The site will be down temporarily while Webgoddess DC MCQueen makes repairs. Please don’t despair, we’ll be back later today.
It doesn’t appear to have been anything personal, but one of those odd mass attacks from an IP in Turkey. Apparently, this is a common annoyance, like acne or something.
Update: DC will be deleting and reinstalling both sites, as well as moving them to a new server. This will create delays and outages which should be cleared up by tomorrow. The hack appears to be a server issue, and we will soon be with a new company. Thanks for your patience.
UPDATE: We’ve got huge files to reupload, and this may take awhile. Everything has been cleaned out, and installed from the ground up. Thank you for your patience. Can’t really do much until all is back online, and we have gigabytes of goodies to restore.
UPDATE: 9 PM Saturday night. Everything fixed. Complete clean reinstall. Let me know if anyone experiences any problems.
My most sincere appreciation to DC McQueen!!!
well, glad it’s up but I’m still getting a slow response time. I’m gonna clear my cache and see if that clears up the problem.
Otherwise YAY
Seems excellent to me so far. I haven’t checked all the recent pages. And I admit I was a little anxious that all the cool comments information on the iMock post might get lost.
But DC McQueen rules! Excellent job! Yay!
Slow response may be due to the fact that Supercache has not been reactivated. I can’t do that myself, DC has to do it. Without it, we place a huge load on the server.
Until it is back up, we may be slow.
Cache is enabled, and it looks like it’s running quickly to me. Don’t remember the last time it loaded this fast!
yes, much MUCH better. YAY for socks!
/pay no attention
and it’s back to slow again. Basically I can count to 25 (not 25 seconds, but counting to 25) while it says “waiting for http://www.adistantsoil.com” but once that goes away it loads immediately. I’m just not sure where this is coming from. I do not have the same problem with colleendoran.com, that loads immediately. I just don’t get it
Arlene, I don’t think this has anything to do with us. It takes me just a couple of seconds to load, and I am on satellite.
I’m still convinced the problem is CPU load.
The more plug-ins we have and the more traffic, the more load on the CPU. When we hit 500 seconds of throttle per hour, the company can slow us down.
I’ve checked my load, and it has dropped by nearly half since we reinstalled Supercache, but we still go over the limit sometimes.
I deleted two Plug-ins, one an extra stat plug-in I don’t really need, and one an IP ban plug-in I no longer need because I have a C-Panel with my new server.
I’ll know in an hour or so if this has helped any.
whatever you did, the lag is completely gone. I’ve been clicking a few test pages here and there and there’s no more delay. I wonder if it was one of the plugins? But anyway I’ll let you know if it crops up again. Right now, it’s back to the way it used to be a few weeks ago…
…except when i have a comment to post. Then it still lags. But the lag moving between pages is now gone. VERY weird…
Our CPU load throttle seems to have dropped by a third.
I mentioned before I use several stat counter programs, and one was via a plug-in. Since it constantly gathers data, it was probably eating a lot of CPU.
Also, DC has been rebuilding colleendoran.com. ADS and CD.com are on the same server, so as long as she is working at it, it’s going to slow down the system, especially since it’s going to need Supercache installed as well.
There is almost nothing I can do about the CPU lag. The more traffic we get, the more it will happen. But the two plug in deletions ought to help a lot.
I am positive that any delay is not due to rogue hackers from Turkey.
I no longer block them from a WP plug in, but directly from my database.
FYI, if you saw a slow down two weeks ago, know that about two weeks ago we had a sudden increase in traffic.
We went from an average of 5,000 hits a day to as high as 12,000.
On weekends, we usually only get about 2,500 hits, but today we have already had 6,000.
This would account for the CPU load.
Wow, that’s a heck of a jump! Hope it means all good stuff for you!
I was concerned the hack would kill our readership, but today’s traffic has been very good.
Of course, our revenue is in the toilet.
well whatever it was doing it, it’s not slowing me down anymore. So, yay for that.
(so spoiled now that dialup is gone XD)
CPU load is very low this morning, and the site is running super-fast as far as I can tell.
Darn… this site is now so popular I have to wait in line for pages to load?! WAAH!
I read this site on my Treo, so speed is never a concern… I expect loads to take time (even moreso now that I’m using Windows Mobile 6.1).
Worth the wait, ne c’est pas?
If we stay where we are, we’re cool, but if we get much more popular, we are going to need a dedicated server, and that is expensive. We’re not bringing in enough revenue to pay for a dedicated server. Not even close.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
So what other alternatives are there?
Do you stop “self-publishing” ADS and have it hosted on another site, like ComicMix or uclick or ImageComics?
Do you split the traffic from the site, posting new pages to a subscription site, then later to a free site?
Not sure.
If traffic goes up enough, one hopes I’ll be able to sell more things or get more donations. But if the past week is any indication, that doesn’t look good.
It could be that this summer season everyone is flat from all the conventions. Or the economy has people closing their wallets.
Advertising revenue has gone down even though traffic is up.
Naturally, I am happy with any donation, so if people can’t hit the tip jar big time, I will not complain.
I’d love to have tiered donation incentives, but packing and shipping takes time.
The great thing about the art donation incentive is that I have all the packaging at the ready. I no longer keep packaging for books on hand.
The hacks this year – in time and out of pocket costs – ate more than six months of donation money. This last was really bad.
“The hacks this year – in time and out of pocket costs – ate more than six months of donation money. This last was really bad.”
Yikes! Here’s hoping you can re-coop that expense. Which I had some free change right now for you! But dang! I’m going to sit down and see what I can squeeze out sometime soon.
Don’t anyone hurt themselves sending me a donation. If you don’t have the money, that is fine. If this site can’t support itself, then that is how it is.
I hope more folks can fork over a few bucks, but I also realize people gotta pay bills.
But yeah, donations just got eaten.
Score one for the pirate crew.