FOR SALE: BlogPatrol.com in Summer 2011

Dear BlogPatrol Users:

After eight years of the once-in-my-lifetime experience of owning, learning, developing, managing, committing to, and enjoying BlogPatrol.com (and most importantly serving all of you as BlogPatrol's users), I'm announcing that BlogPatrol is undergoing preparations for sale to the right buyer/partner in Summer 2011.

The following reasons are driving this decision:

• Significant opportunities in my full-time career now require all of my work/business focus.  In recent months this shift in my career has lead to my inability to respond, as a one-person support team, to your requests for user support.
• As part of a conscious effort to balance my life/family/work priorities, the realization and acceptance (both professionally and personally) that, after eight years, I've taken BlogPatrol as far as I can.
• The knowledge and belief that BlogPatrol.com can continue to grow and expand under the leadership and vision of an owner/team with sufficient experience and resources.
• The desire to have BlogPatrol users continue to experience the high level of support they deserve and have come to expect.

I am looking for a buyer/partner who demonstrates the following qualities, either as a corporate entity or as a dedicated web entrepreneur/professional:

• Professional standards and commitment to providing an excellent customer/user experience.
• A belief in the power of blogging and the usefulness of metrics/analytics to inform bloggers of their impact on the world.
• Technical capabilities to manage, operate, and further develop a data-intensive website using a LAMP architecture that runs a multi-master, multi-slave, multi-terabyte database which collects over 70 GB of data every month in MySQL. The PHP code includes substantial modifications of the software from countercode.com to enable scalability via archiving of BlogPatrol stats into manageable data partitions. The unique BlogPatrol stats display is implemented using Fusion Maps (Flash).
• Financial resources and technical acumen to drive BlogPatrol's growth in the evolving environments of blogging and web analytics.
• Sales and business development experience to leverage and maximize BlogPatrol's international reach, popularity, and position in the blogosphere.

If you have a serious interest in discussing this opportunity, please reach me directly at s a l e s {a t} b l o g p a t r o l . c o m .  For the protection of buyer and seller, the site valuation and transaction will be managed by a well respected brokerage firm.

This is the first in a series of blog posts concerning the sale and eventual transition of BlogPatrol.com. It is only appropriate that I close this announcement with a word of thanks and appreciation to you, the users of the BlogPatrol service. Thanks to all of you, I've enjoyed the unique experience and challenge of building BlogPatrol.com in support of thousands of bloggers all over the world.

Respectfully,
Tony Nguyen

Welcome to BlogPatrol 1.5!

We've completed the migration of BlogPatrol from version 1.0 to 1.5. All services are now available at http://www.blogpatrol.com/, including these features:

• New user sign up
• User log in
• Stats reports
• Change password
• Retrieve countercode
• Lost password reset (automated)
• Contact form (automated)
• Top Blogs

When you view your stats reports, the site should load all of your info within seconds. For a quick glance at the improved capabilities, visit our demo stats report.

If you have any questions, please see the frequently asked questions & answers provided below, or feel free to post a comment if the FAQ does not answer your questions.

...Thanks for all your patience, and let us know how BlogPatrol 1.5 performs for you!

Communicating earlier and more often

I've read a lot of comments expressing your anger and disappointment about:

1. how long it's taking to get our functionality back online
2. the lack of updates concerning our progress

I apologize for the lack of updates, which is entirely my own fault. I understand that you're not happy with us when we don't communicate what's going on, especially during a time when the site's functionality is so limited. I will personally do better to communicate earlier and more often with you especially while you're waiting on us to finish the work to get the system going again.

It has taken so long because of various issues, as described in my previous post, but also because we're being very careful. We're very serious about providing an excellent service, and our commitment has required us to turn everything we do upside down in order to get it right side up.

Quality takes time, especially when all we've got is two guys completely rebuilding a web site on a shoe string budget! We're being careful, and it means we've taken longer than anyone would want, but the results will be worth it.

