server and immediately began working to transfer this website onto that server so that it would not be on the same server as my other sites.
Instead of transferring onto the new server, however, I was unable to login to that server. In fact, the site began displaying as if it were the domain of giftrabbit.com. I have no idea how that happened.
Finally tech support got my domain to point to the right server and I was able to transfer this installation of WordPress onto the new server. It’s up and running and since it’s the only one on this account, we shouldn’t encounter any more problems.
Thank you all for your patience. I know what a hassle it can be to not find the site up when you visit. I know that I was pulling my hair out. Thanks for staying with me.
Bruce Teague said:
You work? I figured you were a full time blogger. Glad your back Nick. Gotta love Mondays.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Bruce Teague –> Not only do I work, but I work a lot. I worked about 80 hours last week. I’m in the United States Army, Bruce. I serve in Washington DC.
Bruce said:
In that case, how many blog posts and comments do you write at work in a week?
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Bruce –> I actually write almost all of my articles on Saturday and Sunday. Throughout the week I jot down ideas, notes and sometimes a few outlines but I do almost every bit of writing on the weekends. I wish I had more time to work on it. When I get out of the army and go full time just think about how much better I can make this site.
More articles…better content…more interaction. It will be the best! 
Sat Chen said:
I thought you were a full time blogger. Not sure if you planned this article though
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Sat Chen –> I hadn’t planned this article but I thought that since the server was messing up all day that everyone might want to know what was going on so I put out the information.
Stefan said:
This is something you should write about more. I checked through your about-page but couldn’t find anything about it. Just think about it, badboys with guns always get the girls.
Yeah, I know you have a wife though..
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Stefan –> I’m not sure exactly what you want me to write more about. More about writing schedules?
Arisu said:
I think he meant what you do beside the blog XD
And yeah, some more info in the About page would be nice!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Arisu –> Oh. I get it. Okay. I’ll put some more information about myself on there. I’ll work on that today.
Stefan said:
I’m sorry I were a bit short. Just as Arisu wrote I meant you should write a bit more about yourself. Even though I have followed every post from you I did not know you were in the army.
Last week I read on another blog that he decided to upload a video on his about-page. This was really a great method for us to see what he really looks like and get more of his personality.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Stefan –> I’ll look into doing something like that. I certainly aim to be as transparent as possible on here. I’ll hook up my webcam and record some information about myself. I’ll try to get that done this weekend. Thanks for the great idea.
Chris Cline said:
I am glad your backup and running…
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Chris Cline –> Thanks, Chris. I’m glad too. It was crazy trying to get it all back together.
Eric B. said:
It’s great that your site’s back up.
I checked earlier and I saw the Just Host logo, so I knew something was wrong. Later I saw a new WordPress installation at this domain. This reminds me that I should make a backup of my site soon.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Eric B. –> Once I got the domain to point to the right place, it only took about 30 minutes to have everything back to where it’s supposed to be. I was laughing about it when I had installed the new, fresh WordPress and it just said “This is another WordPress Weblog.” I showed it to my wife and said, “Hey. Look at my blog!” LOL
Typhoon said:
Hey I think Pointing domain to a new server takes about 24 hrs – 48 hrs. .But looks like it happened quick for you..How much did it take?
Eric B. said:
Actually, that was pretty quick!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Typhoon –> It was instant for me because it was still at the same hosting company so I didn’t have to repopulate name servers with new DNS records or anything like that. The change was all made in house at the hosting side of it.
Greg Dougherty said:
Glad you got things figured out Nick!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Greg Dougherty –> Me too, Greg. Me too. I was on with tech support off and on throughout the day.
Greg Ellison said:
That is not good feeling. I am glade everything is backup and running for you. Greg Ellison
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Greg Ellison –> For a while I was really worried because I have 10+ sites on that account. So when it went down so did all of those sites. It was definitely not a good feeling. You are right about that.
Arisu said:
Glad to have you back!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Arisu –> Thanks, Arisu. I’m glad to be back!
