Sorry for the downtime
Apologies to everyone for the server outage that has forced F1 Fanatic offline for the past four days.
The problem seems to have been caused by the large amounts of traffic visiting the site, which have continued to rise even during the off-season. I am of course very happy that so many people are coming to F1 Fanatic, but I’m not an expert on running web servers and I failed to anticipate the strain this would put on my system.
F1 Fanatic is now running on a new and faster server, and hopefully that will solve the problem. If you are experiencing difficult visiting the site please contact me either via the contact form, on Twitter or via the F1 Fanatic Facebook Group.
Thanks very much for all the offers of help, assistance and hosting alternatives that came in from many of you. I would like to keep in touch with everyone who offered advice and ideas so I can learn from them and avoid a repeat of this gigantic inconvenience.
Once again, I’m very sorry for the downtime and I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Now, back to F1…
alan said on 16th February 2009, 10:18
I am glad too see? – that youre back again Keith – even though I havent been adding to many comments it’s developed into a daily catchup with whats happening in this at times maddening F1 world – thanks for youre hard work
Damon said on 16th February 2009, 10:23
“the server outage that has forced F1 Fanatic offline for the past four days.”
Only four days?!?
God, it seemed like it was two weeks or sth.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 16th February 2009, 14:18
Tell me about it. I’ve not been fun to live with recently…
The_Pope said on 16th February 2009, 10:25
Keith,
I ran this past my guru (briefly), and his response was “Looks like a server config issue. The mime setup is probably wrong on the server if mod_mime is barfing”… hope that helps (doesn’t mean anything to me!)
sajonaraman said on 16th February 2009, 11:16
At last- alive and kickin’ is exactly how we want your blog to be Keith.
bob1716 said on 16th February 2009, 11:22
Glad to see you up and running again Keith. Keep up the good work and more power.
Colin said on 16th February 2009, 11:25
Glad its back, great site!
Chaz said on 16th February 2009, 11:32
Just glad you are back. I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms lol and they are not pretty, believe me…
Sush Meerkat said on 16th February 2009, 12:30
While sorry to hear about the downtime, its great that your getting more and more traffic, keep up the good work.
D Winn said on 16th February 2009, 12:43
Keith,
I think your recent site SUSPENSION maybe had you KERSing, at why your SLICK site CRASHED your FORMULA to be on TRACK for 2009 RACES.
So as you WING your way TYRElessly to find what is BRAKING the BUTTONs, I’ll spend some time at SIDEPODcast, as a DIFFUSER, and hope you don’t EXHAUST yourself picking over the (WISH)BONES of the site.
May the MAXimum DOWNFORCE be with you.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 16th February 2009, 14:18
argh…
Nick said on 16th February 2009, 13:12
wb, felt like forever.
Manuel F said on 16th February 2009, 14:13
Welcome back! Don’t worry Keuth, we know you always do your best for this site, and so many people appreciate it.
Greetings from Italy
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 16th February 2009, 14:19
Thanks guys!
Can I ask, are people still getting errors at the moment? If so, please leave details.
Adrian said on 16th February 2009, 15:37
I do keep getting the temporary holding page when I first try and come to the site, but a Ctrl+F5 refresh clears it.
diseased rat said on 16th February 2009, 16:07
Good to have you back Keith, and for what it’s worth I haven’t had a single error since your return.
Pete Walker said on 16th February 2009, 14:30
Great to have the site back online! :D
Striay/iceman said on 16th February 2009, 16:34
Phew THANKGOODNESS your back!!
I was beginning to get depressed without you people to talk about F1 with!!
i went to the Jerez tests on thursday! i can tell you im no hamilton fan but he was the only one that looked like he knew what he was doing (not to add vettel and webber they were also quiet good) Renaults car looks very slow to me with alonso on board at least! anyways i have some photos if you want them Keith though they arent very good!
Adam Milleneuve said on 16th February 2009, 16:35
Great to have F1F back online, no more 500 errors for me so far…
Would it not be possible to have the same site running on a mirror to avoid any future issues from causing the whole site to be down – a fallback if you like!?
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 16th February 2009, 18:43
I’ll be looking into this among other solutions, although it isn’t cheap 8-)
patrickl said on 16th February 2009, 20:22
I have two web co-located servers in the Netherlands. If you’d like you could put your site on that as backup. If the architecture is something you could use of course (FreeBSD)