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Thank You for the Gift of Hosting

Yes, Sparklette is saved!

On Tuesday, I posted about the imminent danger of this website being forced to shut down. Immediately, my Twitter stream and email were inundated with retweets and messages offering help and support. A surprising good number offered free hosting. I realised just how fortunate I am to have a ready network of resourceful and savvy people that are keen to help.

Thank you

Lucian, the wonderful guy that he is and a firm supporter of Singapore bloggers, went out of his way to sponsor a whole year of free grid hosting — no strings attached. Thank you. Previously, Lucian also rendered his kind assistance when our friend Kevin Lim, a fellow Singaporean blogger, had his thousand dollar bill shocker.

I also wish to thank you for spreading the word, offering me great advice, and just simply caring: skinnylatte, Santoso, hwsoh, amourchaleur, chuyeow, litford, GrowlyBear, nanyate, victortan, patlaw, claudia10, tangenghui, luthieawu, darkholme, littleredbus, nimopress, imknight, soyuzno, hongkiat, pixeldeath, nickpan, metacole, dregar, Kidtalentz.

Then there are the following individuals, an exceptional group, who are willing to go the extra mile:

Saad Kamal, for offering his private dedicated server and loads of expert advice
U-Zyn, for his enthusiasm in getting me on board his cloud hosting solution
Kevin Lee, for kindly letting me share his unused bandwidth
Martyn Hunter, for writing to the Singapore government to sponsor a needy small-time blogger (me)
Anton, for offering to help with hosting
Someone who wishes to remain anonymous, for volunteering to host me

More than anything, I am deeply comforted and moved by your show of support for this website. Thank you!

Moving on

Right now my main priority is to keep the site running. The past couple of days was spent migrating my entire website and database to my new host. It’s been working well, although I’m a little concerned about overusing server resources, not unlike Kevin’s experience with the same host. So far I have encountered a few database connection errors during peak hours. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this works.

This episode is an example of a challenge that bloggers may face. In between sourcing for materials, providing fresh content regularly and responding to user feedback, there is plenty that goes on behind the scene. When I think about it, I probably spend more time and energy keeping the website up and running than providing the actual meat. It shouldn’t be this way.

After this, I am keeping an eye on the website performance. A new design would be coming up shortly that is minimal in graphics.

If anyone is willing to take a look at my WordPress site to see how it can be further optimised in terms of code and queries, please drop me a note and I would be keen to set up an account for you. Maybe we can even learn a thing or two from each other!

Tags: web hosting

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About the Editor

Veron Ang is the Founder and Chief Editor of Sparklette, a Singapore restaurants guide, lifestyle and travel blog. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the National University of Singapore and runs a web design firm at Sparklette Studio. To get in touch, head on over to the contact page or follow @Sparklette and @VeronSG on Twitter.

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Responses Leave a comment

Saad Kamal
1 comment

Thanks for the mention veron. I can look at your WP..just drop me an email.
Reply
Posted December 11, 2009 at 9:29 am
- Veron
  3439 comments
  
  Thanks! I had a feeling you would offer to take a look :)
  Account information sent to your email.
  Reply
  Posted December 12, 2009 at 2:44 am
Nicholas
51 comments

Glad to know things are settling out for you. More food, more food! Man, I’m putting on weight… tsk tsk tsk.
Reply
Posted December 11, 2009 at 1:13 pm
- Veron
  3439 comments
  
  I should be doing some Christmas posts next :)
  Reply
  Posted December 12, 2009 at 2:44 am
knight
1 comment

hmmm so you move to MT’s gs ?
you might need to get additional mysql container and recently happen this issue
no doubt MT is the super star in hosting, but only their dv level above, gs is still ….
Reply
Posted December 11, 2009 at 2:35 pm
- Veron
  3439 comments
  
  You are right. I’m most concerned about the GPU outage. Within 3 days the site has already used close to half the monthly GPU allocation.
  Reply
  Posted December 12, 2009 at 2:50 am
Kevin
26 comments

Lucian is our secret Santa. Reminds us how blogging isn’t free; for some of us, it still takes a lot of time and money to produce elaborate posts as you do.
If you’re concerned about the GPU overages, for the first week or so, just keep track of the useful GPU Usage Report in the MT dashboard. The main culprit for me was the “Permalink Redirect” WP plugin, which keep hitting the server for non-existent pages (ironic). Everything’s under control for me now, but I will eventually want to switch to a more modern WP template (or even just move to Posterous) so things will move faster.
Congrats and good luck! :)
Reply
Posted December 12, 2009 at 6:08 am
- Veron
  3439 comments
  
  Thanks, Kevin. I followed your post closely to catch the good tips :) The Permalink Redirect was never installed in the first place, but I had a couple of other plugins for various redirection purposes. One tip I have to share is that most redirecting can be done via htaccess so plugins aren’t really necessary in this case.
  Reply
  Posted December 14, 2009 at 3:19 am
Evette
3 comments

I’m so glad that you’re able to stay open. I love reading your blog! Looking forward to future posts. Merry Christmas!
Reply
Posted December 12, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Hong Wei
1 comment

Thank you for the mention, and cheers to problem solved!!
Yeah! =D
Reply
Posted December 12, 2009 at 11:50 pm
- Veron
  3439 comments
  
  You are most welcome. Thanks for retweeting :)
  Reply
  Posted December 14, 2009 at 3:21 am
soyuzno
1 comment

Glad things went well for you :). Sorry I couldn’t help too much.
Reply
Posted December 13, 2009 at 11:42 pm
- Veron
  3439 comments
  
  Hey, that’s totally okay! I couldn’t help myself either.
  Reply
  Posted December 14, 2009 at 3:25 am
J2Kfm
13 comments

Congrats veron. Keep the posts coming.
Reply
Posted December 14, 2009 at 7:34 pm
chin
12 comments

Congrats. so happy for you
Wish you all the best.
Reply
Posted December 14, 2009 at 8:23 pm
py
183 comments

I am happy for you and us readers too.
As a reader of your blog, I am grateful to Lucian and the many others who have made it possible for this site to continue running.
Cheers to more great blog articles from you.
Reply
Posted December 14, 2009 at 11:13 pm
pkchukiss
82 comments

I’m happy for you that you managed to solve the problem with your hosting.
Reply
Posted December 16, 2009 at 8:21 pm