Evan Kline said:
Nice of your host to just pull the plug. A little warning from them would have been nice.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Evan Kline –> That’s what I told them when I talked to them on the phone. If they would have told me ahead of time then I could have stopped the issue from ever happening. It seemed really unprofessional of them. If they would have told me that it was pushing a little bit over my limit, I could have done what I ended up doing anyway but with much less downtime for the site and without a big banner that made it look like I didn’t pay the bill.
George Serradinho said:
Wow, I did not even notice the change. I must have logged onto your site before or after the change.
Glad you are up again.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
George Serradinho –> I’m glad that you weren’t affected by the downtime. I probably lost a lot of readers from it and I have a feeling that I’m going to have to work extra hard to make up for the lost time.
Stefan said:
This is something I really hate about shared hosting. They offer you free traffic and free amount of space but as soon as you get some traffic they are complaining and you have to buy a more expensive solution. I’m glad you managed to solve it though.
Dave Sparks said:
I guess that’s part of the deal, they offer you a limited bandwidth etc an if you ever get big enough to warrant more you’re already tied in with them and it’s much easier to use their packages than transfer hosting.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Dave Sparks –> Exactly. It’s kind of like a bait and switch tactic. They offer one thing but when you actually need it, they tell you that you have to have something else. It’s pretty fishy actually.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Stefan –> I know. In fact, the company that I’m with boasts that they allowed “unlimited” bandwidth, storage and a unlimited of a bunch of other stuff.
Arisu said:
Yeah “unlimited” is a word that makes me suspicious about a host… most of the time, things like this happen.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Arisu –> Basically you will go way over your CPU allotment before you get anywhere near a large capacity of anything else like bandwidth.
Typhoon said:
Ya it also happened with me. When I was first going to buy my first server from HostGator, I troubled the online technicians for almost 15-20 mins on the “Unlimited” word but at the end I went for it.
Arisu said:
And how did things turn out? Is HostGator to be trusted on “unlimited” stuff?
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Typhoon –> Do they have CPU limitations there? Because I had never even heard of that before and with JustHost’s “unlimited” plastered all over I thought that they would be the ones to go with.
valp said:
Nicholas, you are bloggin soldier or soldier of bloggin! or both! Glad to hear server is up however I didnt notice any crash
. Receiving daily updates and following your articles which I bet will be INCREDIBLE when you go full time.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
valp –> I’m glad that you didn’t notice. I feel bad for those who visited and couldn’t find the site or who saw the wrong site.
valp said:
of course, it’s a nightmare for everyone holding a site. I’m getting some traffic issues and site is blocked if I don’t manage it quickly
.
Anyway good to having you online!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
valp –> Thanks. Today is much less hectic with server issues and I’m thankful for that.
valp said:
Indeed man. But be prepared because of another collapse – people start to comment because of your competition which seems to cause extreme traffic
.
Btw I need to manage my subscriptions for these posts.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
valp –> Yeah, I have a caching program installed which should help ease the load on the server by being able to serve static pages instead of having to generate them all on the fly. That’s my hope anyway.
Typhoon said:
Oh it might be annoying for you..By the way what’s your host name?
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Typhoon –> I use Justhost.com. I’m happy with the speed and the overall reliability but after this issue, I’m pretty upset with them. It seemed really unprofessional for them to turn the account off and then notify me. I thought that it would have been the other way around.
Sat Chen said:
I am planning to use wpwebhost.com for my website. Do you think thats a good idea.
Typhoon said:
Sat Chen, wpwebhost is good but I would say better go for HostGator as it will give you 24hrs Live customer Support also you will face less problems with it. Even there prices are low don’t think it as a bad hosting company or a just another host; they know the game!
Also if you can spend on more then go for MediaTemple..
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Typhoon –> I’ve been hearing some good reviews about HostGator lately. Maybe that is the one to go with.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Sat Chen –> If that is available, I think it would be a great domain. Go for it!
