Too Big for My Britches!

I’ve gotten too big for my britches!

This old saying seems appropriate after another week of website woes.

A week ago we thought everything had been fixed on Karen’s Chatt. Blog post notifications seemed to be going out to subscribes once again and the website seemed to be working normally after some upgrades.

But this past weekend brought on a new set of problems.

I had some trouble posting Friday’s blog post and several people contacted me that they could not get on the website to read the post. Friday afternoon I found that I could not get on the website either because of a server time-out Error 522. I could not even log in as the site’s webmaster. GoDaddy had parked Karen’s Chatt, whatever that means.

Things went from bad to worse by Sunday morning when I saw that Karen’s Chatt website was gone–at least here at the Bennett house. It appeared that my domain name was gone, too, although the message I saw on the screen said that GoDaddy’s Broker Service may be able to get it for me. The message also assumed I was interested in a domain name that would feature women’s clothing. Why not?

Where was Karen’s Chatt and where were all my blog posts and photos?

All sorts of things were running through my head. Even a few conspiracy theories.  

Did someone steal my website? People try to hack into the website all the time but we have the latest security measures to avoid that.

Did my domain name somehow not get renewed? It is set up for auto-renewal.

Had Karen’s Chatt been censored by Big Tech? People and business are being censored by this dreadful cancel culture, but let’s face it, Karen’s Chatt is not a hotbed of controversy. Perhaps there is an occasional disagreement about deciphering a tombstone inscription or interpreting a church record, but mainly I just try to relay information about local history and people and report facts. Although today there is a move to rewrite or erase history, I should hope the information here does not fall into that category.

I texted son Jeff about the situation as soon as we got home from church and was surprised to learn that he had no problem viewing Karen’s Chatt. He even said it was working lightening fast. Really? How could that be? We called Joe’s sister and she said she could also bring up the website with no problems.

Here at home it was a different story. We could not access Karen’s Chatt on any of our devices or computers. And it wasn’t just us, because at least two subscribers could not view the website either.

What was going on?

The website wasn’t censored. If it were no one would have been able to view it.

Now I started to worry that I had picked up a redirect virus. That is, a virus that redirects you to a different website, not the one you intend to visit. If that were the case the virus would have to be on our cell phones, which we use as hot spots for our computers. Very unlikely and probably not even possible. Plus that would not explain the two subscribers who could not view the website either.

Thankfully son Jeff was able to get to the heart of the matter and solve the problem.

I have been blogging on Karen’s Chatt for exactly ten years now. Jeff set up the website for my birthday in 2011. Karen’s Chatt is not like most websites because I do not delete items. Other websites, like retail websites, remove and add items regularly.

Not so with Karen’s Chatt. I add information and photos twice a week and never delete anything. I have done this for 10 years. It adds up to a lot: 2 posts/week x 52 weeks x 10 years = a lot of blog posts and photos. The website keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

After ten years I had nearly reached the capacity of the server. I was shocked to learn that I had 225,000 files on a server with a capacity for 250,000 files. The website was nearly maxed out, causing it to run very slowly. That was hosing everything up. That is where the problem was.

Karen’s Chatt had gotten too big for its britches and was bursting at the seams.

Jeff moved Karen’s Chatt to a new server. He actually moved it to a small business server with 60 GB of storage. As a small business now, I am currently using 25 GB. At the rate I have been going I should be able to blog and post photos for another ten years, although I don’t know if I have enough ideas for another 10 years!

So, we will see how things go this week. The Bennetts are certainly eager to know and we have our fingers crossed.

Blog post notifications have not been going out for some time but I kept writing the posts. Some posts you may have missed and may want to catch up on: Postmasters in Willshire, Willshire Township, and Dublin Township; Tombstone Tuesday; tombstone art; and my high school assignment of writing the Christmas story in Latin.

Thanks for reading Karen’s Chatt!

3 comments

  1. Karen, you have too much expertise and are too humble, knowledgeable, public service focused , and are too good at what you do to be too big for your britches. Surely glad you have the problem solved. Thanks to your son Jeff for his effort and shared expertise in solving your problem . Thanks for maintaining your fantastic and much appreciated Karen’s Chatt.
    Farrel Krall

    1. Thanks, Farrel! It has been a real adventure lately and hopefully the website issues have all been resolved. Time will tell…

    • Kenny on February 27, 2021 at 11:01 am
    • Reply

    I wasn’t getting emails for your posts but just signed up again. Some of your links in articles do not open for me.

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