Oh gosh. I am getting tooooo old for this, way too old. I just happened to click on my blog here before shutting down for the night and I saw the dreaded “Bandwidth Exceeded: This account has been suspended” page.

Oh my poor little heart sank right down into my fuzzy pink slippers. Any drowsiness I had been feeling disappeared instantly, and the cold rushing of blood started pumping through my veins. By the way, did you know that I have actually felt my “blood turn cold”? I thought it was just a phrase in novels and horror stories. Nope, it’s true. Wow, I hate that feeling.

So I dragged my weary carcass outta bed and tried to do some research. Looks like I was Stumbled (thank you very much, whoever you are!) and my cheapo web hosting service couldn’t take it anymore. Who’d have thought this blog would acquire over a quarter of a million visitors in its short nine months of existence?! Not me!

Anyway, I obviously got it all fixed now. I’m still a little edgy, checking under the sheets and kicking the tires. I upgraded my web hosting service, so it’s costing me a little more. But it’s worth it if I never have to see that Bandwidth Exceeded page and feel my blood run cold like that again.

I’m sorry, visitors, for the lapse. I wonder why I didn’t get my courtesy email telling me I was reaching my limit? Nonetheless, I will certainly be more astute from now on.

What do you do when you’ve become too popular? I have a problem…

Someone Stumbled one of my posts with StumbleUpon. For the past four days, I have seen phenomenal traffic. Check this out.

I usually get 300-350 hits a day. As you can see, the past few days I’ve been getting far more. I was reveling in all that traffic until today when I got this email from my web host:

Your account has been causing really high server loads the past 4 days…

Can you please work on fixing this issue? If it’s not fixed I’ll have to suspend the site as it’s causing the server to crash at certain times of the day.

OK, a paid-blogger NEVER wants to see those words “suspend” at any time. My web host is being really generous, giving me time to work things out. I’ve heard horror stories of other hosts who just rip the rug out from under you, so I am thankful they have given me a little breather.

But what do I do? I am on a “budget” plan, and I’ve used up half my bandwidth for the month. I don’t want my blog to be causing everyone else’s blogs to crash… What would you do in such a case?

I’ve offered to write a post for the hosting company free of charge; I’ve offered to remove the Stumbled post for a while (but would that help? people would still be hitting my blog), and I’ve assured my host that Stumbles are usually temporary. How do you stop thousands of people from visiting your blog??

I hope that my conciliatory offers are acceptable…. but I am at wit’s end. What a day it’s been! First, my htaccess wipe-out at my other blogs, now this! I just wanna go to bed and give a good cry! :(

UPDATE: I called my web host and they are so wonderful! They are willing to work with me, and they understand that Stumbles are usually temporary. I have some homework ahead of me, though– the theme I am using is a little too beefy so I’m going to have to shop for a slimmer theme. Tomorrow I’m going to check the stats with my web host, and see how things go. So now I can get some sleep tonight, at least! what a day, whew!

Oooo you know how I have been bemoaning my Bluehost hosting problems? And my Whip An Orbit web hosting problems (although Whip An Orbit is behaving better now). I had another half-hour outage for all three blogs with Bluehost today. Boy, this is getting old. I’ve only been with them about two months now, and I’ve had a lot of problems.

I’m paying a lot of attention these days to websites discussing hosting sites and hosting information. Here’s a great website on linux web hosting and more. DUH! I wish I’d seen this earlier! It’s called Web Hosting Rating.

Cheap web hosting can be tricky and it definitely takes one with the technical knowledge and experience to be able to judge whether the host is good. More often than not, it is the bad experiences from using cheap web hosting that eventually leads people to lose trust in these low cost endevours and move onto more expensive options, which may not necessarily be better.

“Tricky” is the understatement of the month for me. Bluehost has been tricky. Yeah. [insert angry-face icon here]

Anyway, the site lists three things to look for when choosing a web host. There are some good articles there, too. The information may help you if you are looking for tips. Looks like this blog will be brimming with good ideas to come!