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As everybody already know, Blogdrive has recently moved their data center, promising every blogdriver a better service with less down time. I was very looking forward to this event as this would definitely make Blogdrive a competent blogging platform. (And benefit my fellow readers  )
To me, Blogdrive is a wonderful work of art, programming, business and internet technology. Of course by saying that, I did not take into consideration the frequent downtime, the rude customer service, the slow responce time (in terms of everything: customer service, releasing new upgrades, and server fixes), the defensive sensitive forum regulars, and of course the deadly-inconsiderate-evil-money-minded spammers.
There are a few conspiracies regarding what actually happened behind the scenes. AH hah! I knew you love conspiracies. 
The move started on June 29th, as indicated in this entry. But by July 21st, it still wasn't completed. It was until Auguest 30th where there were signs of "almost done". Till now, I'm not sure if they are completely finished with the move but the red notice that was in the blog management area were now removed. After two months.
Michael has always been very good at telling stories, I loved the way he put things into an easy to understand, emotionally touching story line. But what really happened isn't always what the story claims, usually. It's true that the real Blogdrive crew consists of Michael, Tim, Jeff and Rick. Each specializing in different areas.
What's untrue is... the number of servers claimed. There's only one server, for all I know. And judging from the quality of server responce time, nothing has changed.
It is kept very cold inside to keep the thousands of servers safe from heat damage. It is also very loud in the data center due to the monster ACs and the thousands of server fans running.
Thousands of servers... right! Has Blogdrive improved their service so far? I, still see no difference.
But why can't I see my blog?
I hear you. It's not just you, me too (and as ARS reported it in the forums too)
As many of you know, I'm a computer nomad. I don't make love to the same computer all the time. It's not that I'm cheating or unloyal, I do have feelings for these machines but it's just that ... I'm non-commitment kinda guy. I just want to enjoy myself as much as the computer does. Live for the moment, Carpe Diem. You know what I mean?
Anyway, back to the main topic. I had no problem accessing the admin section or the Blogdrive forum but I can't get to my blog, or any other blog for that matter. The funny thing is, I can access all blogs that are FEATURED as Blogdrive Favorites. Not any others.
This is racism. Just because I'm not on the favorites, shouldn't I get to access my blog?
As I was saying, I travel around, a lot. I've had experience with young, beautiful and energetic new flat-screen desktops with smart, intelligent operating systems (winXP). To old, mature but rock solid late-90s computer who likes long walks around the lake, dogs and cats. One of these days, I'll try to get my pants into the new Vista baby. And no, it's not paedophile.
My point is, from all these different computers there are some times (especially these few days) where I CAN or can NOT reach my blog. And guess what, it has nothing to do with the differences of these computers. It's their location or rather ... their connection source, a.k.a. Internet Service Provider. It became harder to get to my blog if the internet connection I get is rather dodgy, like a wireless network, proxy connection or dynamic IP addresses.
SO,
speculation of the day is:
Blogdrive disables blogs connection to dodgy computers.
why?
 my guess, based on what I've been suffering for the pass few days is to fight spam. I've received more than 50 odd contact form spams in two days. Click on the image to have a better view.
Now, how is this fair? I'm a subscriber but I can't get to my blog. What about my visitors? For your information, my visitor stats have been down by 50%. It's a huge traffic blog so stats differences are very notable despite daily fluctuations.
Lets look on the brighter side of things. By cutting connection to dodgy computers, spam attacks can be reduced and this saves the server from crashing again. At least, Blogdrive isn't entirely down. Right?
But what about those that do have an account here, are loyal Blogdrive users and even are subscribers. Why can't they be exempt from being classified as dodgy? Why can't they get access to their own blog? at the very least.
Dear readers, do you have other ideas as to why I can't get access to my own blogs?
 UPDATE: ~justme~ » "Posting from this IP is not allowed. You are posting from an IP/proxy server that is known to distribute SPAM and the author of this blog blah blah blah
justme was having trouble commenting, whatever happened to the antispam feature introduced not too long ago?
Tags: Blogdrive, ISP, spams, internet service provider,
As everyone can tell, the downtime for our favourite blog host has just occured. Cause of downtime is of course unknown, it's top secret (Blogdrive will have to kill you(in secret) if you figure it out the secret, it's bad for publicity)
There has been a HUGE, I mean it HUGE voice of anger in the Blogdrive forum. And not a single response from Blogdrive themselves.
The frequency of downtime is occuring more and more frequent compared to a few years back. Here are some of the most popular reasons given by Blogdrive whenever there's a down time:
1) Hurricane, this is an annual event and it doesn't just occur once a year but several. Whenever lighting strike, when the storms are strong, one of the internet router will *boom* and so there goes the 30,000 other Blogdrive blogs. This is far worst than a woman's PMS.
