Garry Conn dot Com is Fixed! Come Check it Out!
My God that was rough. I have been battling server issues for four freaking days. Finally I am back and running strong. Mr. Cow has a huge advantage in this competition due to my loss of time. However, I am totally refreshed, typing around 65 words per minute and most importantly, I have a lightening fast new blog. Here is what went wrong.
To begin with, I had way too many sites on one server. Between my own internal sites and customer’s sites it was way too much for one server to handle. The first few days I spent moving sites from one server to another. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it actually is; however, there is quite a bit involved. For one, the servers I have all the sites on are brand new, so they had to be properly configured. Secondly, I then had to transfer each site to the new server and update the DNS on the domain names. While this too isn’t all that difficult, I have to allow a period of time for the Internet to catch up with the change.
During this transition period I had to constantly keep the LIVE sites up to date with the PHASED out sites. I don’t know if that makes any sense, so I’ll just say this. When you change servers there is a period of time when areas of the Internet still see your old version rather than your new. So I had to bounce back and forth keeping everything mirror imaged. My customer’s sites all came first, I had to put the most priority on their sites before my own.
Once I got all the sites on new servers, I then was able to start tackling some major issues that have been going on with my personaal blog, www.garryconn.com. While there are elements that bloggers are keen on judging level of popularity such as Alexa ranking and FeedBurner subscribers numbers, what many people fail to realize is that I am pretty savvy in the Google Ranking department. Consequently as you see my blog only having around 800 FeedBurner subscribers, in reality of things, my blog actually has around 85% search engine traffic. So to put things into perspective, in a nutshell, only 15% of my traffic are really blogger traffic.
Needless to say, my blog gets hit constantly with traffic from search engines. While bloggers pray to the traffic gods and hope that one day their blog will be blessed with traffic, sometimes having traffic isn’t the best thing for a blog. Traffic puts a lot of strain on your server and if you’re running a WordPress blog, traffic will put a ton of strain on your MySQL database that runs your blog. Too much traffic leads to errors, conflicts and all sorts of things that cause a blog owner internal pain.
My whole issue was combating traffic and combating a damaged MySQL database on www.garryconn.com. The damaged MySQL database was finally repaired by yours truly. And once again, that all sounds pretty simple right? Well, in a way it was, but I had to think creatively on how I would repair my database will out making any drastic errors causing my entire blog to go, “bye byee.”
My database was just ridden and infested with useless tables that have been created over that last year from various WordPress plugins. Some Plugins actually modify your database, while others don’t. It’s the WordPress plugins that modify your WordPress database that you need to watch out for. The problem with WordPress plugins that modify your database that they can easily conflict with other WordPress plugins that create tables to your database.
When John Smith makes his “Auto Toilet Flusher” Wordpress plugin he might not be aware that Billy is making an “Auto Wipe” WordPress plugin. While each developer is indeed making a stable plugin, both are unaware of what the other developer is doing. When you combine the two together, it is very likely that you’ll get a conflict or some kind of fatal error.
WordPress by itself is state of the art software. Unfortunately, many WordPress plugins are developed my teenagers, Class B programmers, and other people who aren’t really professionally qualified in programming. WordPress itself is managed by some really hardcore and skilled programmers, but again, with Plugins, you’re looking at a huge open source circle jerk of amateur developers who don’t take into consideration how their plugin will react with other plugins. All in all, that was played a huge part in the down fall of www.garryconn.com
So with that being said, my advice to you is for one: not to overload a server with a bunch of blogs. If you need to get two or three (just as I have done) do so. Servers do cost most, but so does time invested in fixing them, especially if you’re involved in one of the largest and most popular Make Money Online contests in 2008. My delay very well may cost me the game. We’ll see.
Second piece of advice is to research the plugins that you want to install. Try your best to stay away from plugins that actually modify your MySQL database. Before installing a plugin, do some Google searches, troll around in the WordPress.org forum and see what the community reaction to the plugin is.
Check this page:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Database_Description
This page shows you the original configuration of tables in MySQL. When you install plugins that modify your MySQL database, you put your blog and your content at risk. Not only is there a chance that you can get fatal errors beyond your ability to fix, it can also create security holes in your install and make your blog vulnerable to hackers.
I have ditched quite a few really good plugins and I am really disappointed by that. But I know that I can get by without having plugins that can cause potential problems in the future rather than have to partly experience what I have in the last few days.
At any rate, www.garryconn.com is back and running amazingly strong and so am I. I will immediately be posting my next post that will have continued information about the contest against John Cow and my niche blog. Stay tuned and once again, I appreciate your patients through all this mess.
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20 comments
Great!! Conn you are back in action…. Hope you will give us the status of the competition soon
Garry;
Glad to see you up and running again, man. Time to turn our attention to the Cow.
Can you comment on what you have done to have “85% SE traffic.” That sounds killer.
Thanks,
Mark
Even if you are having problems with your server, i hope you will not use this as an excuse to say that you will loose the cowpetition because you were having this issues. You and JC started in zero…. now if he is ahead its because he is taking this seriously as it has to be. You are trying to show that for you this competition is not important because you are the most busy business man in the world… but come on… be serious. thanks.
Oh man… coming right up!!!
I am so happy to have things back right. What a nightmare!!!!
Me too Mark!!! Me too… I am so thrilled to be done with that experience. I feel like a new man!
As far as search engine traffic goes, the hard part I have been desperate to figure out is how to convert that into regular reader traffic. They are all one hit wonders and I’d like to convert them into regular readers.
