Sep
25
My hosting woes continue…

Written by: Adam Christianson

Categories: Follow-up, Podcast

Well guess I’m batting 1,000 in the bad luck department. Just as I get my MacCast.com hosting issues resolved and finally push out a new show, Libsyn.com starts having issues. You see I actually have 2 hosting companies. GoDaddy.com hosts this site, but beacuse of the large amount of bandwidth required for my podcast the MP3 and AAC files for the show are served up by Libsyn. Just after I posted todays show the emails started. Some of you are reporting getting 404 errors and are unable to access the show. My first thought was, “Oh no, here we go again”, but in checking the new GoDaddy dedicated server everything seems to be humming along just fine. So then I chek the Libsyn support blogand see this message, “Sunday Update On Network OverloadIt looks like we are still experiencing overload on parts of our network. The connections are swamping the media nodes and this is causing the 404s you may be experiencing”. Well I guess Sunday has rolled into Monday and the issue is still not resolved. Wholy dung beetle Batman! Sorry for all the trouble folks. The errors appear to be pretty widespread, but some of will luck out an might actually get the show (I was able to downlaod both the MP3 and ACC editions right after I uploaded them). Please DO NOT harass Libsyn about this issue. They are well aware and working to fix it. They don’t need a bunch of email distracting them from the task at hand. Dave and the guys over there are good friends of the show and have always been outstanding. I will update you as soon as I have more info.

There are 12 comments on My hosting woes continue…:

RSS Feed for these comments
  1. Geoff Taylor | Sep 25 2006 - 10:20

    Don’t worry Adam. We know you’ll get it sorted. :)

    Thank you so much for all your great work. I have learnt so much from you as a Mac geek (I’ve learnt to trust your judgement calls), and as a model of podcasting (you manage to keep it really focussed and lean, yet still highly personal).

    Respect!

  2. Victor Cajiao | Sep 25 2006 - 11:30

    The Libsyn guys are the best, and they always sort things out. They do the right thing 100% of the time in my experience. I’ll bet you are so ready for the EXPO and a beer. First on is on me Adam.

  3. Peter | Sep 25 2006 - 12:10

    Whoo-hoo! Guess I’m one of the lucky ones… either that or they just fixed it. :) The download first showed up as a ! in iTunes, but I manually refreshed it, and it started to downlaod after a bit of hesitation.

    Hope things are all good from here on out, Adam! Thanks for the great podcast.

  4. Zaher H. | Sep 25 2006 - 01:16

    Hey Adam,
    Wanted to let you know that at 1:20 pm pacific I was able to download the podcast after a couple of tries.

  5. Mark | Sep 25 2006 - 01:40

    Stay calm Adam, we’ll stick with you and your fabulous show.

    Thanks again for making each wednesday/Thursday evening a mactastic one here in the uk!

    Take care
    Mark.

  6. C Sporn | Sep 25 2006 - 02:34

    This is on digg now. http://digg.com/apple/The_hosting_woes_for_the_MacCast_podcast_continue

  7. Ginny B | Sep 26 2006 - 09:43

    Adam, I missed Maccast when it was down. I was able to download the 9/25 podcast through iTunes last night and, happily, listened to it on my 5am run this morning.

  8. pepper | Sep 26 2006 - 02:29

    phew, you’re back… i can’t possibly be expected to READ mac geekery all around the web; I need you to TELL it to me, Adam… but don’t worry, if it goes a bit pear shaped again we’ll still be here waiting.
    :)

  9. Jim | Sep 26 2006 - 07:51

    Fight the good fight Adam. I say if it takes ads to keep this baby a float, ads it is.

    Love the show.

  10. Kevin Russell | Sep 26 2006 - 08:08

    Hey Adam,

    I was able to get it this morning no problem, thanks for the great show!

    Kevin

  11. Alex Santos | Sep 27 2006 - 12:25

    Adam, I think it’s high time to get advertising on your show. All the hosting woes are evidence of that and it’s more than likely the advertisers will be lining up to get a spot on your show.

    IT isn’t fair that you drain yourself financially for the rest of us. Personally I wouldn’t mind hearing an ad every now and again.

    I just thought of something. Since podcasting (casting, netcasting…whatever – Apple screw you on this point) has become so mainstream and a most viable part of the internet fabric nowadays, it would be most interesting to see the trend of independent productions move to the realm of advertising. It would be great to hear more independent ads being produced and latched to podcasts.

    I am sure many mac developers out there have garageband and are completely capable of producing their own ads! There could be special pricing for small developers and a slightly higher price for the bigger developers. Thing is, a lot of ads and jingles can be so easily produced using just Garageband.

    I think there are many many exciting opportunities that can unfold. There are so many technologies today that can allow independent programming like the maccast be a catapult for yet another niche industry – independent advertising.

    Use your creativity Adam and get opinions – I’m sure you will, but there are just a few ideas I thought of while putting this, now long, note together.

    Good to see things are coming back together. I look forward to the future of the maccast with a lot of enthusiasm.

  12. Peter | Sep 27 2006 - 07:04

    Just to comment on the ‘shared hosting’/ GoDaddy thing…

    I am disappointed that despite the low usage you fell foul of their ‘heavy user’ handling. I had something similar with a different (now taken over, but that’s another story) hosting service

    I had an “unlimited” reseller account, but at some point they gave me 7 days notice about suspending the account (heck, I had 50 user accounts to shift!) and why? Because they had changed their control panel software to the latest version of Plesk, and because it handled files in some different way, it meant that the number of domains I had became “an issue” for them.

    No compensation, no nothing, just “clear off our server” (despite having paid a year in advance).
    Anyway, hosting can be a minefield, as every ‘heavy user’ finds out to their cost…

    Don’t you hate it when there are both unwritten rules and monitoring that only the hosting firm can do, so as a user you cannot tell if your usage might be creeping up to some limit (eg 5% or 10% of server total)…

    Good luck with the site. I was told about your GoDaddy problem by someone with a Mac, whose website I host (for free, at present, but like anything that gets popular, it won’t be possible forever!)