1 Step Back, 3 Steps Forward!

1 Step Back: Cancelled Servers at SingleHop.com

• March 2007 was a challenging month for BlogPatrol as we waited for SingleHop to finally deliver its servers -- and then lost dozens of hours of development time on a fruitless exercise trying to configure the servers to our needs.
• I won’t go into the details of why things didn’t work out for us with SingleHop, but I do want to thank Drew Hurlburt and the technical team for trying their best to accommodate us.
• It was a painful decision to cancel the deal with SingleHop because of the loss in time and money. Not to mention, BlogPatrol's reputation taking yet another ding because we made the wrong choice for us.
  
• Ultimately, finding a new provider was the right thing to do because it keeps BlogPatrol aligned with the main reason for starting over: giving everyone involved with BlogPatrol every possible advantage for good service.

1st Step Forward: Online with New Servers at ThePlanet.com

• I'm very confident that we've now got the right machines in the right configuration and environment.
  
• We chose servers at ThePlanet.com that are in the same class as the ones we tried at SingleHop: Dual Intel Dual-Core 5130 Woodcrest, 8 GB RAM expandable to 16 GB, and a RAID 1 array of 4 x 320 GB SATA Drives.
  
• Those of you who are keeping up with this blog know that the old server that we'll be getting rid of later this month is being leased from EV1Servers.net, which The Planet bought about a year ago.
• In keeping with the tenet of starting over, however, I signed up as a completely new customer at The Planet. Nobody at The Planet has any idea that I also was a customer of EV1Servers.

2nd Step Forward: MySQL Enterprise in a Master/Slave

• A huge part of the problem with our old system was that we were using a single instance of an outdated of version MySQL Community Server. Relying on a single instance meant that all the writes (BlogPatrol recording when someone visits your blog) and reads (when BlogPatrol displays real-time your stats reports) were happening on a single copy of the database. Imagine 1,000 people trying to read and/or sign a wedding guestbook at the same time and you'll get an idea as to why the system kept failing.
  
• We've re-designed the database so that it now uses master (writes) / slave (reads) replication using MySQL Enterprise Server in a setup that uses as many virtual machines as needed. Now imagine yourself back at that same wedding -- except that there one or two guestbooks that people can use to sign in (write) and several dozen other copies of guestbooks for people to read. Everyone's a lot more comfortable!
  
• I'm very pleased to announce that we've completed the installation of this new database design!
  

3rd Step Forward: Public Beta Testing of the new database setup

• We've completed our internal testing of the new servers and database configuration
• We're now in the process of inviting users who signed up to participate in BlogPatrol 2.0 to test the system too.
  

...May 19th: Your stats will be available to you again soon

• We expect to turn on BlogPatrol's full functionality, including access to your stats reports, on or before May 19th.

Progress Report - March 31, 2007

Current Status
On March 29, our two new servers arrived at our web hosting provider, SingleHop.com, and we began the task of installing the various operating system and software packages needed for BlogPatrol 2.0.

The new servers represent a significant upgrade in all areas:

• server: from a single server to a pair of Dual Intel Dual-Core 5130 Woodcrest servers
• processing: from a single processor to a pair of 2.0 GHz Processors
• RAM: from 2 GB RAM to 8 GB RAM expandable to 16 GB
• storage: from 3 separate hard disks to a RAID 1 array of 4 x 320 GB SATA Drives

Next Steps: Part 1
Once the setup of the new servers is complete, we'll be migrating BlogPatrol.com from the old server to the new server. This means that you will soon have access to your stats reports again!

For the short-term, the functionality will still be BlogPatrol 1.0, but the capacity of the database will be much greater because will be going from a single instance of a MySQL 5.0.24 database to MySQL Cluster with multiple instances. We'll have the design to add as many new instances of the database as needed to accommodate user needs.

Next Steps: Part 2
We'll complete our requirements analysis for developing BlogPatrol 2.0, and start prototyping the BlogPatrol.

While we were waiting for the new machines to arrive, we did a ton of research on Web 2.0 designs, methods, and functionalities. It will be a very exciting few weeks ahead!

Login turned on, but stats reports still offline

Account login is now turned on and so you can at least do basic administrative funcions like:

• updating your password
• retrieving your counter code
• changing your counter icon
• viewing your total visitor count (for those with stealth counters)

We are looking to see whether the system can bear the added load of users logging into their accounts, in addition to the regular stats counting by BlogPatrol.

