Photography is Not a Crime

17 responses so far ↓

• 1 Rick // Jan 4, 2009 at 7:54 PM

  I’m thinking that you were just taking me to task because some widget wasn’t working on my Blogger blog.

  This puts it all in perspective I would say, right Carlos?

  Blogger looks better all the time when I hear stories like this.

  .

• 2 Carlos Miller // Jan 4, 2009 at 8:05 PM

  Rick,

  This is not a WordPress issue, this is a hosting issue.

  Obviously, I am unable to find a hosting company that can ensure my site does not go down.

• 3 Jasmeet // Jan 4, 2009 at 8:07 PM

  I don’t trust Go Daddy at all.

  Moving on, I would recommend you keep a backup of your site, so should this happen, you can restore it on your own and not deal with those idiots.

  Feel free to send me an email if you’d like some backup methods.

• 4 Carlos Miller // Jan 4, 2009 at 8:10 PM

  Jasmeet,

  I already get my databases emailed to me twice a day because I had serious issues with my previous hosting company, Lunar Pages.

  http://carlosmiller.com/?s=lunar+pages

  And I do have my files backed up but I should do that more often.

  Is there anything else that needs to be done?

• 5 Rick // Jan 4, 2009 at 8:39 PM

  Considering that you were on the front page of Fark and Slashdot, I’d say it probably had to do with bandwidth and for whatever reason they buckled under the load (instead of giving notice that you’ve hit your cap).

  I’m not intimately familiar with how GoDaddy’s backend operations work (though I do have a couple of sites hosted through them), I know enough to know that you or anyone else logging in wouldn’t be able to change the permissions on the directory. Permissions changes do not equal file deletion.

  So they either buckled under the load or you’ve made some powerful enemies that are doing unheard of things with file permissions.

• 6 Mike in NoVA // Jan 4, 2009 at 9:02 PM

  Carlos, I wondered what happened. Hope you catch the hacker.

• 7 Carlos Miller // Jan 4, 2009 at 9:17 PM

  Rick (#2),

  I figured that was the cause of it because it has been posted on several sites, including the two you mentioned.

  From Fark alone, it has received more than 1,000 page views in just over an hour.

  But it was really strange to see that my files were no longer there.

  When I had these issues with Lunar Pages, they removed the site from the server, but it didn’t affect the actual files.

  And I know for a fact that nobody has the password to this particular account, which I’ve only opened a couple of months ago.

  And that whole “forbidden” page was strange because I had never seen that before, even though my site has gone through heavy page views in a short period of time due to sites like Digg and Reddit.

  However, right how the site is acting very slow, so I know it’s struggling with all the readers

  I am also clueless about these things like “permissions”, which is why I wanted to throw it out there to see what people would say.

  Just got your email but it looks like your comment went through ok.

• 8 Rick // Jan 4, 2009 at 9:39 PM

  Carlos…not to squabble, but if I move to WordPress I have to find a host. The two go hand in hand. No such problem with Blogger.

  Just sayin’.

  .

• 9 Carlos Miller // Jan 4, 2009 at 10:49 PM

  Rick(#1),

  One can always move to WordPress and not host their own site, as I did when I first launched this blog.

  The main reason I switched was because they only offer you limited themes (templates). However, these themes are even more limited in Blogger.

  I actually liked my theme except it was restricted to two columns, and I’m a newspaper man, so I wanted three columns.

  Besides, once you host your own site, you have more control of it. It’s the difference between renting and owning.

  So it really boils down to whether or not you have long-term plans for your blog or not.

  I do have long-term plans because I will continue to blog even after my case is over, which was not the idea when I first launched the two-column blog back in April 2007.

  I actually thought it would last less than a month because my trial was scheduled in a couple of weeks.

  But then they kept delaying my blog, and in the meantime, people were sending me story tips.

  So by the end of 2007, when I switched to three-columns, I realized I was onto something. Not only an outlet for my journalist skills and passions, but a niche that needed to be filled.

  And that’s where the problem comes in.

  Every time I post a story like the Amtrak story, which does not get covered by the mainstream media, my blog ends up going through “the Digg effect” because it gets huge readership.

