Posts Tagged ‘Hosting’

Flying the Coop

F1 Minute ScreenshotAs Formula 1 heads into it’s ‘winter break’ and the daily influx of gossip and rumour fades to a quiet whisper, we figured it would an ideal time to launch a news site!

They don’t pay us the big bucks for nothing, let me tell ya.

Actually, it’s not really a news site per se, we’re just giving F1 Minute a home of it’s own. The recent addition to our podcasting stable, has grown so rapidly and consistently that it’s ready to leave the tender bosom of Sidepodcast, and venture out into the big, bad world on it’s own.

You can view the new site at: http://www.f1minute.com/. It’s still a little wet behind the ears, but basically fit for purpose. Feel free to have a poke around and let us know what you think.

So What’s New?

From a listerner’s perspective, nothing changes. The feed is still in the same place as it always was, so if you’ve subscribed to the podcast, you’ll not miss a moment’s news. iTunes and various other podcast directories are already pointing to the new location and we’ve moved all posts and comments across to the new domain.

Additionally Christine has created a Twitter thingy, to keep you bang up-to-date with the latest in news and gossip. Just in case the idea of ‘F1 news every single weekday’, is simply not enough information for you.

So Why Change?

We’ve created a new home for F1 minute, because it was getting a little bit swamped by all the action on this site. Many search engines struggled to pick up the latest posts and because it didn’t get a look-in on the homepage, not everybody spotted it.

Additionally we’ve picked a pretty solid hosting company (that I believe is the same as Ollie’s), which should give us an extra layer of stability after some of the hosting problems we’ve had here. Ideally we’d like to move to Amazon’s EC2 cloud, but the technology is too immature to make the jump right now. Media Temple offer a good compromise, which is less flexible, but not so cutting-edge.

What About Embedded Content?

If you’ve jumped on board and added the embeddable F1 Minute player to your site / blog / forum, we’ve not forgotten you. The good news is you don’t have to change a single line of code. You’ve probably noticed that today’s episode is still happily running on your site and it will continue to do so.

However, if you’ve got five minutes to spare, we do recommend that you take a look at the new sharing page. The code listed there has been tweaked in order to point to the new domain. Upgrading code on your site will enable you to benefit from the increased reliability that the new host’s offer us, and we’ll also be adding new players and customised embed options to that page soon.

Just to re-iterate, you don’t have to change anything, we know you’re busy people and we don’t like to impose.

In Conclusion

So, there you have it. New domain, new host, better stability and a web site dedicated solely to the vocals of Ms. Blachford.

Oh, I almost forgot. The new site is entirely at the disposal of the gravelly-voiced damsel, there’ll not be an anti-McLaren post in sight (although I might stop by with some inflammatory comments). If you thought she had a lot on her plate before, you’ve not seen nothing yet!

Please stop by and say “howdy”, leave a comment or peruse at your leisure. As always, thoughts, ideas and criticism are readily welcomed.

Go there NOW!

Somewhere Only We Know

Quick apology to everyone who’s struggled to access ye olde sidepodcast for the past 12 hours. During the night our hosting company appeared to be playing the twisted, but familiar game - “best of luck getting out of this one”.

Did you miss us?

Luckily it was just the blog affected, podcasts continued to download unabated, although yesterday’s F1 Minute was slightly delayed for anyone using the new shared site version - big apologies to anyone affected there.

As it happens, we’re already deep into the process of building a more reliable Sidepodcast for next season, one that should hopefully withstand irresponsible hosting companies messing with our minds.

Just for kicks, enjoy the following system status notifications, both raised late last night (within an hour of each other), and see if you can’t spot the deliberate lack of joined up thinking here:

21:46: Some customers may find they are experiencing ‘timeouts’ when downloading email.

22:46: Customers may find they are unable to access their databases. All customers affected will be emailed shortly with further information and instructions.

Real tears, let me tell you. Real tears.