Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
These feeds go along with the existing category feeds and keyword feeds that were already setup and running.
To subscribe to an author simply navigate to one of the authors articles on articlesnatch - and then click the rss icon in the location bar of your browser - or click on the profile page of the author - at the end of the url of the author you will see a number - this is the authors id number. The authors RSS feed is http://www.articlesnatch.com/myrss/id so for author id 500 it would be http://www.articlesnatch.com/myrss/500.
To build keyword targetted RSS feeds - use http://www.articlesnatch.com/rss2/keyword. i.e. http://www.articlesnatch.com/rss2/forex or http://www.articlesnatch.com/rss2/myspace.
These feeds were designed to help you stay in touch when new content is added - whether you use these to aggregate data, or display headlines, etc. Please feel free to use them on your site, news readers, etc.
We also have a google gadget available - that will allow you to search for articles based on a keyword.
If you have any other ideas for how you would like feeds to be created, please feel free to post below.
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
When I wrote the first post, my biggest concerns were that this sort of thing was happening regularly and that a lot of customers were affected. After the site was recovered and fully functional again, I had the pleasure of speaking with someone at MediaTemple who was willing to listen to my concerns as well as answer a few questions. What I found out from that conversation made me feel 100 times better about the MediaTemple GS service than I did before.
My main concern was that this downtime was widespread, it turns out that while most customers experienced intermittent periods of 30 minutes to 60 minutes of downtime, myself and maybe 2 others were affected for a long time. That's not too bad considering the 125,000 domains that are hosted on the Grid Service. Sure it stinks that our article directory was down for so long, but hopefully thats a one off occurrence and won't happen again.
My other concern was that the times when I tried to reach customer service, it took 15 to 30 minutes. Fortunately the phone system at MT will tell you how long the expected hold time. I found that these hold times are not normal and for most of 2007 they had an average hold time of about 3 minutes. Which is a lot more what I was expecting. Since the incident I have not been on hold at all any time I called in. I spoke to them about this and was told that MediaTemple has been growing rapidly and they are always hiring and training new customer service employees. Also since I called when things were down, that was the most likely time for other customers to be calling as well.
My last major concern was that something like this would happen again. I was told that they have been working on the cause for the downtime to correct it so that it won't cause the problem again. Additionally he said that they are constantly improving the way that the Grid works, so as to minimize problems in the future.
Media Temple made things right for the downtime - they gave me a discount on a DV (Dedicated Virtual) server so now our other site is no longer hosted on the Grid. It was a lot easier than I thought to move from one to the other. I just had to rsync the files and mysqldump the databases, update the connection string and that was about it. Pretty simple out of the box.
The DV servers use plesk control panel to help configure everything - I was surprised at how simple it really was, as this was the first time I used plesk. I realize now why resellers use Plesk to setup domains - it makes a lot more sense and there are tons of controls.
In the end what started out looking like a very negative situation turned into a positive experience. I guess sometimes its how a company handles the problems that matters more than the problems themselves.
As for the other things in the previous post - Mosso has also dropped their request based billing to go to a billing based on CPU and disk I/O usage. We will have to wait and see how it goes - during June.
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
Hostgator has been great for a few smaller blogs that don't get as much traffic as a lot of other blogs. Additionally installing new ones is quick and their tech support is great - although I can't say that I've really ever had to contact them. They do offer ssh access if you need it for your shared site. If you are planning on using them for a lot of disk space just read the terms - they say that if you have more than 50,000 files on the site, then they will not be backing up your server. In case you did the math for the 600 gigs of disk space you get - thats an average of 12 megs per file.
GoDaddy is currently hosting a SSL enabled blog we run that sells products and that is because when it was hosted on Mosso - it ran so slow people thought the site was down. Ten to fifteen second page load times were common on Mosso with this setup so we moved the site. Normally I just use Godaddy for Domain Registrations and not hosting. But for the price of the one hosting account, I couldn't refuse. If the performance gets worse than at Mosso, I'll move the site. GoDaddy has great support and a great refund policy.
Mosso has been the host for this blog and the article directory for the last year - over all - its been an ok experience. At times it was great and everything went very smoothly. At other times its been very rocky and hard to get anything to work. The support staff there has always tried to help to the best that they can. But more often than not the issues I was having were not issues other people were having and usually it was due to the script that runs the article directory. However a few months ago they announced a request based billing system - so it is no longer a cost effective solution.
