How quickly it changes

Part of the migration from one server to another, new hardware, new hosting, part of the change depends on the register’s efficacy. See previous mention and full disclosure.

When I moved astrofish.net/mrx over, the site reappeared within minutes. astrofish.net? Not as quickly. The old host didn’t want to give it up.

I moved from a “unlimited” account that apparently had some upwards limits. I corresponded briefly, shopped in earnest, and got where I did, with a good grasp on what my limits are.

When I moved the last host, the limit was 5 gigs. The site itself, it isn’t much larger than that, not with all its files, but the bandwidth, while not unlimited, the upper limits on the shared server was bumping 80 gigs in throughput this last fall. Let’s see, three, four basic sites, two of which are daily photo-blogs, kramerwetzel.com and the side-project, BexarCountyLine.com, which, if I can, eventually needs to be on its own IP address.

In the conversation with the guy from Register4Less, I asked about bursts, and he used a term, “Slashdotted.”

Since the days of yore, when I was “H T T Pee, COLON, SLASH-SLASH, double U-double U double U dot blah blah blah slash tilde (etc),” my material has continually been a big pull. Even then, my site sucked more bandwidth than anything else on the server, at the time.

Used to be Mondays were the big day and I’d cause a spike in traffic. I’ve evened out the load on hardware, but my style is longer and longer, despite my minimalist yearnings and leanings.

I did a get a slash-dot spike one time, nerd cartoon included me as a link. Ten thousand page views in a morning.

What amused about the casual reference is that I no longer use Slash Dot as a referral. Used to be Digg, but even that’s too mainstream. The site and that term, coined for the site’s name and address, refers to a huge spike in traffic, and most shared hosting plans are unable to withstand that kind of spike. A mention or discussion, a hotlink from Slash-dot usually resulted with enviable data consumption.

Good for selling ads. Enviable if the traffic is converting. (“Converting” means converting into paying customers. It’s really just a numbers game. Or so I’ve been assured.)

I cannot emphasize how easy this transition was. Due to a couple of well-planned factors:

astrofish.net

The family of websites covered under the astrofish.net company banner, the fundamentals include hosting by HostGator.com, WordPress content delivery, and that WordPress theme is the highly adjustable Thesis Theme. The subscription/membership details are handled by the WishListProducts.com plug-in. Register4Less – One-stop solution for domain names.

Simple is still hard to do.

Shakespeare’s Canon
As duly noted, there’s more ahead. One reason I liked using Shakespeare’s works, well, the real reason, stupid publicity material notwithstanding, the real reason was the Elizabethan works are shot through, just filled with astrological references. Part of the worldview, then.

Another appealing point, though, was that Shakespeare wasn’t going to release any new works.