<Ideas about the Future of Energy in the US (from our Industry Insider and Prof. Goose) The Oil Drum News Deposit/Open Thread>

Our technical problems

Posted by Super G on September 1, 2005 - 8:19am

This has been a hectic week for the technical side of The Oil Drum. Simply put, the unprecedented amount of traffic overwhelmed our software and server. The high traffic happened to coincide with the inaccessibility of the main technical person at our ISP, so even though our troubles started on Monday, we were not able to come up with a comprehensive solution...until now. (more under the fold)
We now have our own IP address, our own Scoop process, and are using a page cache for the anonymous readers. These changes should improve the site's performance significantly.

The IP address for the site is 216.127.55.83. If you are having DNS issues, you may access the site at http://216.127.55.83. Unfortunately, due to the way that Scoop implements cookies, you will not be able to log into the site when you access it this way. I'm not sure how long it will take for this new IP address to propagate. If you are technically savvy, you can add an entry in /etc/hosts file to manually map the IP address to theoildrum.com.

We greatly appreciate everyone's patience during this hectic time. I am not a professional IT guy and I have a full-time job (which I have been somewhat neglecting!), so please continue to bear with me.

Our technical problems

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11 comments

Dave Cohen on September 1, 2005 - 8:46am Permalink | Comments top
Re: "We now have our own IP address, our own Scoop process, and are using a page cache for the anonymous readers. These changes should improve the site's performance significantly":

Great work, SuperG, I assume xlan has been responsive. Thanks for your efforts.
JLA on September 1, 2005 - 9:31am Permalink | Comments top
Hmm, and I had just assumed that the "Kat" had your tounge.  

[I know--pass the crackers for all of this cheese...]

greeny on September 1, 2005 - 10:25am Permalink | Comments top
did i miss the link to donate money?
Super G on September 1, 2005 - 10:58am Permalink | Parent | Comments top
The link for the Red Cross is in the upper right-hand corner of the site's front page.

Or right here.

greeny on September 1, 2005 - 11:36am Permalink | Parent | Comments top
no not to red cross

to the oil drum for better servers

( i am going to hell and my carma is shot)

sampo on September 1, 2005 - 11:23am Permalink | Comments top
Thanks for all your work SuperG. I've been trying not to overburden TOD with too much obsessive refreshing of comments...but it seems like this place has the best information around...and i think you guys got Atrios'd/Drum'd/Slashdot'd or something....i don't remember where i saw the link but it did surprise me to see it on one of those front pages.

Keep up the good work, all of you ARE appreciated and are doing a service that is desperately needed.

Cheers

ab on September 1, 2005 - 12:03pm Permalink | Comments top
How about posting some stats? Would be interesting to view.
Super G on September 1, 2005 - 12:12pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
There's a link to Sitemeter in the right sidebar.

Or right here.

greeny on September 1, 2005 - 12:34pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
anybody got a link that explains those stats in more detail?
gooddog on September 1, 2005 - 6:30pm Permalink | Comments top
FWIW, Bloglines is not showing new posts for The Oil Drum...

kw

Prof. Goose on September 1, 2005 - 10:48pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
hmmm...feedburner seems to be working, but bloglines isn't.  strange.  I'll alert the supah one.

Our technical problems

PDF version

11 comments