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I was in contact with said the site was over using the available resources, and said this may be down to a number of out of date software components, or to a hacking attempt, and recommended that I upgrade some of the software and install some additional; security software, which I did.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.