Good night, Good morning, Goodbye... Irene

Bad news:  Due to Hurricane Irene, we lost power to the homegrown server overnight sometime before 6 AM Eastern on 8/28/2011.

Good news:  Fortunately, we have already been working on a migration of the server over to a hosted solution.  We successfully cut over from the homegrown server to the hosted solution as of ~8:45 AM Eastern on 8/28/2011.  The site appears to be functioning normally, although there may be some minor issues with the stats because the cutover was forced due to weather conditions, rather than elegant/planned.

BlogPatrol back online

August 14th  @ 5:39 PM
BlogPatrol.com is back online and counting stats again.  Due to changes in schedules and availability, I have very limited access to server administration support, so I needed to overcome a steep learning curve in order to fix the issues that caused the site to be down since last Thursday.

You may have seen the prominent banner ad showing that BlogPatrol is now listed FOR SALE on Flippa.com.  Hopefully, the new owner will have both the technical chops and the business savvy to move BlogPatrol forward to better performance than I've been able to do lately.

August 14th  @ 1:52 AM
I'm sorry everyone.  I've had to work through numerous issues with the server and also the database.  I'm almost done with the fixes, and will post another update soon.

August 12th @ 11:01 AM
The BlogPatrol service is currently down due to maintenance on the site.  I'll post an update when the maintenance is complete.

Power backup, website backup, but just started fixing database

One step at a time I guess.  We've got power back on site, which means the server is back online.  However, the database tables crashed because the server shutdown was due to a power outage.  Initiating the database repair now.

Good News (Relatively)

The website outage is due to a power blackout where the server is located, not due to a hard disk failure. What this means is that we will be able to get BlogPatrol online sooner rather later, soon after the power comes back on.

BlogPatrol Returning May 8, 2011

Murphy's Law has taken its diredct aim on BlogPatrol.  In addition to the database issues that we have been dealing with over the last week, we are now affected by a failure of the primary hard disk, which is a solid state drive (SSD).  These SSDs are known for their speed, performance -- and burnout rate.

Due to scheduling constraints, the earliest that we will be able to fix this hardware issue is approximately between May 6-8, 2011. I understand that these kinds of down times are unforgivable in today's Internet.  All I can do at this point is I apologize for the ongoing let down from BlogPatrol.  This failure is a primary example as to why BlogPatrol is looking for a buyer / partner with appropriate resources and expertise.

BlogPatrol Server Being Worked On

Been having a run of bad luck with the server and database.  We are working on the issue and hope to have the site up again soon.

BlogPatrol Back Online

I'm sorry folks.  One of the disks on our server crashed and, due to limited schedules, it took us a while to get the site back online.

Database Maintenance on April 23

4/23/11 @ 3:23 PM
Currently fixing database so that it renders stats reports properly again.  I expect to be done with maintenance activities within a few hours.

4/24/11 @ 10:20 PM
I'm sorry folks, but due to some scheduling issues, I'm only able to get part of the database back online right now.  You should be able to read your stats again finally, but the system may be responding slowly.  Once the system is fully back online, I'll post another update.

4/26/11 @ 7:59 AM
The database appears to be stable again, as it looks like users are able to view their stats reports.  If anything changes, I'll post an update here.

BlogPatrol back online...

BlogPatrol is back online following some issues with our Internet Service Provider and subsequent problems with the database. Stats are now available for all days (except for January 28).  I'm sorry for the extended delay and downtime.

Issues, Fixes & Enhancements

Updated October 16, 2010:

Thanks to everyone for your feedback on BlogPatrol issues and enhancements. We're operating BlogPatrol with part-time resources, so we rely on your active support to help us provide you the best service within our means:

• DEPLOYED as of August 23, 2010:  Display your blog's Top Blogs ranking under the Account Settings portion of your Account Login and Control Panel.
• DEPLOYED as of August 18, 2010:  Improved presentation and organization of the data in the Detailed Visitors Logs report. 
• DEPLOYED as of July 10, 2010:  A search functionality on the Top Blogs page that allows anyone to search publicly listed blogs.  If a blog is found, then the search will display the blog's rank, hit counts, and stats (if public).
• DEPLOYED as of July 5, 2010:  Improved the Clear Stats functionality.  BlogPatrol users are now able to clear visitor counts/details, clear hit counts, or clear all.  One warning though is that all clear functions are permanent and therefore cannot be reversed.
•  DEPLOYED as of May 25, 2010:  Upgraded and updated the database table that holds the reference IP addresses and corresponding country names.  (A user reported that the country counter is not working for Russia (.ru) and Turkey (.tr).)
• DEPLOYED as of May 21, 2010:  Synchronized time / time zone on classic stats reporting with regular stats reporting.
• DEPLOYED as of May 17, 2010:  Corrected formatting errors that were causing error messages to display in Internet Explorer for the BlogPatrol homepage. 
• DEPLOYED as of December 30, 2009:  Improvements that have made the "Custom Upload" function, and the "Account Settings" form, easier to use.
• DEPLOYED on December 19, 2009: Finally, after nearly five (part-time) months of design, development and testing, we are ready to deploy the new customizable features for the BlogPatrol counter widget icons. The new features will allow users to [1] create invisible/camouflaged icons, [2] upload and design custom visible/stealth icons, and [3] design their own visible icons, in addition to the [4] system icons currently available.

