Miscellaneous

WE ARE BACK!!!!

If you tried visiting the blog over the past few days, you probably noticed that THERE WAS NO BLOG and freaked out.

We understand the feeling. Believe us. On Tuesday, our old server simply suspended our account without any notice because our blog was getting too much traffic and was making the entire server slow. Mayhem!Chaos!Terror! ensued as you might imagine.

For the past couple of years, we’ve had problems with our old hosting provider, but figured that since we have so much data, transferring would be a nightmare of a task, and we were willing to deal with crappy service in the name of preserving sanity. Up until last week, a shared server had worked well for us, and everything was going along swimmingly. But then, beginning Sunday evening, disaster struck.

Dear readers, we have grown.

We have grown so much in terms of visitors (thank you, everyone, for that!) that we now need to have our own dedicated server. Our account with what quite possibly could be the WORST hosting service in the world was suspended and locked down – and for the past few days, we’ve been frantically trying to find a new home. There was a good deal of blood, sweat and, yes, tears involved in the process – but we have FINALLY sorted everything out. The Book Smugglers is back on track, with what is hopefully better, faster, more reliable service. [1. Ana’s Note: And when I say “we” I really mean “Thea” who is the tech genius behind the Smugglers’ enterprise. Can we please ALL HAIL THEA!!!!!][2. Thea’s Note: And ALL HAIL ANA for holding down the twitter feed, emails, and helping explain the situation to concerned readers in the meantime!]

Anyways! We will resume regular blogging from tomorrow with our usual Sunday Stash post. We will have to re-schedule some of the posts we were supposed to have done last week, including the Nebula Readathon who was supposed to have happened today. Further details will follow tomorrow.

For now, just a few more bits and pieces. Because of this change to a new dedicated server, we are unfortunately incurring on unexpected monthly costs that we can’t afford for long and we will be looking for sponsors soon. This is a decision that was not made lightly and we hope our readers will understand. We’ve resisted ads for so long, because we don’t want any perception/accusation out there that we have conflicts of interest with regards to reviewing, or that we write about certain hot topics to garner more traffic. We promise that we will maintain our integrity as reviewers and will NOT accept any crappy spamtastic ads for cameras or whatever unrelated products. We will also be including affiliate links to our reviews and radar posts from now on and we would really appreciate your help! If you read one of our posts and decide to buy the book online, it would be awesome if you would consider do so using the links we provide.

We have had a hard week, dear readers. For a moment there, we despaired[3. Thea’s Note: Staying up until 2am each night dealing with hosting providers’ terrible customer service “support” desks, finding a new host, and then migrating the databases and tens of thousands of images we have, figuring out the DEVIL that is SQL…well, let’s say it wasn’t a fun week. Although, one does get an interesting sense of nostalgia/trends while going through every single file we’ve created. I am amused and very pleased that for every month of the year, we have uploaded at LEAST one zombie-related image. How awesome is that?] and wondered, but thanks to the power of awesome wikis, codecies, and some truly awesome blogging buddies that offered advice (here’s looking at you, Kristen, Jane of Dear Author, and everyone on Twitter!), we have prevailed. Despite the terrible experience that was this week, the hardest thing about it all was how much we MISSED blogging. We missed it like hell. We missed writing, we missed YOU, and we missed your comments.

It’s good to be back.

Ana and Thea

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

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27 Comments

  • Carolyn Jewel
    March 26, 2011 at 11:07 am

    Wow. I’m so sorry about your terrible customer service experience! But I’m glad you found a new home. Congratulations!

  • Nicole
    March 26, 2011 at 11:30 am

    So glad you guys are back πŸ™‚

  • Jess Tudor
    March 26, 2011 at 11:35 am

    Phew. Glad you’re back. Sorry it was so crappy. You’re the only review site I read regularly.

  • Meghan
    March 26, 2011 at 11:47 am

    Welcome back!! Sorry to hear you’ve had such a horrible server experience. I for one am actually pretty blind to ads; if they keep you two running this blog then I’m all for them.

  • de Pizan
    March 26, 2011 at 1:09 pm

    Glad your back! I don’t know what kind of sponsors your looking at, but on Awful Library Books, the ad program they use is , which only does literary-related ads. Which if you’re going to do ads, it’s kind of cool to do ads for a product both blogger and reader can get behind.

  • de Pizan
    March 26, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    Shoot, sorry for the wonky tags. The program is called Litsense.

  • Michelle
    March 26, 2011 at 1:15 pm

    UGH, what a nightmare! So glad you prevailed and are back!

