Thought I’d take a second to update you on what’s been going on the past two days since the redesign.

Yes, I know that the site was not loading or was slow to load for some. For a short time each day, the site was down completely. There is no issue with the new template or code. Rather, the problems have all been hosting related. But, I think, they have been fixed.

Here’s what happened:

On Sunday, I pointed the URL from Typepad to our new WordPress site. Those changes, DNS changes, can take up to 24 hours to complete. Totally normal and there’s no way to avoid it. So that’s why some of you may have had trouble accessing the site Sunday night and into Monday… which is when there was another problem: our new host shut us off. By 10 a.m., not more than 16 hours since the site had fully switched over and when visits see a sharp increase, the site tripped the servers and was temporarily suspended. I upgraded the hosting plan and had them move us to a (virtual) private server. The site came back, but the switch, which can take several hours, is the reason why some of you were seeing new updates and others weren’t, and it’s also the reason some comments disappeared. By Monday night, though, all seemed good. Things were running smoothly, even though some may have still been waiting on the domain to make its way over to our new host. But yesterday morning, right around the time I tweeted out the Morning Wood link and, again, at 10 a.m., the site slowed to a halt. Our host told me to mess with caching settings (so images and ads load more quickly), but that didn’t do the trick. The site bounced back, but was slow throughout most of the day. So I switched hosts. The new one is specifically designed for WordPress sites and takes care of all speed and spam settings. It powers some of the biggest sites on the web. The change, however, means that some comments from yesterday may have disappeared, and it also means that, last night, I, again, had to redirect the domain. Most of you should be seeing the site on the new servers, and it should be running quickly, but there’s a chance some folks will have trouble accessing the site today as the domain makes its way over to our new host. Other than that, we should be good. And I need a beer, and then coffee, and then more beer.

Thanks for your patience. And please let me know if you run into any issues.