• TURNED OFF CO-REGISTRATION ADS as of November 7, 2009: Thanks to a tip from a new user, I discovered that the advertiser I was working with to provide co-registration offers during the new user sign-up process was spamming new users with way too many ads and even pop-up ads. I have terminated the relationship with that advertiser and disabled the co-registration ads until I can do this in a way that does not spam BlogPatrol users.
• ANALYZED as of August 3, 2009: Analyzing feasibility and cost/benefit of future enhancements, including placing an upper limit on daily number of visitors tracked, implementing an HTML-only counter code, providing a new set of BlogPatrol counter icons, and also allowing for the upload of custom icons by users.
• CLOSED as of July 28, 2009: A couple of users reported that the "Ban IP" function was not working properly. We tested this issue, but were unable to find any errors with the system. If you continue to find otherwise, please post a comment.
• COMPLETED as of July 24, 2009: Made sure that the revamped Top Blogs pages displays only those accounts which have opted-in to the "Include my site in the BlogPatrol Top Blogs List" option.
• COMPLETED as of July 22, 2009: Fixed a bug in the recently added "Blog Name" data field, which was not correctly saving phrases that contain apostrophes (') or quotations ("").
• COMPLETED as of July 20, 2009: Updated BlogPatrol signup instructions and screen shots. Updated directions and screen shots for installing BlogPatrol on Blogger Blogspot blogs.
• COMPLETED as of July 19, 2009: In testing round two of customizing the TITLE TAG of the Top Blogs pages so they correspond to the settings of each BlogPatrol user account. Expecting to have this feature live by July 20.
• COMPLETED as of July 15, 2009: Customized the TITLE TAG of all stats page types (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) so they correspond to the public/private settings and blog name or Blog URL of each BlogPatrol user account.
• COMPLETED as of July 11, 2009: Released further refinements to the "Retrieve Counter Code" form. We have made it easier for users to copy the BlogPatrol code so that they can paste it into their blog.
• COMPLETED as of July 5, 2009: Created a new data field that allows users to name their blog as part of their BlogPatrol account. For example, the address of this blog is http://thepatrolblog.blogspot.com/, but the name or title of it is The Patrol Blog.
• COMPLETED as of June 30, 2009: Expanded the amount of data provided in BlogPatrol reports. For example, increasing the display from 25 to 50 visitors in the Detailed Analysis of the Last 25 Visitors report.
• COMPLETED as of June 23, 2009: Expanded the functionality of the Top Blogs page. Instead of listing only the Top 100 blogs, the page will provide links to scroll through all blogs that have opted to be ranked by their number of hits. We will be implementing the changes within the next 48 hours.
• COMPLETED as of June 11, 2009: Improving the format of extra long usernames as they are displayed in the left navigation pane.
• COMPLETED as of June 10, 2009: Improvements to the Retrieve Counter Code page that will make it easier for users to view and copy the code for their BlogPatrol accounts.
• COMPLETED as of May 25, 2009: Implemented new bug fixes to make sure that the BlogPatrol reports are consistent in relation to each other regarding the number of unique visitors being reported by each report (e.g., data in the "Details of Last 25 Visitors" versus data in the "Hourly Visitors for Today" and the "Today's Visitors").
• COMPLETED as of May 25, 2009: Implemented additional bug fixes on the hourly stats reports to ensure that the time stamps match correctly to the time of day in relation to the time zone of each user's account. We'd also like to recognize the author of Authentic Designer Items For LESS for her help in reporting and testing this issue.
• COMPLETED as of May 23, 2009: The URL validation script on the signup form was not accepting a trailing slash at the end of corrrect addresses.
• COMPLETED as of May 12, 2009: Implemented enhancements that make the BlogPatrol contact form easier to understand and use.
• COMPLETED as of May 2, 2009: We have completed upgrades that doubled the RAM on our Dell PowerEdge 2900 server from 24 GB to 48 GB RAM.
• COMPLETED as of April 20, 2009: The CAPTCHA that was formerly installed on our signup, contact and lost password forms received many complaints. We have implemented a new CAPTCHA, which we expect to perform very well. Please let us know if you find otherwise.
• COMPLETED as of April 7, 2009: Made enhancements to the new user signup process that will require new users to validate the spelling of their username, blog URL and email address. These improvements will help to ensure that BlogPatrol account information is entered correctly. Ensured that default value of "Starting Counter Value" is equal to zero. Updated signup instructions to reflect these changes.
