Website issues today
Though it is possible my readers might not have noticed, but it appears there was some major issue today on the website that slowed things to a crawl and could have even been an attack by hackers somewhere. Because of this my web guy Shane had to disable much of the under-the-hood stuff I use to post so he could fix things. Thus, no new posts or cool images today. Those posts that did go up had been scheduled before the problems appeared.
I am hoping to get back to normal tonight and tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Though it is possible my readers might not have noticed, but it appears there was some major issue today on the website that slowed things to a crawl and could have even been an attack by hackers somewhere. Because of this my web guy Shane had to disable much of the under-the-hood stuff I use to post so he could fix things. Thus, no new posts or cool images today. Those posts that did go up had been scheduled before the problems appeared.
I am hoping to get back to normal tonight and tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The site has been sluggish. Still is. I also had a couple of failures to connect. Hope you guys get this all sorted soon.
On a positive note, it has been several days since the last time I got one of those annoying “You’re posting comments too fast, slow down” messages. The current sluggishness and wonkiness are not a good trade for the lack of Karen messages, but I hope the absence of the latter persists once everything else is back to normal.
While your problem might be of hackerish origin, I think it’s statistically more likely to be an inadequately tested WordPress update. Millennial and Zoomer coders now dominate in the software space and none of them show much evidence of having ever heard of regression testing.
The site has been fully updated and optimized. This was not a a result of hackers. Dick is correct that it is a complete nightmare with an enormous amount of potential conflicts. New WordPress patches pushed weekly, 5 different PHP versions currently being supported, plugins, themes, etc. There is little regression testing done due to the complexity of all the variables. It has become a huge issue over the past 18 months as when one thing updates, it breaks something else. The site itself is running on very high performance hardware, so that is not an issue either. It is an ongoing battle and these days I spend more time fixing site hiccups like this than doing routine maintenance. Also, FYI, The “posting comments too fast” is built into WordPress and is a site self-defense mechanism.
Shane the BtB Web Guy,
Does BtB have its own servers or is it hosted? If it’s hosted, is the hosting, as well as the software site app, provided by WordPress too? I ask because I sometimes get the “posting comments too fast” message on my first comment of the day, hours after my previous one. This would only seem to make sense if your WordPress site is sharing physical resources with those of other subscribers. In such a situation, I can see why such a message might appear on a first-of-the-day comment. In that case, the message wouldn’t be about me, personally, or maybe even the entire BtB site but about the entire hosted infrastructure and the aggregate of all the sites it supports being pressed hard at a given instant. Any further light you can shed on this matter would be appreciated.
Shane the BtB Web Guy,
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
We truly appreciate having this web site, and we are glad that Robert has someone to turn to when trouble arises. I don’t think we realized that you have to perform weekly maintenance in order to correct the frequent updates.
By the way, I have been getting the “posting comments too fast” notice so rarely that I get surprised by them. The unannounced moderation (my poet disappears without telling me that it is in the moderation in-box) is so common that I just go with it. They always arrive when Robert moderates, so it is not a problem for me, just for poor Robert.
Also, I noticed the new “Verify you are human” check box. It is nice to know that I didn’t turn into a Borg or robot sometime during the day. I’m going to try out this new box now. Since you are reading this, it works (and I am still human *whew!*).