He’s a popular guy. Somebody Stumbled my post on How To Think Like Bill Gates, and the traffic spike exceeded what my hoster could allow for a shared server. So if you happened to wander by Sources of Insight last Sunday, you might have noticed it wasn’t available.
Here’s the impact … I had to move to a dedicated server which changed the costs of my little blog from a few dollars a month to a few hundred a month. Wow. I did not expect this. It’s the Slashdot effect
What I also did not expect is that my site was not available for a stretch of time during the migration. I also had to re setup and pay for a more expensive backup plan. All of this, to deal with periodic spikes.
The good news is, I can revert back to my shared hosting cost, if my traffic goes down. The bad news is, each time I hit a spike, I’ll either have a server down, or I have to swap back and forth between a dedicated server and shared hosting. Not good.
Maybe it’s a sign that it’s time to level up in life. I might just stick with the dedicated server for now.
I can’t help but think back to my early days of little league. I was batting .700 (which, if you know baseball is extremely high.) I was in the minors and didn’t want to move to the majors … I thought I would suck. The surprise for me, was I didn’t, and although my average went down, I was batting in the .300-.400 range, which was still extremely high.
Here’s how I’m going to respond to this unexpected change of plans:
- Stick with the dedicated hosting per now.
- Experiment and test ways to fund my site.
- Enjoy the journey.
I figure if I keep flowing value, and if I give more than I get, then things should take care of themselves. Worst case, I’ll learn a lot from my experiments, and at least my site should now handle more traffic.
So if you see me fumble and stumble along the way, please bear with me, while I find my wings.
Photo by jurvetson
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