After an interesting day, Windows to Russia has been moved from a USA based hosting to a hosting based out of India… (As several figured that out and expressed to us, their thoughts in comments and e-mails!)
As per this article: “Coffee and Blocked” explains what happened and enough information of why we had to leave. I will state and add that the same day that “Coffee and Blocked” was posted. We were knocked offline again for over three hours. It covered a 6 hour period and was a one sided affair by me. The site would be blocked and I would write an e-mail. (I would also try to connect by live chat and that just did not work either.) Then the site would come back on line and they would never respond. The site would go back down and I would write an e-mail. The site would be unblocked, again with no word from the host. This became a game for about 6+ hours until they tired of said game and gave up on it for the day. It only affected the Windows to Russia blog. All other blogs were unaffected. No explanation was offered by said host…
On Saturday Sveta and I finalized who we wanted to use as our next host. This host right now is only for Windows to Russia. We have acquired two hosts, one in India and one in Russia. We will have a reflective updating mirroring system set up after we are all done and that will allow Windows to Russia to be able to stay on line better against server crashes. Of course this does not happen over night because Sveta and I have to learn as we go…
We are officially on the Indian server as I write this and the new hosting company has been very nice to work with during the transfer. It looks to be a good situation for Windows to Russia and we will decide later about moving all blogs. As of right now Coffee Talk, Thoughts of Moscow, Russian News From Russia and Windows to Russia have been moved. They all reside on the same domain…
Thanks everyone for patience and lets hope over the next few days that we get everything back in the groove again. Sveta and I have learned a lot this weekend and we had fun…
Windows to Russia!
Update: After being asked several times by e-mail how we knew we were blocked and not just hosting problems? That is a fair question…
Answer: The host was changing our index file to unreadable. They physically blocked our index file. They did this from higher up than what we have access to on the server. I tried to change this file back myself but they refused to allow it to be changed. Then they would change the file themselves and allow us access. That is how we knew that the host performed the block themselves. If index file was unreadable the whole blog was unreadable and that is how they affected only one blog out of all that we have. It was a direct targeting of Windows to Russia…