Well, I'm back from Mexico and fully recovered (except for the bug bites). When I got back on Saturday, I took a quick look at the activity, and noticed that Thursday, April 24th, was one of the lowest traffic days in over a year. My immediate reaction was, "oh well, it's the off-season, I was gone so there wasn't much to read, no big deal.' Still, the massive drop off was disconcerting, especially for a weekday (weekends are another story).
And then I checked my email.
It turns out, as most of you are probably aware, the SBNation network was having some problems for a couple of days, the most severe issues occurring Thursday. Rather than just ignore those issues (and let's face it, they didn't impact me), I thought I'd let you know what I know.
The issues were related to the upgrade to SBNation 2.0 as you might have guessed, but apparently not directly to the software. As part of the platform migration, some new servers were introduced on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning in the wee hours. Unfortunately, although it is very rare, there were problems with the memory in those new servers. Given that it wasn't the first place anyone was looking, it took awhile to identify and rectify the problem. Once the problem was identified and the servers were swapped out, the situation stabilized.
I guess the good news is that this was a minor issue for the Citizens of ClipsNation given the timing. Blogs in Orlando and Washington actually had playoff games that night - that couldn't have been fun for Ben Q. Rock or pradamaster and Jake the Snake.
So at any rate, I apologize for the downtime on ClipsNation last week. These are some of the growing pains associated with the success of the SBNation network. Hopefully we're in a stable mode at this point. And, by the way, thanks to Citizen John R for his excellent FanPost in my absence.