2009 Planning Guide - My Gift To You!Break Your Feed? Lose Your Traffic!
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Two days ago we moved to a dedicated server which is proudly sponsored by our hosting provider. To make sure we wouldn’t run into any problems during and after the move which could have potentially resulted in downtime, we’ve spend hours on copying, checking and adjusting things where needed on the new box.
We love you guys and didn’t want to deprive you from any of your favorite cow-blog updates so that’s the least we could do! Anyway, let’s not get carried away here. Everything is up and running as you can see and we’re faster loading than ever before! So why is there less traffic?
Good question. We’ll try to explain without becoming too technical!
The Internet we’re using relies heavily on the nameservers out there. These guys translate those hard to remember IP addresses like 127.0.0.1 into cool names like JohnCow dot Com, and all of the devices we use to surf the web need to know atleast one nameserver to get to know where JohnCow dot com lives, or any other cool website. Those nameservers aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed and have to ask their big brothers for help. Once they know your address, they’ll remember it for a certain time, the information is cached. The problem that lies within this is that the little nameserver, who just asked his big brother for a your site’s IP address, won’t check if you’ve moved house for a certain period. It’ll tell your Internet device to go to the old address until it forgets where JohnCow lives and has to ask big brother again who will then tell him the new address. What do you get as end user? An empty house.
Now have a look at your feeds. Most of us are registered with FeedBurner which provides all sorts of wonderful little tricks for your boring old RSS feed.No matter how cool FeedBurner is, it too has to ask some little nameserver where you live so it can update your content. 
If the little piece of shit nameserver X lies to FeedBurner and gives out your old address, your new posts will not be updated and all your subscribers will not be notified of new content for them to munch on. They won’t come to your blog because nobody told em about the fantastic new posts! If this keeps up for a few days, readers will even start to unsubscribe and forget all about you! And that boys and girls is exactly what’s happening to us. You’re here but we bet you didn’t come by through the RSS feed. The same goes for other sites that bring in traffic by the way, Technorati and MyBlogLog seem to talk to the same little bastard nameserver X so nobody there is aware of our updates either. We hope for nameserver X’s sake that he’ll ask his big brother for an update soon, or else…
So remember kids; Chew your food atleast 10 times, floss after every meal and check your blog’s feed regularly to make sure you’re not missing out on traffic!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Kill the little rouge DNS server
was it the old server or the new one, because those are black if i am not mistaken!
Isn’t that so sad? The attention span of people today is so limited, any break in a normal routine will cause them to forget about you and move on to something — or someone else. In a way we as webmasters have all become these little entertainers, scared to miss a day of posting or make any wanted or needed changes because of what it could potentially do to our audience numbers.
So what’s more important, the loyalty of a few subscribers, or the constant influx of a lot of strangers? Hmmm…
How can you forget John Cow?
honestly! he is the man when it comes to delivering the milk, i get mine usually at the store!
You changed your nameservers? Or you had to create your own too? Shouldn’t take more than 48 hours in both cases, usually faster these days.
I got here through the feed, so its been updated somewhere! Sorry for your probs. Moving to a dedicated is probably good thing in the long run.
I had a similar problem a few months back and it’s quite frustrating! But having this blog on a dedicated server is definitely the right choice.
So here’s to herds of hungry visitors grazing their way to your lush, green pastures!
Shine on,
Aaron
Ah, I smell what you’re stepping in.
I don’t have to worry much about it at present. But once my reader base grow, then it may come handy
I’ve learned that if you anticipate the future, or maybe I should say, if you ‘claim’ what you seek, then it will happen. Just live everyday like you have thousands of readers, and it will come sooner than you think. It’s the power of positive thinking (a.k.a. ‘The Secret’)