Going Dark…Maybe.

After fifteen years of running my own site, I’ve reached a point where the site is too big and unweildy, and bloated with dusty old stuff that really should go.

Also, because the site has been established for so long, spam is killing me and loading the server.

Also, there’s over 500 in-bound links to the site, most of them pulling on images I’ve uploaded, instead of putting the image on their own site.

Because of the bloat and traffic, my site host company is getting snippy about how much CPU time I’m stealing from their other clients.  It’s got so bad that simply trying to add a new post to the blog is spiking CPU usage above their acceptable limits.

As I would prefer to continue blogging, and don’t want to off-load any of my articles, or the more popular and interesting posts, that means rebuilding the site.

I’ve looked into a few options, and with Dar Albert’s help — she’s going to create all the pretty stuff — I’m going to completely rebuild my site from the ground up. That means that for the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be doing nothing but rebuilding.

Because I need an Internet connection to do the rebuilding, I can only work on the new site when I’m at home.  My laptop, alas, doesn’t self-generate an Internet connection wherever I go (I wish!).  Instead, I will be able to keep up with blog posts in the meantime, and some new story writing.  However, it’s possible that two things might happen:

1) There might be some post schedules I miss because I’m too busy building pages for the other site.

2)  You may already have noticed the parred down front page and the lack of useful functions — I’ve disabled most of the plug-ins that provided functionality above and beyond basics.  This is what is allowing me to continue to post for the meantime.

32) My current site host may pull the plug on this site without warning.  It’s their prerogative to do this if they think my CPU usage is unfair to other sites.  Other hosting companies have done this to me in the past, involving a massive effort to find another host pronto and moving the site there.  It also involves a dearth of sleep.

If my site suddenly disappears, that’s what’s happened.  Don’t panic (because I’ll be doing plenty of that — enough for everyone) — I’ll be back as soon as I can manage it.

Think of this site as currently working on an emergency power generator that runs on gas — which could give out at any minute.

In order to keep things very light and easy on the current system, I’ll be keeping the posts short and snappy.

If the lights do go out, I will keep everyone up to date with important notices via my FaceBook page, so if you haven’t liked the page yet, now would be a good time to do it.

I’ll make a big announcement (of course!) when the site is complete, then you can come and check out my funky, fancy rebuild and tell me what you think.

Until then, nose down, tail up.

Cheers,

Tracy