One great thing is that once I started going with more list building, I get quite a few people who join my mailing list on a day to day basis.. Which is real nice.
As far as my search traffic goes, I relate that to my coding, the titles of my posts being similar to things that people search for in Google, my content that compliments the keywords I target and not to mention that my blog is PR5 helps too.
Leonardo,
You’re an idiot. New blog and new attitude so go piss up a rope and see what kind of results that gets you. I am really done being nice to people who take shots at me. Either love me or leave me and if you don’t have anything nice to say, I’ll be sure to ban your IP address and prevent you from visiting my blog again. Bandwidth is a huge issue for me and no use wasting it on you.
Woo hoo, glad to have you back Garry. Scares the life out of me all these server issues!
Oh man… I am just glad it’s all over. Hopefully this new hosting company pans out and if they do, I will hook them up with a huge thank you post! LOL!!! I can honestly say, “what a pain in the freaking ass.”
looks like the business man doesnt have any culture… i didnt try to offend you but your reply is so rude. In fact, i am following this competition to see who can show to have the best results. not just about who sells the new website higher, because for me the really important issue is from whom i am learning more. I wrote my last comment because you should focus on writing post about what you are doing in the competition, also you promised to say your url but you didnt. i know that its important for you to explain to your readers why your blog was having some server problems, but it looks like you dont have something else about what to blog. anyway, if you want to ban me, i will not try to enter by some proxy server because i will understand that i am not welcome in your blog. you need to be polite with the people who read your blog. And if you are trying to ban me because the true hurts, go ahead and ban me. Kindly regards.
This blog, my blog, is a personal blog where I have friends who not only follow my ventures online but also follow things that happen in my day to day life. How dare you come here for the first time and dictate what I do with my blog or how I do it.
This blog is packed full of over 650 posts that will help you in learning the business of making money online. If I choose to write a post and inform and educate my readers about the trouble I have been experiencing with my blog, I have that right and my readers deserve to know what happened so that they too can learn from the experience and hopefully never get into a situation that I just got out of. I am lucky that I have a somewhat advanced level of experience and general understanding of how MySQL works, otherwise I would have had to fork out $450 dollars to the company that was going to come in here and fix things for me.
You’re not here to learn. You’re not here to be a nice individual, you’re here to try to ruffle my feathers. Again I say to you, go piss up a rope. I could care less about how you feel towards me. I am who I am and I will use my blog the way I see fit. Note my name, Garry Conn and note the name of my blog, Garry Conn.
If you have a problem with what I write, how I write it or when I write it, then oh well. Go read http://www.JohnChow.com and see how much you learn over there.
The thing that you’re failing to understand is that whether my little FeedBurner chicklet displays 0, 800 or 25,000… it has absolutely ZERO effect on my day to day business. What you see here on my personal blog is a journal of events that take place on other sites. I could pack up and close up shop on GCDC and the the only person who would lose is the people who read the blog.
I’ve seen some fairly strong developers who disagree pretty strongly about the performance of wordpress:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001105.html
Are you using any of the caching strategies to improve performance with it? It sounds like quite a CPU hog.
Like having a baby, it sounds like.
Glad to see you back in the driver’s seat. Now get back to blogging!!
wow you two guys.. to he honest i have never thought garry would/could say something like that to the reader.
anyway..
*leave to the next post*
Sorry… but I wasn’t really in the best of moods and I was very excited to have my blog back after so much hell, his comment kinda got to me. I am human with emotions and don’t really hesistate to illustrate that fact. The days of me having to be politically correct while wearing a suit and tie are over.
While I probably shouldn’t have made those remakes, I did and nothing I can do about it now. It is what it is, he caught me at a bad time. Oh well. Live and learn.
Is Garry just a tad bit edgy??? YES!!!!! LOL!!! Anyone have an extra Prozac?
Glad things worked out dude! I sorta know where Leonardo was coming from (as far as you saying John Cow might win because of your down time)…it sounds like you are laying the ground work for losing…you started this out saying you were going to blow him out of the water (well…those are my words, not yours)…and now you’re doubting things. (it seems)…
I think you are still on the right track…the down time to you might have seemed like a lot of time lost but on this end things seem to be at an even pace….
I have learned a lot from both of ya’s…I’m already applying some of what I learned from you….You should stay with the positive attitude like you had at the beginning!
Anyway…something kind of funny I noticed today…John dissed you a few days ago for asking other people to contribute to your site’s content…well in his email today to his mailing list he is “on the look out for fresh new writers at Gamerz Reviewz”. Hmmmm…
Well…Good job Garry…keep it coming man…
Very cool, my friend. It’s nice to come to the site and see the pages load so fast. You did an amazing job, that would have totally boggled my little brain. LOL
[...] Conn dot com and check out his incredible make money on line ideas. He wrote a great post entitled Garry Conn dot Com is Fixed! Come Check it Out! which explains some turmoil he went through during a server crisis. Maybe I [...]
Hi Gary! I hopped from Bobby’s blog. Thanks for saving his blog. And wow, this is a very great post! Thank you for sharing!
Hey just reading through your mishap. Glad to see you are back on top of things again. I know I will have to get rid of bunch of plugins sometime but as you said it’s probably easier to do it before the stuff hits the fan.
[...] was on the rise and my blog was loading very slowly and at times would even crash. Later after I fixed my WordPress blog and talked about how the damage came from overloading my MySQL database with too many WordPress [...]
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