MediaTemple - we moved a site to their grid service after looking for a new host for some of our sites that are currently on mosso. The first site we moved is much smaller than ArticleSnatch and the guys in sales said oh that won't be a problem just put it on the grid service and you will be all set. Moving the site and the database over was cake - with the SSH access you get to the machine. This alone was a huge plus compared to mosso. So we moved the one site over and about 3 days later, got an email saying that it had exceeded the MySql shared resources and would be bumped into a capacity system for a few days. Then I got the same email again after it came out of the capacity system. So I just bought a 256meg mysql container for the site - thus doubling the hosting bill for $40/month.
Thing have been relatively smooth at Mediatemple until yesterday (see below). The GPU usage (their form of monitoring CPU time) has been about 1/3 of what you get included for the month. Overall it works pretty well. It is slower to respond than the site hosted at Mosso, but no request based billing. As for support, most times I've called in I was on hold for an average of 15 minutes. One time it said I would be on hold for 50 minutes - I hung up. Seems that morning is the best time to call.
Yesterday - about 24 hours ago - I noticed that the site started giving a 403 error. At first I thought that I broke something in the .htaccess file, so I open up FTP. It won't let me connect. So I check the system status - it says intermittent speed issues. So I called support, was told it would be 30 minutes to wait, so I hung up. I put in a ticket instead. I got a reply a few minutes later saying "The issue you have reported has been identified by (mt) Media Temple as possibly being part of a wider problem affecting more than one customer. An internal incident (INC# 393) has been opened to track the issue and to provide you collective updates as progress is made toward a resolution." She also included a link to the status site above. Ok great - nothing to do so I forgot about it.
This morning I check the site - still down. So I call MediaTemple - this time only 6 people in line. I speak to a customer support rep who says that he will have an admin look into it. When they were moving people, my site was supposedly moved to the new location (or so they thought). But the files never made it. Thus explaining why I can't even ftp to the site. So he said that it would be resolved shortly and he put in a ticket. That was 8 hours ago and it still is not resolved. If you review the status site from today - it seems they have been very busy over there they have even made a whole category for this incident.
So where do we stand now - well - we certainly won't host anything critical at mediatemple. But going forward I think for the $40/month we pay we will be seeking an alternative host for that site. I've been looking at Joyent and several others. As for the sites we host at mosso, we are looking for a dedicated / colocated server to run the site so that we will have a lot more control over what scripts can be used, etc.
Want to help? Know a great host - please let me know!
Have you had similar or opposite experiences with these hosts? feel free to comment below. Remember when commenting - use your name not a keyword.
UPDATE: After 25 hours of total downtime - the site is back up.
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
Hostgator has been great for a few smaller blogs that don't get as much traffic as a lot of other blogs. Additionally installing new ones is quick and their tech support is great - although I can't say that I've really ever had to contact them. They do offer ssh access if you need it for your shared site. If you are planning on using them for a lot of disk space just read the terms - they say that if you have more than 50,000 files on the site, then they will not be backing up your server. In case you did the math for the 600 gigs of disk space you get - thats an average of 12 megs per file.
GoDaddy is currently hosting a SSL enabled blog we run that sells products and that is because when it was hosted on Mosso - it ran so slow people thought the site was down. Ten to fifteen second page load times were common on Mosso with this setup so we moved the site. Normally I just use Godaddy for Domain Registrations and not hosting. But for the price of the one hosting account, I couldn't refuse. If the performance gets worse than at Mosso, I'll move the site. GoDaddy has great support and a great refund policy.
Mosso has been the host for this blog and the article directory for the last year - over all - its been an ok experience. At times it was great and everything went very smoothly. At other times its been very rocky and hard to get anything to work. The support staff there has always tried to help to the best that they can. But more often than not the issues I was having were not issues other people were having and usually it was due to the script that runs the article directory. However a few months ago they announced a request based billing system - so it is no longer a cost effective solution.
MediaTemple - we moved a site to their grid service after looking for a new host for some of our sites that are currently on mosso. The first site we moved is much smaller than ArticleSnatch and the guys in sales said oh that won't be a problem just put it on the grid service and you will be all set. Moving the site and the database over was cake - with the SSH access you get to the machine. This alone was a huge plus compared to mosso. So we moved the one site over and about 3 days later, got an email saying that it had exceeded the MySql shared resources and would be bumped into a capacity system for a few days. Then I got the same email again after it came out of the capacity system. So I just bought a 256meg mysql container for the site - thus doubling the hosting bill for $40/month.