2) Upgrading server (or software), I'm not sure what its updating really. Whenever it say upgrading server, I hardly ever see any new features that comes with it either. Well, maybe sometimes (like the comment spam protection) although the down time could be of entirely different reason.
3) DoS attacks. Oooh... I absolutely hate it when these hackers have nothing better to do and choose to launch an attack on Blogdrive. Come on, why would anybody want to harm Blogdrive, there's 30 thousand innocent souls at stake. Say no to War on Iraq!
4) Spammer steals bandwidth. Yeah, these dirty bastard who are trying to make a quick buck on pharmaceutical products and pornography "steal" bandwidth. How? Erm... I don't know... I just know that it caused down time here on Blogdrive. (oh, really?)
5) Seige's Fault. It's all my fault. I didn't meant it. I didn't want anybody to get hurt but because the toilet isn't working I had to find an alternative target to satisfy my "nature calls". All this downtime is caused by waiting for the server drying up and for the toilet pump to be fixed. Disaster eh?
(In case you haven't realise, number five is totally made up and I've never actually seen the server before. Accept for a sexy picture of it here.)
Oh, and don't ask me why on earth update.blogdrive.com wasn't updated with any news about the downtime. All I know is that if you found out why Blogdrive was down, you'd better watch out because you might be murdered in a tragic death where all your body parts are broken into pieces and thrown into the river with no trace at all.
What was I on again? Right, WHY wasn't update.blogdrive.com UPDATED?
Tags: blogdrive, server, forum, downtime,
It seems to be occuring more and more often, every time I make a new entry I would receive several email notifications. (Mind you, I'm one of the more narcistic fella who subscribes to his own blog just because I love myself so much)
Anyway, I think it's just a minor glitch and could be something to do with the system restarting the process over and over again when it couldn't send out emails. Or maybe something else.
I hope Blogdrive will fix this soon too, because it might cause my readers to unsubscribe from me because the email notifications clutter their inbox. Like spam.
Reference: Multiple notifications, Blogdrive sending several mails on entry updates?
Tags: Blogdrive, Email, Notifications, Subscriptions,
It appears these days Blogdrive has began to improve a lot. Just today I noticed that we need to insert a human code verification to submit a comment. I'm not sure how soon was this implemented but I believe it could be installed in the recent "outage" that was causing a lot of noises in the forum. See, good things come after the bad. ;)
Notice the ... erm ... advertising at the top? haha Anyway, the Anti-Spam filter works just like the tagboard's. If you are logged in (to blogdrive) you probably won't see it. But if you are not logged in, you are very likely to see it. You only have to fill in once as a cookie by the name of "asc" will be stored in your browser. So, don't complain that it's too annoying. I'm pretty happy with this feature, although it's a bit troublesome (sometimes) it really cuts down on comment spams. *Updates* It appears this is being reported over at Blogdrive Update, good to see real blogdrive updates.Tags: Blogdrive, Comments, Spam, Anti-spam,
I find tag clouds fascinating. It's a really cool way of design and it tells a lot of information regarding your blog. A useful way to evaluate the contents of the blog, categorising it's post and an instant method of evaluating the blog.
But it's not possible here on blogdrive, yet. Maybe it'll be a good suggestion to Blogdrive's new category/tag system. (You guys listening?)
Well, cool it may be. I wonder if your visitors actually look at tag clouds? Will they be using the tag clouds to navigate the site? Will they just see it as another blind section and not bother about it anymore?
I wonder if there are sites out there that offers tag clouds for blogs. It'll need some spidering of a blog before they can come up with a tag cloud. Technorati have them but they are not very good. In fact, technorati is under bad heavy pressure from spam blogs that almost any non-spam blogs are considered spam.
Back to tag clouds, I'll attemp to make my own if I can't find an available service.
Anyone with suggestions?
*UPDATE: Just found ZoomClouds, try it out dudes.
Tags: tag clouds, design, navigation, spam, blogdrive,
Helpee have created a forum topic to report on what's going on behind the scene. This is an applausible action because now we'll know why we are experiencing difficulties accessing webblogs. At least we know it's not a problem with our own computer (a relief). http://www.blogdrive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3137 I'm certainly happy to see that despite a sudden influx of spam to my blog (which is ten fold) basically because BlogDrive is now beginning to communicate with their users in a more formal way. Keep up the good work! Currently, it's reporting the status of the technical problems with the server. It's been stickified and locked from posting by normal users. I certainly hope it'll be regularly updated with the ongoings behind the scenes. This benefits the users as well as Blogdrive. Oh, btw I hate spam. Sigh. *Updates: They have removed the forum topic and started a brand new blog for it. Read them here.
References: Blogdrive Update,
Tags: BlogDrive, Forum, Spam,
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