Updates on site status
No doubt that you’ve noticed the problems with the site over the last week. The story is this: we’ve outgrown our current server and hosting plan, and need to move to a dedicated server. We’re looking at those options now. Presently, our current host has us throttled to a single connection per second, and frankly, it’s killing us. However, we do respect their point of view: they cannot have a single client using a higher ratio of processor time than everyone else, and thanks to the recent media blitz, our processor time has soared. 
Compound that with the fact that we move 5 gigs in RSS feeds (not audio, just feeds) a day, and you can see how we’d need to upgrade.
I want to personally thank all of you for your patience while we work out our site and traffic issues. Rest assured we’re doing everything we can to get it fixed up as soon as possible. I’ve been working each day to tune the site and make things more efficient.
I’ll be recording a segment on this for the Podiobooker Podcast, so listen in if you want more detail.
Thanks again — we’ll post more updates as they happen.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it. It helped settle my jonesing a bit for the next chapter in anything.
You understand how obsessive us geeks can be. Right?
Thanks again and best wishes on the move.
I look forward to hearing “the rest of the story” (paul harvey quote) soon.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it. It helped settle my jonesing a bit for the next chapter in anything.
You understand how obsessive us geeks can be. Right?
Thanks again and best wishes on the move.
March 31st, 2007 at 1:24 pm
[...] Everybody’s being frustrated by the wealth of new subscribers and visitors to Podiobooks. It’s a great problem to have, but many of you had feeds get disrupted and it’s been impossible to get onto the site at times. The latest word from PB is that they’re working on a new hosting arrangement that will solve these problems and I’m trying to give them enough time to resolve the issues before I add to them with another book. [...]
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
Ah, the price of fame. I live in a small tourist town and understand this promblem to a degree. We who live here all year know where all the good places to eat and shop are, but when the tourists come in you might as well forget getting to any of those places. Thankfully they go home and hopefully they tell there friends about us.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I wonder if the site perdformance is the reason a few listeners have mentioned audio quality problems–like a hiccup during the download? Two people mentioned such problems, and so far as I know, my sound should hold up fine.
If you’re a listener to my novel _The Lamp Post Motel_ the new chapters gives you the good parts–sex scenes–that my bluenose publisher cut out. Just my way of getting my way with my book.
And remember, your comments are always much appreciated, pro or con.
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Off-topic: We’ll miss you Joe Murphy. Kudos to the Far-point extended family for the great compassion and friendship shown to Joe. You folks are good people.
BB
April 6th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Wow, so that is 15 gigs a month in RSS feed transfer with the current membership. Most big hosting companies charge about $350-400/month for a dedicated server with 2000 gigs of bandwidth. I wonder if a company like GoDaddy or Rackspace wouldn’t give you that in exchange for a little message and maybe a small button or banner. It don’t seem like much to reach a pretty good audience. Sigler does it with GoDaddy for his stuff.