Thing have been relatively smooth at Mediatemple until yesterday (see below). The GPU usage (their form of monitoring CPU time) has been about 1/3 of what you get included for the month. Overall it works pretty well. It is slower to respond than the site hosted at Mosso, but no request based billing. As for support, most times I've called in I was on hold for an average of 15 minutes. One time it said I would be on hold for 50 minutes - I hung up. Seems that morning is the best time to call.
Yesterday - about 24 hours ago - I noticed that the site started giving a 403 error. At first I thought that I broke something in the .htaccess file, so I open up FTP. It won't let me connect. So I check the system status - it says intermittent speed issues. So I called support, was told it would be 30 minutes to wait, so I hung up. I put in a ticket instead. I got a reply a few minutes later saying "The issue you have reported has been identified by (mt) Media Temple as possibly being part of a wider problem affecting more than one customer. An internal incident (INC# 393) has been opened to track the issue and to provide you collective updates as progress is made toward a resolution." She also included a link to the status site above. Ok great - nothing to do so I forgot about it.
This morning I check the site - still down. So I call MediaTemple - this time only 6 people in line. I speak to a customer support rep who says that he will have an admin look into it. When they were moving people, my site was supposedly moved to the new location (or so they thought). But the files never made it. Thus explaining why I can't even ftp to the site. So he said that it would be resolved shortly and he put in a ticket. That was 8 hours ago and it still is not resolved. If you review the status site from today - it seems they have been very busy over there they have even made a whole category for this incident.
So where do we stand now - well - we certainly won't host anything critical at mediatemple. But going forward I think for the $40/month we pay we will be seeking an alternative host for that site. I've been looking at Joyent and several others. As for the sites we host at mosso, we are looking for a dedicated / colocated server to run the site so that we will have a lot more control over what scripts can be used, etc.
Want to help? Know a great host - please let me know!
Have you had similar or opposite experiences with these hosts? feel free to comment below. Remember when commenting - use your name not a keyword.
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
However the messages that I still have to go in and remove manually are those from people who didn't read the comment policy - or ignored the message next to the name box that says "no keywords". Sure this blog is part of the dofollow movement and the commentluv movement, but that doesn't mean your free to leave all the keyword spam you want in the comment field.
So I will continue to remove comments from people who choose to use something other than their name in the name field. Sometimes if the comment is more than "great post" - i'll allow a site name instead of a name. But I really don't understand why it is that people who write some great comments choose to have their comments removed instead of displayed, just because they are more concerned about a keyword anchor text link.
So if you want to leave a comment - I would love to have them, but please just use your name. I really don't like seeing so many great comments go to waste because people chose keywords instead.
Have a great weekend!
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
I sit in a lot of chairs when I go to office supply stores, but I still haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. In the process of looking for a new chair, I came across some mesh back chairs. I had never really thought of a mesh back chair but I figured I would look into it and decide later.
In my search for a mesh back chair I came across one that looks promising its called the Raynor Ergohuman mesh high back chair. This chair seems to fall in the middle price range for most office chairs of a good quality. It does come with a lifetime warranty as well - which I thought was a nice feature.
This chair says it is specifically designed for users who use a computer for more than 5 hours. Which for a lot of us is true for most days. The adjustable positionable arm rests look great to me. It does say that if you are outside of a certain height range then this chair will not work very well for you - so make sure to take that into account when looking for an office chair.
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
I sit in a lot of chairs when I go to office supply stores, but I still haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. In the process of looking for a new chair, I came across some mesh back chairs. I had never really thought of a mesh back chair but I figured I would look into it and decide later.
Originally published at ArticleSnatch Blog. You can comment here or there.
The blog - mixedmarketarts - talks about blogging about the iphone. He mentions that because of all the people who are constantly grabbing things that say iphone, that just talking about it on his blog has helped him build a large number of links.
I still think this is a pretty random idea - but cool at the same time. In case you haven't yet checked out some of the other great posts on mixedmarketarts - I strongly suggest you go spend some time there. I have been there a few times now in the last few days - and its a great blog.
Have a good day!
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