Typhoon said:
JustHost is a name which Many people including me haven’t heard of..I doubt on the awards which they are showing they have won..I would say you should better go for HostGator as It’s damn too great.
By the way as you said that CPU usage went very high according to the hosting company..Did you asked about the reason for it? I think high traffic could be a problem…Are you using any Super Cache plugin to lower down this?
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Typhoon –> Yeah, I’ve got some great cache programs running but for some reasons it peaked that morning. It wasn’t even a high traffic morning. I’ve had much higher traffic on other days. I really don’t understand. If I have more issues with them again I will definitely switch to a different hosting company. That was pretty crazy trying to deal with that.
Sat Chen said:
Thanks for the suggestions. I wanted to get wpwebhost because it is made especially for wordpress which I am planning to use. Any suggestion on a good domain?
Diane C said:
I am so glad that you are back up and running. I was worried when I logged onto the site yesterday morning and saw the screen.
Stefan~ You’re right that badboys with guns always get the girl. I am thankful to be his.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Diane C –> Yeah. Diane messaged me in the morning and said, “Honey, do you know that your site is down!?” Fortunately I was already working on it but it was nice to know that she was letting me know about it.
Sat Chen said:
Did, you know that this site was down today as well. Must have a lot of traffic or my school computer was too slow
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Sat Chen –> I didn’t notice that it was down. What did it show? An error page?
Sat Chen said:
I waited for about 3 minutes but it still showed loading. So, maybe it was the school computer.
P.S. I had nothing to do in class
Mukund said:
I feel a little warning or a something like that would have been better. Any way, you are back on your track. Hope there is no such problem in the future. I have got some visitors for my blog from here! At least for that, I need your blog. Just kidding!! We bloggers definitely love your site. Beautiful tips for beginners like me! Keep blogging!!
Sat Chem said:
Your blog also has some great imformation. By the way, how many visitors did you get from this site?
Mukund said:
I got 6 visitors per day for the last few days as per Google Analytics. But, I am pretty this rate will increase over the next few days, provided I am active in this site.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Mukund –> Great! Getting involved in an active community really has its benefits as you can tell us. I’m glad that you’ve gotten some visitors from the site here. Good for you!
Mukund said:
Yes Nicholas! Even I am happy that I got visitors from your site. Definitely should thank you for that!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Mukund –> Me too. I’m so glad to be back online. That day was pretty crazy.
Ron Boracay said:
Wow, you are in the US Army and doing office at Washington DC.
You are such a hardworking person, imaging blogging at weekend and working at weekdays.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Ron Boracay –> It just goes to show that even if you work a full time job you can still create a successful online presence. If I can do then anyone can do it.
ZXT said:
You may want to check Bluehost too. It’s popular not only with bloggers but with most webmasters too.
I just hope there’s a written rule about CPU usage so we bloggers won’t get surprised if one of our articles just gain popularity.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
ZXT –> I know. I’m just too popular for my own good. LOL. Just kidding.
Pinaybackpacker said:
I haven’t encountered any problems yet with my webhost. I’m with Fireball Internet and no one has complained about downtimes yet so i don’t know if I’m just lucky (keeping fingers crossed) or I’m not getting too much traffic yet to clog my servers.
I also try to host more of my images on Picasa and I only use videos which are hosted on other sites like YouTube.
I can’t believe you have a dayjob, too. You must be an excellent multi-tasker!
The photo made me laugh. It looks like Mr. Bean and Saddam Hussein combined (no offense meant).
I’d love to hear about why you decided to go into blogging.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Pinaybackpacker –> Ha ha. I have a photo of me in my dress blue uniform (I’m in the Army) and I did this same effect to it and hung it up in my office at work and all of my friends tell me that I look like a dictator. That’s why I switched and started using this one.
ZXT said:
About 20 hours ago I’ve experienced page can not be displayed error in this blog Nick. It lasted for about 10 minutes. Just letting you know.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
ZXT –> Do you remember what the error looked like?