For the first time in just over 11 years, I have not been able to complete a post.
We were away for the whole of the last week, with very limited Internet access, and the week before I planned to complete two posts, the Essex Street Water Gate post which I did finish for last Sunday, and a second post for today, the 15th of June.
However, whilst trying to complete these posts, the website kept going down.
I managed to complete the Essex Street post, but also spent loads of time trying the find out why the website kept going down. Not for long periods, just over one hour was the maximum downtime, but there were many shorter periods of around 20 minutes – not helpful when you are trying to complete a post.
I spent lots of time in contact with the hosting provider. The first agent I was in contact with said the site was over using the available resources, and said this may be down to a number of out of date software components, or to a hacking attempt, and recommended that I upgrade some of the software and install some additional; security software, which I did.
The site kept on going down.
Back in contact with the hosting provider, and a different agent, who now said that the up to date software modules could be in conflict, or that the security software could be over using resources.
Running very short of time, I just about completed last Sunday’s post, unloaded anything that was not essential for the website – and we went away.
The website did continue to suffer some downtime, but not as much, and the last brief period of 6 minutes downtime was last Tuesday afternoon, and it has been up 100% of the time since then.
So, I have no idea what caused the problems.
The hosting provider has also recommended that I upgrade the site to their next service tier, which I am happy to do, but would prefer to know the root cause of the problems, to have confidence that an upgrade would be the fix.
I will see what happens this coming week, but hopefully normal service will be resumed next Sunday.
No apology necessary, I hope you get it sorted to your satisfaction
Wow. Computer problems can be so complex and resistant to solving. Best of luck in the coming week! And thank you for all that you do for us, your loyal readers. I have learned so much about the best city in the world.
-Robert
Lugano, Switzerland
Each week you provide this older Londoner with new insights in extraordinary detail. Thank you, and please do not apologise, embrace the time to deal with technology and resolve gremlins.
I hope you feel only great pride in your marvellous achievements over 11 years. Thank you for your continued interesting posts.
Shit happens. Not your fault .
Your posts are so universally excellent, well researched and interesting, that while many of us feel sad we can’t read some fascinating details of London’s great and gothic wonderfulness at Sunday breakfast this week, I’’m sure I speak for most of us when I say don’t worry, we’ll just wait with even more eagerness for next week.
This is just to say how much I enjoy reading your posts and appreciate all the time and care you put into them. They are a gift to all who read them and a beautiful tribute to your father. I wish you well in getting all the tech stuff sorted.
How frustrating for you. Please do not worry. You have been doing a great job for many years which I certainly have appreciated. I hope you find the cause for you own satisfaction but look forward to regular service resuming.
Goodness – no apology necessary – I am sorry you had this hassle and I hope it didn’t impinge on your time away. Your posts are splendid – they enrich my life , thank you very much indeed.
Echoing everything everyone else has said. Much sympathy over the technical problems. I very much enjoy reading your posts and look forward to the next one.
At least this gives us chance to show our appreciation and send best wishes.
No apologies needed. I came across your website whilst researching my family tree, going back to the 17th century, in the Shadwell docks area. I’ve been fascinated by your photos of the various steps leading down to the Thames, as well as your accounts of the origin of street names and the history of other parts of London, which also gave me insights into the lives of my ancestors. It’s a wonderful website and I’m deeply grateful for all the work you put into it. Many thanks, Kate
No problem, Sir. These things happen with Technology from time to time!!!
Thanks for what you do and I hope you enjoyed your week away!!
No need to apologise, you’ve brought us so many interesting and varied posts regularly, that you’re entitled to have a break to get things sorted, and I hope you do get your computer problem resolved. I know how frustrating that can be! Thank you for all your work. Maybe we can look back through your archive and re-visit previous posts instead.
There is no need to apologise—this is the most interesting blog on the web. I have been following it for years.
Take your time; if/when you’re ready to post again, we’ll look forward to it.
What everyone else said! Writing a long and thoroughly researched post once a week takes great devotion. I have been blogging for twenty years I know how hard consistency can be.
Reading your posts is a delight and as they said, you have nothing to apologize for.
Don’t worry
Ah the joys of websites – hopefully a swift eviction of the gremlins and no apology needed, your blog is of sterling quality and it stands to reason that it occasionally needs to be removed from the shelf and given some fettling!
How frustrating for you David. Technology is great when it works, maddening when it doesn’t; often nothing you can do. Looking forward to the next one when things are up and running!
There’s not a soul in the land who uses IT who won’t identify with the stress and frustration these sorts of interludes cause and hasn’t come within a hair’s breadth of launching their laptop through the window!