  • Kristen
    March 26, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Welcome back! Glad to see you got everything up and running again. And I hope you both have a better week!

  • janicu
    March 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm

    Wow, sounds like there’s a LOT of hard work involved with moving servers. Glad you guys managed to do it! (And I’m glad I could still access your posts on my reader so I wasn’t totally deprived).

  • Katie
    March 26, 2011 at 1:55 pm

    I found your blog rather on accident by looking at re-tweets. Read through your painful ordeal, what a mess! And … found out you also have at least a small fascination with zombies since you “uploaded at LEAST one zombie-related image a week…” I must say, that IS awesome, I tip my hat to you and look forward to reading more of your writing. Yay Internet! Katie

  • Ana
    March 26, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    Hello everybody!!! (OMG comments!!!! <3)

    It is good to be back, thank you for the welcome back!

    Pizan: we had heard about it before and will def investigate further. thanks.

  • Estara
    March 26, 2011 at 2:09 pm

    Applause! You are invincible! All hail! ❗

  • Katharine
    March 26, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    Thank you so much for all your hard work! I don’t know what I’d do without my daily Book Smuggler blog stalking. I was jonesing, I will tell you. πŸ™‚ But now you are back, and all is right with the world. Crisis averted, panic attack subsiding. Hope you two have a chance to breathe and pat yourselves on the back… before giving me more of the awesome book review fun we all know and love. All hail both of you. πŸ™‚

  • Mihir
    March 26, 2011 at 5:10 pm

    Hi Ana & Thea. Good to see 1 of my fav. Blogs back & kicking πŸ™‚

  • KB/KT Grant
    March 26, 2011 at 5:18 pm

    Can I be part of your entourage since you’re superstars now? πŸ˜†

  • Emm
    March 26, 2011 at 5:53 pm

    Thanks for the effort in getting the site back up- i’m not gona lie, I freaked a little when i couldn’t get through. Dw bout the ads, the fabulous reviews more than make up for a few ads on the side, and I hope you might even profit a little from it, you guys deserve it

  • Chachic
    March 26, 2011 at 10:28 pm

    Welcome back! πŸ™‚ Sorry to hear about the problems that you had but I think it’s great that you guys are back.

  • orannia
    March 27, 2011 at 1:31 am

    If you tried visiting the blog over the past few days, you probably noticed that THERE WAS NO BLOG and freaked out.

    I know I mostly just lurk, but I was so freakig out last night. I was Googling with intent and then I remembered you Twitter (I don’t πŸ™‚ and went there and all was revealed *grin*

    Sounds like a stressful few days. Glad you found a new server.

  • Jodie
    March 27, 2011 at 4:38 am

    Glad to see you fixed up and back. That sounds like an absolute nightmare. Watching colleague work with our server hosts I can tell you it’s not unusual for providers to just do things, get calls from customers and be like ‘Oh yeah, did we not tell you?’

  • David
    March 27, 2011 at 5:48 am

    Good to see The Book Smugglers back online, you were missed.

  • heather
    March 27, 2011 at 7:28 am

    Glad you guys are back!

  • KMont
    March 27, 2011 at 7:50 am

    SO GLAD yall are back! *spongebob dance, baby!!*

    Sorry, I’ve been ensconced with only a 6 yo and two wiener dogs and Sponebob for company for the past week. Yeah – I’m going mad in my own way, too.

    SO – that’s why *I* am grateful yall are back! Please don’t leave me alone with this group again!

    And…so sorry this happened, so sorry yall suffered all this stress, and you’re awesome for getting through it and getting back online.

  • MarieC
    March 27, 2011 at 8:02 am

    So glad you’re back!

  • Tipsy Reader
    March 27, 2011 at 2:10 pm

    yay! At least it was for GOOD reason that you got shut-down. Too popular? PSSHHH πŸ˜›

    So happy you’re back!

  • MaryK
    March 27, 2011 at 2:51 pm

    I’ve noticed before that you guys don’t use affiliate links for books on the blog. Would that help to offset costs? I’ve no idea how lucrative affiliate links are.

  • Ebony McKenna
    March 27, 2011 at 4:58 pm

    Hooray you are back!

    And although we’re only new friends, I’d like to call you both a combined name. Anathea springs to mind, πŸ™„ or would that be presumptuous of me?
    *runs off*

  • Su
    March 28, 2011 at 7:14 am

    Huzzah! So glad you’re back. Even if the journey was brutally painful. I wouldn’t mind ads, either. You two bring the awesome on a constant basis, and I think you should get paid for that. Thank you for your blog! πŸ˜€

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