If you don't know what I'm talking about

See, there's this other blog called Perfect Duluth Day (which I won't link to because there's no point) with 150 members and it was just fine until recently.

What happened

Well, it all comes back to this video of a kid dancing on stage to "I Love Rock and Roll." People on PDD liked it, and were a lot nicer about it than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise.

Then it got leaked out to some nasty sites. You know what I'm talking about. Sites made by and for people who enjoy misery. There are a lot of people on these sites; it's surprising how many Beavises and Buttheads there are on the Internet. Anyway, long story short, our server got slammed.

"Unmetered" bandwidth does not equal "unlimited" bandwidth. I'm not sure how it works, but for whatever reason, even though the video has been removed from the server, very few people can get through to PDD. Perhaps they have turned off the tap, so to speak.

What we can do

First of all, I'd like to hear from anyone who has any ideas about what exactly is going on and how this type of thing works. Our host, Doteasy, has been great up until now. Replies to Starfire's emails have come back vague, and all of them suggest we get a dedicated server for $100/month. This is not an option.

Right now, we're in sort of a holding pattern. This doesn't just affect the PDD community, it keeps me from vlogging, since that was where my video files actually reside. It also keeps Starfire from doing anything on Le Garage, since that site is a PDD subdomain.

Anyhow, it is a good time to regroup and rethink the whole Perfect Duluth Day thing. Perhaps we need to revamp the site. I've dreamed of changing the whole thing over to something other than Blogger -- perhaps Movable Type or Word Press.

It's getting toward the end of the month, and while I hope things will change after the first, I'm not betting on it. I'm looking into other hosting options for this site so that I can once again post videos, but the thought of overage fees concerns me.

Once again, I'd appreciate any insight that anyone might be able to offer. Leave a comment or e-mail bchase@gmail.com.

Thanks.
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