“This too shall pass”!
Look forward to your next issue.
No apology needed. I’ve been following your blog./ enjoying your walks for sometime. The research you put in is admirable and will just fuel the anticipation for when you’re next able to sort out the technical difficulties.
I appreciate all your efforts. These things happen
Sending all good wishes
Janet
How annoying fans frustrating for you. Best wishes for a stress free week!
Regards
Sarah
You a doing a great job. The information you provide is an invaluable reference tool.
Some time the internet, can create issues, and none more infuriating the when the system drops out.
Look forward to seeing next Sundays post
I completely agree with all the other comments. We look forward to each post whenever it arrives, and hopefully you will be able to sort out these issues shortly.
No worries at all, I appreciate your difficulties and the quality and interest of your posts.
These days there a lot of bots from all the competing AI services scraping websites for information. Generally a website host’s advice to upgrade suits their purpose but not necessarily yours
Give yourself a break – you are the last eprson who needs to a[pologise.
See you next week, we’ll be waiting.
11 years continuous weekly (approaching 600 detailed posts) is an extraordinary record.
Londoners are indebted to you for providing such a huge, fascinating narrative of London’s history … so one hiccup in that record hardly warrants the agonising – congratulations and thanks!
We’ll still be here next week. Nothing to apologise for. I do wonder whether the hosting site is defelcting blame for something which may be its fault but is easier to put on the user – not an uncommon occurrence!
Thank you for all the effort and research you put into your posts which are always so rich in detail and history.
It’s so frustrating when technology fails, and especially when it’s not clear why!
You have my sympathy.
if PCs and related gear were cars they would remain garaged. If they were ‘planes no government would allow them to fly.
your sterling efforts below are much appreciated.
Three cheers.
I love reading your posts, and I really appreciate the work that you do to put them up. Sympathies for any underlying tech problems, and I totally get that you want to fix the problem, not the symptom.
No apologies needed. I am in awe of the research and writing so I can only imagine your frustration at the technology.
You are a very lovely person and you have joined the rest of us dinosaurs as a person with long-lost traditional values. As a person who lived in the area of your heartland – Cripplegate – I adore your site and posts and will always be in your debt rather than the ther way around.
Please keep up your good work and promise never to apologise again!
Jeff
You deserve a rest!
My sympathies. It is very stressful battling software and infrastructure problems.
‘Morning, David. Every Sunday you interrupt my boring, routine chores to take me to places that I haven’t visited, and in many cases haven’t even thought about, since childhood… and you don’t ask any money for it! Thank you for your service and for the fascinating and frequently uplifting yarns you bring me. We can hardly complain when the fundamentally precarious medium of the internet disprupts your normally inviolable schedule.
On a slightly different tack, a cynic might wonder whether it is a coincidence that the cure for the problems your IT has been suffering appears to be the transfer offunds to your service-providers, but that too is the nature of the internet and IT generally.
Good luck with restoring normality to your systems. I look forward to my next trip to back my childhood and beyond whenever you are able to arrange it.
Keep up the excellent work. I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts on a Sunday, many of which bring back memories. My family moved from London (E1) in 195i but I returned there as a MN Cadet for SSA in Poplar a the marine college in 1964. Many happy days learning and relaxing in the East End, Had a flat behind the London Hospital in Turner Street – long gone and go to know a few of the nurses !! All the best. Bill Smith
I hope you get as thorough ,sincere, and polite an apology from your service provider. If it helps, another US newsletter I subscribe to apologised for a hiccup today, too. Not to worry, a chance to go over some of the last 11 years’ work!
Please don’t apologise.
If only you knew how much joy you bring to people who eagerly await your latest post.
I am an old and disabled man living in Norfolk, but remember vividly my childhood in London. I am fascinated by buildings and the stories they tell of their past lives. Reading your posts is a highlight of Sundays for me.
I’m sure I speak for many when I say thank you for hours of pleasure.
Hey, don’t beat yourself up! As you can see from the torrent of sympathetic and vastly appreciative comments here, we can wait until next week!
This archive you have been amassing is an amazing achievement, and we’re suitably grateful to you.
Hang on in there, David! No one on this earth expects you to kill yourself getting your blog out at a certain time each week! Getting more than one post a week did puzzle me. I thought you had already written them and were timing their release, since the posts usually appear with military precision in the early hours of Saturday. Just a note saying the internet is playing up is fine and relax the timing of them a bit. No need to apologise at all. Could just be a ploy to make you spend more money. I would complain about their attitude trying to make you upgrade.
Sorry to hear about the technical problems, and hope that they will be resolved shortly.
