We’re back!
December 22, 2008
As some of you may know, I work at The Monroe Publishing Co. in Monroe, MI. I manage the New Media department, which basically means anything internet/website related. We created a blog network a year or two ago (blogsmonroe.com), which MiBeerBuzz is part of. The blogs have been relatively stable the past year on a shared server. The problem (which is a great problem to have) has been the traffic continue to soar on all of the blogs. The host would contact us about this soaring traffic, letting us know we crashed the shared server, but we would tweak a thing here or there, thinking we fixed the problem.
Finally last week, they called us and said we were done using that shared server and in order to put the site back up, we had to upgrade. The upgrade plans (dedicated servers) started around $150 a month. The shared server plan we were on was a low annual fee. Since the blogs aren’t a huge revenue stream (we get a small amount each month from Google Ad Sense.. very small amount), there was no way I could afford to upgrade the blogs to a dedicated host.
We do have one dedicated hosting plan that has some room, enough for the blogs. So last week we began the tedious task of downloading every blog and re-uploading them to the new dedicated hosting environment. This wasn’t easy. We’re doing them in alphabetical order, and some of the blogs were so large they took hours to download (this one included). The downloads would also time-out after a while, which required us to click a “continue” button. We’re still downloading and re-uploading them but they are slowly appearing online.
So that’s the long story. Thanks for everyone who’s contacted us the past week asking what was going on. It’s nice to know we have some fans! This has also made me aware that I really should have a back up plan for the future, if something like this happens again.
Now that the beer blog is back up.. guess what I’m going to do? You guessed it – have a beer (or three). 
Posted in Beer News
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Glad to see the site back up and running… was worried I wouldn’t be able to ask this question in time:
I am going to be up in the Traverse City area snowboarding for a couple days… according to beermapping.com, there appears to be 3 breweries in downtown. Anyone have an opinion on which I should be sure to stop at? I’m hoping to make it to all of them but I could be pressed for time. I’m also planning on stopping by Short’s Brewing as well.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
If I were going up to Traverse City today – I’d skip any other activities and head directly to Right Brain Brewing. That and Shorts are the only two that I’d be hitting. Some say the North Peak is good – I haven’t been there in a couple of years, I skipped it the last time I was up there (back a few years, it seemed food was more of the focus over the beer, but that very well could have changed). Macinac Brewing skip all together unless you’re really bored waiting for the gal to shop downtown… Am I missing any place?
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
By the way, I know we’ve mentioned it on the Beer Buzz before, but I’m heading out tonight to the Harbor Inn & Ale in Monroe, MI for a beer. They have two Dark Horse beers (Perkulator and Triple), two Bells (Winter White & Stout), New Holland kolsch and a pilsner from Erie Brewing. Excellent selection for Monroe, MI! The food is pretty awesome too, semi-gourmet at really good prices. Alright… enough typing, off to have me a perkulator!
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I stopped by North Peak when I was in TC a few years ago…it seemed just like Grizzly Peak. Then I realized they were owned by the same dudes. It’s not bad at all, just I could get the same atmosphere close to home.
Glad you are back up! I’m so simple…I thought it had something to do with the weather or something.
And I nominated this Harbor Inn and Ale as a future MI Beer Buzz/CBiM meet up!
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Thanks for putting the beer down long enough to fix the blogs!
We now return to the regularly scheduled drinking…
December 23rd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Thanks for the advice! I was 99.9% sure I already knew the answer — Short’s and Right Hand are definitely on my list. Might stop by North Peak for dinner.
Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!
December 24th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Keep up the good work! It’s good to have a place to find out about local beer stuff (well sorta local, I’m in Livonia).
I’ll start clicking ads from the blog, hopefully that will help a bit.