Checking this entry on Lorelle on Wordpress, she talks a lot about downtimes and servers going belly-up. Well, it’s a fact of life. My Bluehost account is very reliable, but even they can’t deal with a +12 hours power outage, and gave up after 5 hours of diesel generators, Dilithium crystals decomposing and inverted polarities.
BUT (there’s always a but) the Server Down is NOT my biggest concern anymore.
A few weeks ago my earnings suddenly dropped to half the daily average. Of course Murphy being Murphy, I was away, returned home late afternoon. Check here, mess with adsense codes there, ping site, everything is fine.
The problem? Although the server was up and running, the database OK, external links properly working, somehow Wordpress messed up with some config and returned to its default theme. Yes, the one I never touched, and never included ANY adsense code.
Lesson learned:
- Always check your blog personally. A pingomatic server check is not smart enough to visually detect problems.
- Don’t be a lazy stupid monkey (like me). Edit the default template and include some adsense code. Worst-case scenario even looking like a plain install your money will still generate some revenue.
- Don’t go out. You can’t have a life. (OK, maybe this one doesn’t apply to everyone)