9 ms·

Wordpress Hosted Blogs are Down

45 points by jfornear 17y ago

JacobAldridge 17y ago
My lolcats. Nooooo! (Sadly, I did discover the outage when I opened my morning read of Fail Blog / Graph Jam / I can haz cheezeburger / Oddly Specific / Photobomb / WTF Pictures / Ugliest Tattoos / Failbooking. Does admitting that mean I'm no longer qualified for HN?)
- frossie 17y ago
  "Does admitting that mean I'm no longer qualified for HN" This should have come under Don't Ask Don't Tell....
- MartinCron 17y ago
  For what it's worth, Oddly Specific didn't go down, as that's where we're testing running Wordpress on the Windows Azure platform. -Martin from Cheezburger
  - JacobAldridge 17y ago
    I can confirm that actually - when I opened all the links, the others stalled while Oddly Specific did load. Good to know why.
dnsworks 17y ago
This means that Techcrunch is down, and @arrington is gearing up for a nervous breakdown after his 4th or 5th provider switch in 2 years. Eventually I would think that they would belly up to the bar and implement a redundancy solution that involves multiple solutions. Then again, I am an infrastructure architect, not a blogger, what do I know?
- farrel 17y ago
  That... or maybe he'll just move it over to tumblr.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    Or Posterous!
  - terrellm 17y ago
    But if they take back or "steal" his subdomain the how will he blog about the injustice?
- mrkurt 17y ago
  Multiple solutions at which level? WP is hosted in redundant datacenters, I assume they have redundancy most of the way down the stack as well. What do you expect Techcrunch to be able to do that the Wordpress people can't?
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    Techcrunch's problem is a far smaller and simpler one than Wordpress's. Four or five ISP switches now, and it's clear with each move that they are grasping at straws, hoping to just throw money at the problem and it will go away. Websites don't work that way. Wordpress.com has a problem that is many magnitudes more difficult and complex than just keeping one blog available. Techcrunch could do a far better job by keeping their TTLs low, choosing a secondary datacenter site for replication. In the frequent event of an outage they just perform a master promotion, change the dns records in order to get back online quickly. You don't have a redundant site if all of your eggs are at layeredtech. Throw SoftLayer or Equinix into the mix.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  I believe the appropriate response after multiple provider switches would be "fuck this shit, it ain't worth all the worry" and just deal with occasional downtime.
benofsky 17y ago
Wow, I'm surprised TechCrunch is included in this, you would think they have a bit more of a redundant setup.
- pavs 17y ago
  Why would any website which gets few million hits a month not have a redundant system is beyond me. If you consider the amount of money they make the cost of a redundant setup is really nothing.
  - CoachRufus87 17y ago
    When you consider the amount of money their losing right now...
  - icey 17y ago
    I was under the impression that people used Wordpress VIP hosting so that they wouldn't have to worry about using a redundant system (meaning that Wordpress VIP should take care of it).
    - andrewpbrett 17y ago
      We were under that impression as well.
    - benofsky 17y ago
      yeah, that's what I thought too.
    - brk 17y ago
      You can't outsource your liability. At a certain point (a point which TC passed quite a long time ago) you simply have to own your own infrastructure. That does not make it bullet proof, but it puts it under your own control and you can respond accordingly and better control the outcome of any outage. I know that in Web2.0 everybody wants to think that they can outsource all the messy bits of running a website to the lowest bidder, but that approach has never worked. When you get REALLY big (like facebook and google big) you move from a self-managed server in a carrier-neutral datacenter to building and maintaining your own datacenters. For some reason people think it's perfectly normal that facebook builds its own datacenter, and yet also perfectly normal that a large blog (Techcrunch) take no ownership of the very equipment that makes their site go.
compumike 17y ago
Of course this happens just hours after we launch a new video and are getting lots of traffic from hackaday.com (which is apparently WP hosted)... http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/digital_calipers_dro/ http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/digital_calipers_dro/ So looking at our server logs now, we're largely seeing hits to that page from Google Reader (I guess it cached their RSS feed?).
- stanleydrew 17y ago
  I think that's how Google Reader works, or at least I hope that's how it works. They do the polling for the feed and then store it somewhere to serve to anyone who's subscribed through Reader.
jrockway 17y ago
The big mass of PHP spaghetti has finally become self-aware -- and it killed itself. And people say artificial intelligence isn't...
- stanley 17y ago
  Either that or it's secretly constructing Wordpress T-1000

