It has been a while since I’ve commented on the state of the website, which is a good thing. However, I felt that I should let you all know that I am looking towards getting the hosting problems resolved soon. This site is currently hosted at BlueHost, which served me very well for the first year or so that I was with them. For the last few months, however, they have been having a firewall problem that blocks access to this site 4 or 5 times a day for 30 to 60 minutes at a time. They have also been having power loss problems, which is rather strange as the original reason I went with them was because that sort of problem was not likely given their location.
If the problems persist, then I will be moving the hosting elsewhere. I am exploring the possibility of getting some direct hosting, but if that falls through then I will be sending this website over to DreamHost. I already have a few websites with them and have not had anywhere near the headaches that I have been having with BlueHost.
On another front, I have culled almost 11,000 spam messages from this website over the last few months. It seems to be getting popular. I guess that my audience is one that would like bad ringtones, random drugs, and strange pornographic fetishes. If that describes you, then I’m sorry I’m stopping the unwanted ads from getting to you. A few have slipped through my moderation queue for brief periods, but I get rid of them as soon as I notice them. Since I have myself emailed in two different places and follow the RSS feed, I usually notice pretty quickly.
Once you are spotted by the spammers, it just increases. I don’t know if it is a function of popularity or age or both. Are you using the wordpress plug-in, akismet?
As for hosting, I’ve had great success with pair (pair.com).
Yes, I am using akismet. It’s funny; it catches 99% of the spam, and every once in a while it picks a random person to block. Scott was on the block list for a few weeks once, and lately any comment that I make winds up on the block list.