Tomorrow (Monday) is the site's 7-year anniversary. If you enjoy the study of math & numbers like I do, you probably know the number 7 is often associated with notions of completion & perfection.Seven years ago tomorrow, I acquired the domain name radified.com. Following day (June 5th), site went live (online).
You can read the very first Rad entry at the bottom of this page (archives for June/July, 2000). Fortunately I learned a thing or two since then (tho much of it the hard way > trial-n-error).
I tell people who praise my computer skills (especially my troubleshooting skills) > "it's cuz I've made every mistake possible with a PC."
We are now at the site's 4th server, beginning, originally, with a server in Kansas City (at web-host named Communitech), which started suk'ing soon as it was bought by Interland, who then loaded my server (along with many others) on a flatbed and (in the dead of night) moved them to Atlanta.
After a year in Atlanta, we began having problems (increasingly) with Apache (open source web server). Until stability problems got so bad I had to move the site ...
••••• today's entry continues below •••••
.. to Lunarpages in Feb 2006, to our first new server (physically located downtown Los Angeles). Great move, that was. Reliability at Lunarpages was rock-solid (and fast).
Then, just last month, we moved to a new server, physically located in Las Vegas, in order to get MySQL (database) 5.x & PHP (web scripting language) 5.x.
Altho I didn't realize the new server was located in Vegas, until guys in the forums started running tracerts in order to troubleshoot connection problems they were experiencing.
They said, "Thought your server was in LA. How come I'm tracing to Vegas?" I made a phone call and found they were right. (It *was* located in Vegas. Surprise!)
Anyway, at first Lunarpages tried to say it was a problem with my ISP. And my ISP may have been experiencing problems.
But I wasn't the only one having problems. I live in Orange county. John (who authored the FAQ) was also having trouble, yet has a different ISP (Cox). NightOwl is up in Washington state & Magoo lives in Arizona. Even Mr. Brian (Australia) was having trouble. So they can't dismiss the issue as (a problem with) my ISP.
Personally, I think it was due to a problem with Apache. In fact, I know at least one of the times I called, Apache was down (cuz that's what the LP supervisor told me).
Whenever you can check email fine, and and connect to the site via FTP, but not serve a single web page .. that's a classic case of Apache needing to be restarted.
I have plenty of experience with Apache-problems. That's why I left Interland.
I also suspect the supporting network infrastructure of Lunarpages' LA-based data center is more robust than that of the one in Vegas (as one might expect, given the history of the Internet).
Lastly I feel the support for FastCGI (which I tried to use with my blog) by the Vegas-server may have contributed to its problems with Apache. FastCGI is available as an Apache mod (using an Apache handler).
Lunarpages claims its technical support for FastCGI is "limited," but that's an overstatement. So I'm not surprised that particular server (which supports FastCGI) is having trouble with Apache.
Latest server (as of 30.May) does not support FastCGI (oops, almost said Apache).
Far as I know, Mr. Brian (Australia) is the only one reporting any problems with the new server, and he says those problems are limited to 30 seconds. After our problems of the last week or two, where the site was gone for (up to) an hour at a time, I can live with 30 seconds.
Not sure if Brian is still having those same problems.
Update > Maybe my recollection is off. Whois says I acquired the domain name 30.May.2000. Either way, the site's first official day online was still 05.June.2000.
Comments (3)
Congratulations!
Rad, I'm kinda late to the party. But, I tell ya...RADIFIED enabled me finally turn the corner in being a somewhat self-reliant computer user. The degree to which the forum moderators (and others) are willing to wrap their minds around our computer problems is, in a word, overwhelming. I'm glad you're out there, Pal.
Posted by Joe (aka Sumrica) | June 4, 2007 11:10 AM
Posted on June 4, 2007 11:10
Thanks Joe. (You're right on time, my friend.)
I agree that the guys (in the forums) totally rock.
I'm continually learning new stuff from them. I especially like that we have minds from all parts of the globe meeting there to share both experience & expertise. What's that old adage? "Iron sharpens iron."
Self-relaint. Yeah. I can still remember the days when I used to depend of tech support (of various hardware & software manufacturers). What a terrible feeling that was. Especially when they all point the finger of accusation at each other, and are reluctant to admit the problem might actually be with *their* product.
Posted by Rad | June 4, 2007 5:15 PM
Posted on June 4, 2007 17:15
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