45 points by jfornear 17y ago

My lolcats. Nooooo! (Sadly, I did discover the outage when I opened my morning read of Fail Blog / Graph Jam / I can haz cheezeburger / Oddly Specific / Photobomb / WTF Pictures / Ugliest Tattoos / Failbooking. Does admitting that mean I'm no longer qualified for HN?)

frossie 17y ago
"Does admitting that mean I'm no longer qualified for HN" This should have come under Don't Ask Don't Tell....
MartinCron 17y ago
For what it's worth, Oddly Specific didn't go down, as that's where we're testing running Wordpress on the Windows Azure platform. -Martin from Cheezburger
- JacobAldridge 17y ago
  I can confirm that actually - when I opened all the links, the others stalled while Oddly Specific did load. Good to know why.

dnsworks 17y ago

This means that Techcrunch is down, and @arrington is gearing up for a nervous breakdown after his 4th or 5th provider switch in 2 years. Eventually I would think that they would belly up to the bar and implement a redundancy solution that involves multiple solutions. Then again, I am an infrastructure architect, not a blogger, what do I know?

farrel 17y ago
That... or maybe he'll just move it over to tumblr.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  Or Posterous!
- terrellm 17y ago
  But if they take back or "steal" his subdomain the how will he blog about the injustice?
mrkurt 17y ago
Multiple solutions at which level? WP is hosted in redundant datacenters, I assume they have redundancy most of the way down the stack as well. What do you expect Techcrunch to be able to do that the Wordpress people can't?
- dnsworks 17y ago
  Techcrunch's problem is a far smaller and simpler one than Wordpress's. Four or five ISP switches now, and it's clear with each move that they are grasping at straws, hoping to just throw money at the problem and it will go away. Websites don't work that way. Wordpress.com has a problem that is many magnitudes more difficult and complex than just keeping one blog available. Techcrunch could do a far better job by keeping their TTLs low, choosing a secondary datacenter site for replication. In the frequent event of an outage they just perform a master promotion, change the dns records in order to get back online quickly. You don't have a redundant site if all of your eggs are at layeredtech. Throw SoftLayer or Equinix into the mix.
electromagnetic 17y ago
I believe the appropriate response after multiple provider switches would be "fuck this shit, it ain't worth all the worry" and just deal with occasional downtime.

benofsky 17y ago

Wow, I'm surprised TechCrunch is included in this, you would think they have a bit more of a redundant setup.

pavs 17y ago
Why would any website which gets few million hits a month not have a redundant system is beyond me. If you consider the amount of money they make the cost of a redundant setup is really nothing.
- CoachRufus87 17y ago
  When you consider the amount of money their losing right now...
- icey 17y ago
  I was under the impression that people used Wordpress VIP hosting so that they wouldn't have to worry about using a redundant system (meaning that Wordpress VIP should take care of it).
  - andrewpbrett 17y ago
    We were under that impression as well.
  - benofsky 17y ago
    yeah, that's what I thought too.
  - brk 17y ago
    You can't outsource your liability. At a certain point (a point which TC passed quite a long time ago) you simply have to own your own infrastructure. That does not make it bullet proof, but it puts it under your own control and you can respond accordingly and better control the outcome of any outage. I know that in Web2.0 everybody wants to think that they can outsource all the messy bits of running a website to the lowest bidder, but that approach has never worked. When you get REALLY big (like facebook and google big) you move from a self-managed server in a carrier-neutral datacenter to building and maintaining your own datacenters. For some reason people think it's perfectly normal that facebook builds its own datacenter, and yet also perfectly normal that a large blog (Techcrunch) take no ownership of the very equipment that makes their site go.

compumike 17y ago

Of course this happens just hours after we launch a new video and are getting lots of traffic from hackaday.com (which is apparently WP hosted)... http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/digital_calipers_dro/ http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/digital_calipers_dro/ So looking at our server logs now, we're largely seeing hits to that page from Google Reader (I guess it cached their RSS feed?).

stanleydrew 17y ago
I think that's how Google Reader works, or at least I hope that's how it works. They do the polling for the feed and then store it somewhere to serve to anyone who's subscribed through Reader.

jrockway 17y ago

The big mass of PHP spaghetti has finally become self-aware -- and it killed itself. And people say artificial intelligence isn't...

stanley 17y ago
Either that or it's secretly constructing Wordpress T-1000