…and we’re back!!! An Open Letter To Our Readers
Dear JAMM friends, readers, advertisers, etc…
I want to start by thanking all of you for your patience and support during the last couple of days. Trust me when I tell you this has been the most frustrating and stressful time I have ever experienced since joining JAMM back in 2006. We were only down for two days, but it certainly seems like it has been an eternity (weak cliche, I know). I wanted to write this quick note to let you know what happened, where you are now, and what you can expect in the future.
WHAT HAPPENED
In a nutshell, our webhost, Bluehost, evicted us. This all started late Thursday night/early Friday morning while I was asleep. I woke up Friday morning to a flurry of emails saying the site was down. I was not too concerned, as we had been experiencing some problems lately. Then, I noticed an email from Bluehost, reading:
Your web hosting account for justanothermobilemonday.com has been deactivated (reason: site causing performance problems).
Although your web site has been disabled, your data may still be available for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted.
OK. That got my attention. Luckily, I was off from work on Friday. I ran downstairs and fired off some emails for help. Then I called Bluehost technical support, where I was told that the site had been deactivated for excessive server load. That was it. No instructions to fix the problem. No opportunity to reactivate. As Brandon put it, “Pretty much just a giant middle finger and a goodbye.”
Before long, I was in touch with our two WordPress/web site gurus: Brandon Steili and Daniel Sachs. Now, I would love to tell you that the three of us worked all day and all night to fix everything. But the truth is, I did a whole heck of a lot of listening while the two of them rattled off in computer-speak for hours. Needless to say, I owe the life of JAMM to the two of them. Brandon and Daniel almost certainly had better plans for the last couple of days. But they dropped everything they were doing to spend an awful lot of time trying to undo what Bluehost had done to us. I really will be eternally grateful to the two of them for all their work over the last days getting the site back up and running.
In addition to Brandon and Daniel, I also truly appreciate the help, support, and advice of our online friends, particularly, Judie Lipsett (www.geardiary.com), Patrick Jordan, (www.justanotheriphoneblog.com), Dan Cohen (www.whatsoniphone.com), and Clinton Fitch (www.clintonfitch.com.)
Where Are We Now
The Good News (Yes, there is some)
Growing up, my Mom used to always tell me that every cloud has a silver lining. And I did manage to find a silver lining in this one. Our contract with Bluehost was due to expire in June. For some time, we had been discussing whether to renew with Bluehost or find a different host. This really forced us into a decision. We started evaluating webhosts suggested by some of our friends, and ultimately arrived at a concensus on Dreamhost (which Brandon recommended.) And after a day and a half, I can say that so far I am very happy with them so far.
The second piece of good news is that we lost almost no content in the end (posts, comments, pictures, etc…) Thanks to some excellent backup practices, along with a masterful review of our database information; pretty much everything you like to read and see here at JAMM will remain intact. So it should look like we never left.
Along with that, this incident really forced us to take a hard look at the site. We knew our databases were a mess, we had a ton of spam registered users, and a number of other problems which were causing hangups, slowdowns, and other errors on the site. Although starting fresh was a lot of work, our databases are scrubbed completely clean, and the site is faster than ever.
The Bad News (Yes, we have some of that, too)
As you might imagine, everything is not quite as it should be right now. One of the latest things we noticed was that the JAMM Store is not functional. Fortunately, that should be one of the easiest things to fix. Watch for that to return soon.
The biggest thing you may notice is that our theme has completely changed. Now, some of you may have heard that we are looking at a completely new approach to delivering all of our news, views, and reviews. What you see is definitively NOT the new approach. Unfortunately, our old theme was no longer functioning due to a number of plug-ins which are no longer active on the site. So, we picked a relatively clean looking temporary theme. We are still working on the new and improved JAMM theme, and hope to be able to unveil that soon. In the meantime, please excuse any anomolies with our temporary theme, sit back, and enjoy the same great content to which you have become accustomed.
Speaking of plug-ins, we are slowly but surely working a number of features back into the site. Don’t be surprised if you see some missing functions and features. We are working on that, and hope to slowly bring that all back.
The most disappointing news is that we have lost most of our user registrations. While we are upset to inconvenience our loyal readers, asking you to reregister on the site should not be much of an inconvenience for anyone (it takes about 30 seconds). Additionally, because of this, we have been able to eliminate all of the spam registrations which we have accummulated over the years. So, if you are unable to login, please take 30 seconds to register again. We promise to make it worth your while, maye even with a few giveaways for registered users.
Where Do We Go From Here
We are still working hard behind the scenes here, so you should continue to see an awful lot of improvement in the next couple of days. In the meantime, you can still enjoy JAMM in all of the usual ways. Our RSS feed is still working fine, and you can always enjoy all of the stories posted on the main site. Like I said, everything is working fine on the site, even though it may not look as nice as we would like.
We are also going to be working to unveil the new JAMM theme as quickly as possible. We had planned to go live with that sometime over the summer, and it is not quite ready yet. So, please bear with the construction mess over the next couple of weeks. Once again, Bluehost has forced our hand to move faster than expected. But the new theme is coming…and it should be unlike anything you have seen from any other tech site. So watch for that coming soon.
Finally, I want to close the way I opened. I really cannot express enough my gratitude to Brandon and Daniel who just dropped everything to not only get the site back up and running, but cleaned it to make it perform better than ever. you guys are amazing. And I also want to thank all of you, our readers, for sticking by us during the last couple of days. For now:
We are back…and the best is yet to come!