TypePad - the hosts of this blog - are working on the problem with the loading of pages that we first discussed on Thursday. The problem isn't constant but deteriorated again badly over lunchtime. Apologies for this. We are planning to move the blog from TypePad to MoveableType soon and hope that this will lead to a better service all round.
4.15pm: We think the problem is resolved. The Latest News & Blogs list had more than 3,000 entries (most of them invisible) and this was causing the problems. Let us know if you are still struggling to load the frontpage and we'll go back to the drawing board.
Thanks Tim and Sam! I was going to email you to say it had got bad again - but I know you're working on it as hard as you can! And this on the start of such a big news week...
Posted by: Sally Roberts | June 09, 2008 at 14:39
isn't MoveableType just the self-hosted version of TypePad?
Posted by: Norm Brainer | June 09, 2008 at 15:23
It is Norm Brainer.
Posted by: Editor | June 09, 2008 at 15:26
Been running a lot smoother last day or so. Not sure what changes were made before these latest ones, but they certainly did the trick for me!
Following on from Norm Brainer, how come you're moving to self-hosting, surely your bandwidth usage is huge and would lead to ridiculously huge bills compared to the fixed rates offered by TypePad?
Posted by: Chris | June 09, 2008 at 16:29
Thank you Chris, The reason for moving was ease of backup, better emergency support and more design flexibility but I'll investigate the costs issue. Thank you. We realise it will cost more but 'how much more' is obviously of interest.
Posted by: Editor | June 09, 2008 at 17:36
Better over the past few days. Seems even better now. Will feedback if that changes.
Posted by: Jon H | June 09, 2008 at 18:47
working grand now
Posted by: Oberon Houston | June 09, 2008 at 19:28
CH is now usable again !! - we brought our college site back in-house and have found the small increase in costs well worth it.
Posted by: kingbongo | June 09, 2008 at 19:33
There are many self-hosting options to keep costs low. I reckon it can be done cheaper than TypePad's paid hosting. The real trouble is with archive retention and broken links.
For real design flexibility, I would suggest a move to Wordpress, though.
Posted by: Ali Gledhill | June 09, 2008 at 20:29
All seems ok now, although haven't been able to access the whole site since my last post above until this morning.
/subtley changes his URL to a reccomended host :)
Posted by: Norm Brainer | June 11, 2008 at 08:44