  To me, that’s a sign of success and proves the media doesn’t have the news judgment it likes to believe it does.

  But it also means I have to figure out a way to handle this sudden increase in readership.

  But this is part of the responsibility when you own, rather than when you rent.

  So I guess the main question is, would a Blogger blog handle the “Digg effect” better than a self-hosted WordPress blog?

  Perhaps.

  But then you do a little research and discover a little item that says that if you blog on Blogger, Google owns you content.

  Now that might not matter to you, but it does to me, considering all the original content I publish on this blog, including words, photos and videos.

  Especially considering that I sometimes write stories that the media refuses to write.

  You might find this link interesting.

  http://optempo.com/2008/01/22/niche-blog-hosting-wordpress-vs-blogger/

• 10 Frank C // Jan 5, 2009 at 3:02 PM

  Hi Carlos,

  Thanks for mentioning the post on my blog.

  So far as the ‘Digg Effect’ you may want to look into a WordPress plugin called wp-super-cache that’s supposed to help with that on self-hosted WordPress blogs. I also recommend that you look into hosting other than GoDaddy because, as you discovered, they can be less than helpful at times.

  I really enjoyed reading your blog too. I’ve been noticing how the police departments around the US have become more militarized in the past 15 years or so. We don’t need a solider playing police officer in Baghdad and we don’t need a police officer playing soldier in Miami.

• 11 Carlos Miller // Jan 5, 2009 at 3:30 PM

  Hi Frank,

  I actually have the Super-Cache plug-in installed, but obviously it didn’t make much of a difference here.

  I’m on a month-to-month basis with Go Daddy for this very reason. I had issues like this with Lunar Pages that never got resolved.

  So now I’m going to keep looking for another host. Meanwhile, Go Daddy has this new offer called “Grid Hosting” which is where your blog is connected to many servers, or something like that, and it’s supposed to reduce the chances of the blog going down during high traffic.

  I signed up for it so we’ll see how it goes.

  I really hate having to keep searching for new hosting companies because it’s such a hassle to have to switch over.

• 12 peterg22 // Jan 6, 2009 at 3:55 PM

  @Carlos: “Obviously, I am unable to find a hosting company that can ensure my site does not go down.”

  Ah, but you can – do it yourself! Okay, there’s a learning curve but once it’s all set up you only have your ISP to worry about. It worked for me!

  ps.. yes, I know it’s a lot of work but if you’re getting that much hassle it’ll be worth it..

• 13 Kris Dahl // Jan 6, 2009 at 5:01 PM

  The Apache error message you receive would have been caused by a permissions issue. You would get a 404 File Not found if it was deleted.

  Permissions can and do often get screwed up. Its a mistake and it should be easy to fix.

  The problem is that the phone support folks at GoDaddy probably aren’t system administrators, so they don’t understand the concepts of permissions.

  I’d suggest finding a hosting company that has admins and techs that understand what is going on. Often times smaller ISPs and Web Hosting companies are nice because you build an actual relationship.

  -k

• 14 genewitch // Jan 7, 2009 at 3:50 AM

  you want a free audit? it’s what i do for a living, security auditing. But i need your permission cause there’s a chance it breaks stuff (it never has, but it can).

  Release of liability and all that. At the very least you can tell go daddy what to fix (if i had a dime for everytime i had to talk to a hosting company to upgrade their damn web portals and whatnot.)

• 15 Tom // Jan 9, 2009 at 1:43 PM

  Hey, am enjoying reading through your posts. Good stuff!

  Sounds like someone knocked permissions while working on the server rather than anything too deliberate mind.

• 16 Carlos Miller // Jan 10, 2009 at 12:05 AM

  Tom,

  Thanks for reading. And stick around after the excitement of the BART shooting dies down.

  There’s always something going on here.

• 17 Johan Bach // Jan 19, 2009 at 7:52 PM

  Godaddy has a habit of bowing to government and corporate pressure. Perhaps that’s what caused your files to become blocked, not “hacking” and definitely not deletion. Just google for: godaddy government pressure

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