If you talk to four Programmers about technical problems, you will be given seven mutually different responses as to the cause !
Some of the explanations will involve spending unnecessary money on finding a solution (i.e. Flat Tyre = buy a new car with go faster stripes). Sorry for the cynicism.
The receipt on Sunday mornings of the latest weekly report is always a joy, and a revelation, and this week’s missing report gives me a chance to go and re-read my accumulation of previous material.
Thank you so much for all the excellent, and often revelatory, commentaries about the city of my birth.
Well done on the 11 years input. I love your posts
Your kind post reminds me that I have been reading your wonderfully researched and written posts every week since mid-2017. Thank you for the care you put into this project. I hope one day your posts will be available in book format as well.
Sorry to hear of the disruption. Curious to know who your service provider is. You can claim compensation for a broken connection I believe
I am always amazed how you manage to create such super posts every week with all the research and background etc that you do. DO NOT STRESS on missing anything!,
I wonder if your hosting company was doing upgrades or maintenance during the period it was going up and down. The people you spoke to may not have even known what was actually going on in the company server rooms. I would not buy an upgraded plan if you haven’t got a cause for the issues you had. That is just a good sales tactic and may not resolve anything except take more out of your pocket ! If your server space is getting low or they want you to be on a dedicated server or some such. Maybe but get the facts and numbers first. Hope this makes sense. Sorry if being bossy, I was in IT for many years.
These things happen.
May I take this opportunity to thank you for all of the wonderful posts you have managed to successfully post over the years.
Thx for update.
Absolutely no need for any apology David. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I express my gratitude for what you do, the blog is an essential weekly read for me, you are incredibly generous in providing it.
No problems just v grateful for all the posts you have done! Thank you
Your apology is kind but considering the excellence and interest of your site hardly necessary. Do keep up your good works. We all enjoy your posts
John
No apology necessary!
Just want to say ‘Thank You’ for everything!
I’m one of many here who appreciate the work you put into this blog. So as has been said, no need to apologise.
If you don’t get a satisfactory outcome with your website hosting people, feel free to drop me a message. I may well be able to host it for you, and I’d be happy to do that gratis, as you give so freely if your knowledge and research.
Cheers, Paul.
Thanks for all you do to provide such fascinating content for us all. I feel your pain but stick with it there will be a solution out there.
You are so highly prized, no one can object to a break, for whatever reason. Many many thanks for your extraordinary revelations through London.
Take care of yourself, you are ptecioud
Take care! Maybe you could repeat some of your good work. Everyone needs a break.
Many thanks, all the same. Looking forward to the nmext post.
11 years of consistent integrity takes more of my attention. A side note, It appears your page load is heavy, not to say it’s all due to image size as other factors such as google, site analytics, widgets etc as well as hosting bandwidth all play a part. Recommend you investigate prior to up-selling being touted as a solution.
Thanks for your apology and explanation.
There was really no need to apolgise, the explanation was sufficient.
I really enjoy reading your blog every week but wouldn’t complain if you occasionally had to miss one for whatever reason.
My commiserations – I have increasingly been finding that ones time on line becomes increasingly limited and one is cut off. Honestly… we are constantly encouraged to do more On Line but the internet often cannot cope with what one writes unless it is short in content. I have to keep going back, reconnecting and keeping my mind fixed on “the end goal”. Fortunately content usually is “not lost but gone before” as an obituarist famously once said. There are occasions when it is late at night and one feels “why am I bothering…will anyone care?” I have already said here
how remarkable and valuable the information you give to us all is, so please – though it is tiring and depressing to have to persist and/or repeat work – it has such value to your readers and researchers and is so much appreciated.
No worries- your posts are always worth waiting for. Hope you had a good time away anyway.
No apology necessary The amount of time and effort you so generously put in to this site is awesome. I hope things return to normal for you very soon.
Staff at the barrister chambers called 23 Essex Street, now located in Grays Inn, were most interested by your post about Essex Street and neighbourhood. Thank you.
Thanks for all your efforts and all the constantly top top content
Thanks!
Sorry you had to deal with this problem!
You’re allowed a holiday!!!
How hugely frustrating for you. Thank you for describing what happened – do hope the glitch has been solved. Meanwhile, this is a timely moment to thank you for so many absorbing posts. The analysis is remarkable and your commentary unique. Thank you so much for all the pleasure your work provides.
No apology needed! Your posts are a joy, they should not be a burden to you. We the delighted and regularly informed public forgive you! 🙂
I was told there was a world wide problem….
How annoying for you. It is often so difficult to find the problem due to an increase in complexity and traffic. I hope you get it sorted as I love your posts!