Site Outage, New Comments, and the Cycling Ebook

Just a short post to let you know that I appreciate everyone being patient with the site yesterday. You all know that I’m always tweaking the site, trying to make it better for what I want to do and for your experience here. One of the things I had used to tweak the look was using a plugin called Disqus. I liked it because it gave commentors multiple options to sign in. It was never perfect though so yesterday I thought I would give another, but similar, plugin called Intense Debate a try.

About an hour after turning the new plugin on, I got notice from my hosting provider that they had to suspend my site due to excess server load. Apparently, Intense Debate put a huge load on the server as it imported all my comments into their system. They shut me down in order to keep the server online. I made some changes my host recommended and tried again. It looked like everything was working OK. At about 6 PM last night I checked the site and it was down again and may have been down all afternoon (nobody told me it was down so I don’t know for sure). At that point I decided to just go back to the standard commenting system and drop both plugins. Since doing so I haven’t been shutdown again and the site looks to be loading faster (maybe my readers can confirm that). You won’t get the same amount of comment options as before but I think using the standard theme comment options looks cleaner. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

The How To Start Cycling Ebook is 90% done. I have just a few things left to do and it’ll be ready for release. I had every intention of releasing it this week but am going to hold off one more week. That’ll give me time to make sure it’s polished and can make some changes to the site before releasing it. I’ll also be out of town this weekend which also influenced my decision to delay it. I didn’t want to launch it and not be able to do anything if there were problems over the weekend.

My riding is coming along nicely. I’m still just putting in base miles right now as I continue to get time in the saddle and get my fit dialed in. Victor over at Bicycle Lab has been doing wonders and this weekend we made some small changes. We moved my saddle forward 1cm, raised the saddle 1cm, and tilted the bars up about 5 degrees. It’s amazing what those small changes can do. My ride this morning was really good with my average speed up about 1.5 mph from what it was before we started making changes. Granted, 14.6 mph isn’t fast but I’m moving in the right direction.

Thumbnail Photoc: Leonard John Matthews

http://lovingthebike.com Loving the Bike

Oh man, sorry to hear about your website issues……I’m sure that is all you needed to add to your already busy life. Good recovery.

Can’t wait for that e-book.

Darryl

http://bikingtolive.com Bryan

Yeah, I hate website issues. Can’t complain though as I’ve had virtually zero hosting problems for the two years I’ve been with Hostgator. Any problems I’ve had have been as a result of the owner (me) doing something.

http://www.satincesena.net Sabinna

Yep, like Darryl, I’m looking forward to the book. It’s so true that the small changes make a difference–a good bike bike fit can be done at a shop, but the job really has to be completed in long miles on the road…quite a few variables involved and experimentation to dial-in the exact fit is a great way to go.

http://bikingtolive.com Bryan

Sabinna, thanks so much for dropping in and leaving a comment. Thanks also for the re-tweet of my Training Mindset article. Much appreciated.

I think you’re spot on about the fit. You can get it done initially as the shop, or virtually like I am, but putting time in the saddle is the only way to get it dialed in to what’s best for you.