Why are stats reports still turned off? We already know that the system cannot handle the regular stats reporting, so we will not enable access to stats reports until we migrate in a few weeks to the upgraded servers at our new web hosting provider, SingleHop.com.

I expect to have more updates for you once we have a couple days' worth of performance data with user logins enabled.

How to Participate in BlogPatrol's Extreme Makeover: Blog Counter Edition

Thank you for the supportive responses, suggestions and questions! Your desire to participate really energizes us toward our goal of making BlogPatrol 2.0 an incredible service for you to have and for us to provide to you.

For members who wish to participate in creating BlogPatrol 2.0, let's start out by gathering your comments on the following three categories, organized as three separate (and hyperlinked) posts below:

1. What you liked about the old BlogPatrol (and don't want to lose in BlogPatrol 2.0)

2. What you didn't like about the old BlogPatrol

3. What you want in the new BlogPatrol 2.0

I'll help begin the commenting process by sharing the feedback I've gotten from your email messages under the corresponding category (posting).

I'm tempted to include some rules of participation, but let's just see what happens first so that we don't get in the way of creativity! :)

NOTE: We've turned off commenting on this post because we ask that you comment your likes, dislikes, and wants under the links provided.

BlogPatrol’s Extreme Makeover: Blog Counter Edition

The current version of our service can no longer handle the growing demands of the BlogPatrol community. To the point, the service is no longer functioning at all. No amount of fixing, tweaking, or re-engineering has caused it to perform as desired. At this juncture, the service is inoperable and dead -- as soon as we enable access, the server overloads with user requests to login and the database crashes. This cycle has repeated itself dozens of times since my last blog post.

The bottom line is: You're tired of excuses and bad service. We're tired of failing your expectations. Therefore, we are shutting down our existing service in order to focus all of our energies into performing an Extreme Makeover: Blog Counter Edition.

We are changing everything about our service to create BlogPatrol 2.0:

• bringing in new talent
• changing our web hosting provider
• upgrading our servers
• redesigning our database
• rewriting our counter code
• building a new website
• simplifying sign-up, management, and use of your account

We invite you to help us do things right by telling us what you want (or don’t want) from BlogPatrol 2.0. Please let us know what you want us to do with your account:

• DELETE - You're done with BlogPatrol and you never want to hear from us again. If you don't want any part of this new chapter of BlogPatrol, then we understand and thank you for trying our service. We will not be bothering you any further.
• WAIT AND SEE - You're skeptical, but you're willing to wait and see if BlogPatrol 2.0 can deliver on your expectations.
• PARTICIPATE - You want to help in the creation of BlogPatrol 2.0. Like the neighborhood volunteers who help to rebuild the houses on the popular TV series, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, you’re willing to volunteer your ideas to help build a brand new service.

To notify us of your decision, simply do the following:

• To DELETE, send an email reply to delete (at) blogpatrol dot com along with your blog address, such as http://yourblog.blospot.com. We will delete all of your account information from our database with our apologies for failing your expectations.
• To WAIT AND SEE, you need not do anything. We will retain your information in our database so that we can invite you to try BlogPatrol 2.0 once we launch the service.
• To PARTICIPATE, send an email reply to participate (at) blogpatrol dot com along with your blog address, such as http://yourblog.blospot.com. We will then contact you with follow-up information on how you can tell us your ideas and give us your feedback: posting comments on The Patrol Blog, responding to short web surveys, and testing the new system.

My colleagues and I are very excited to begin the creation of BlogPatrol 2.0. We look forward to creating a service that is easy-to-use, reliable, accurate, and able to grow along with our community's needs.

I will post updates as more information becomes available, including when the new system will be ready for test and launch.

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.

The Patrol Blog

Hello, everyone. I'm Tony Nguyen, owner of BlogPatrol.com. I'm starting this blog with the intent of providing a channel for communicating topics of interest to the BlogPatrol community.

The Patrol Blog will focus on performance issues including system downtime and planned improvements. Secondary topics will include commentary on other issues impacting the blogosphere such as social networking, blog design, search engine optimization and placement, monetizing blogs, and reviews of technology products.

I hope this blog will be a helpful and fun opportunity to share new ideas for BlogPatrol services with the BlogPatrol community!