BlogPatrol's Post Nuclear Recovery

I apologize for the flatlining of the site for so many days. BlogPatrol has started its online recovery with the system running MySQL 5, which will help mitigate* the too many connections error that has plagued the system forever.

* I'm saying mitigate (and not solve) because the transition to MySQL 5 is an important piece of the solution, but not the whole solution.

A summary of events: Thanks to the willingness of a friend of BlogPatrol to take on BlogPatrol's database/software/hardware challenges, I saw an immediate opportunity to fix the site beginning with a version update of our database engine. I knew this was a huge risk, but given the serious performance problems nagging the site, I felt the risk was worth it - estimating that things couldn't get any worse. Well, for the last few days, it did get much worse! The site flatlined for days without even rendering the home page. In migrating to MySQL 5, we discovered that our current server environment did not re-configure as easily as expected from supporting MySQL 4 to MySQL 5. Continuous debugging efforts have helped us to bring BlogPatrol back online for longer stretches of time without errors. Right now, we're debugging the problem that's causing the hourly stats reports (by visitor counts, by percentage) to not render properly. It looks like all the other stats reports are rendering properly and more quickly than before. We're seeing fewer instances of the "too many connections" error as well.

The summary behind the summary: I imagine that you must be wondering why BlogPatrol has had so many problems? BlogPatrol is not just a web start-up, but it's a web start-up managed with part-time resources and a steep learning curve.

History of BlogPatrol: I purchased BlogPatrol in September of 2003 from Charles Coxhead (a brilliant gentleman, also the originator of Blogarama and numerous other sites). To give you an indication of the steepness of my own learning curve, I didn't even know what a blog was until I discovered BlogPatrol. I did, however, recognize BlogPatrol as a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow. It's been an eye-opening three plus years of overcoming numerous learning curves: technically, business-wise, and marketing-wise. It sometimes also gets very difficult running a part-time business with a full-time job and a growing family, but my commitment to BlogPatrol only deepens with every challenge. The greatest challenge (and attraction) of running a business is that it makes a person confront weaknesses and shortcomings in ways that working for someone else never does (the subject of another post). Right now, the team running BlogPatrol consists of me, a very dedicated consultant, and the aforementioned friend. We do what we can, when we can, to bring you BlogPatrol.

BlogPatrol here and now: We know that being free doesn't mean having a free pass to provide bad service. The reality though is that BlogPatrol must be converted from its architecture as a low traffic site with a small user base to a scalable design that supports as much traffic as our users require. We also wish to upgrade our web site so that you can customize how you view your stats information. These changes require resources, planning, developing, testing -- and time to get it right. Upgrading from MySQL 4 to 5 was only the first of many steps that we'll be taking to make our servers run properly. For example, some of the other steps will include migrating from PHP 4.x to 5.x, and most likely changing hosting providers as well as the specific flavor of Linux that we are using.

So, there you have it. Some of you will roll your eyes at what I've shared with the expectation that we should get it together already. I understand that. Others of you will understand what I've shared as a commitment to working, learning, growing, and adjusting until BlogPatrol is done right. I appreciate that.

Your help: Please let us know if/when you still encounter any errors when you attempt to login or view your stats. Your observations really help us to work better for you.