• COMPLETED as of March 16, 2009: Fixed distortion in formatting of stats reports that would occur when the URL of a BlogPatrol user's blog site was greater than 44 characters in length.
• ADDED as of March 13, 2009: Co-registration offers and discounts to the new user signup process. New users can choose to skip the co-registration process entirely, or to select those offers which appeal to them.
• RESOLVED as of March 13, 2009: BlogPatrol accounts are sometimes increasing their visitor counters with NON-UNIQUE PAGEVIEWS (i.e., HITS), instead of UNIQUE VISITORS based on IP address of the visitor's computer. BlogPatrol counters are intended to count each IP address as a unique visitor during a given 24-hour period.
• COMPLETED as of March 13, 2009: Visitors using the Chrome browser by Google are being reported as using the Apple Safari browser. We need to update our code to recognize new browsers such as Chrome, Flock and others.
• COMPLETED as of December 22, 2008: We have rebuilt the operating system on the BlogPatrol server. This work caused BlogPatrol to be down for about 36 hours. We are operational again, however, as of December 21. Thank you for your patience.
• COMPLETED as of November 25, 2008: Full Server Audit: I have terminated the contract with my previous server administration company, SeeksAdmin. I am glad to announce that I have contracted with the excellent company named Red Audit, which has initiated a full audit and hardening of the server. Red Audit has already found and corrected numerous problems.
• RESOLVED as of November 2, 2008: At least some of the cities in time zones such as UTC+1, UTC+2 and UTC+3 are to a large extent wrong. As examples, Athens and Instanbul are listed as UTC+2, but they are actually in UTC+3. A detailed code review is required to determine if such cities are being affected by Daylight Savings Time changes, etcetera. Thank you, Νεκατομένος ο ερχόμενος, for calling this to our attention!
• FIXED as of October 17, 2008: We have resolved the issues (a) pertaining to the "keyword" data not appearing in all reports and (b) relating to the "Self-referring/Bookmarker" result being displayed so frequently for reports containing referrer information. I will need to write a blog post explaining this.
• RESUMING BUG FIXES, September 22, 2008: I'm sorry for the work stoppage on my end. I've had a number of issues outside of BlogPatrol that I had to resolve. I am, however, resuming the analysis and bug fixing this week with my contractor and will post another update soon.
• FIXED as of August 21, 2008: We have resolved the database slow response times which made it difficult for users to login and view their stats. The problem was the bug fix that was installed to get the Details of Last 25 Visitors report to coincide with the other reports.
• CLOSED as of July 20, 2008: Open call to our users to send web traffic to our test blog from our BlogPatrol users to help us to gather, analyze and fix the issues/bugs listed above.
• FIXED as of July 18, 2008: The "Weekly, Daily, and Hourly" reports were missing data for the current day and its hours.
• COMPLETED as of July 12, 2008: We have configured the development and test web site on the new server, which will allow us to proceed with bug fixing of issues found on the main site.
• FIXED as of July 7, 2008: For some users, especially accounts newly created as of July 3rd, the BlogPatrol counter image was not displaying properly on users' blogs (only a "broken X image" appears). For these accounts, BlogPatrol was not counting visits/hits. To obtain the fix for your account: Remove the BlogPatrol counter code presently installed on your blog, and then add the new version of the code using our install instructions.
• COMPLETED on July 3, 2008: An activity in the works since June 6, the migration of BlogPatrol.com to the new server is complete. We had a number of challenges which delayed the process, but, at last, we've reached the goal of migrating the site to a better machine. Thanks to everyone for your patience, especially during the challenging parts of the migration.
• COMPLETED on June 10, 2008: We have updated the instructions and screenshots for BlogPatrol Signup Instructions and How do I change the time zone of my BlogPatrol account? to match the new look and feel of BlogPatrol.
• COMPLETED on June 8, 2008: We have updated the How to add BlogPatrol to a Blogger blog instructions with screenshots that match the new look and feel of BlogPatrol.
• IMPLEMENTED on June 3, 2008: We have added the ability for you to ignore, or ban, up to four different IP addresses (home, work, wireless and other). In addition, we have enabled the ability to ignore (ban) dynamic IP addresses using the * and ? wildcard characters.
• FIXED on MAY 22, 2008: User gets logged out if s/he changes password. In order to resume activity in their account, then the user has to click logout and then login with the username and new password. Resolving this issue required some intensive redesign of our scripts, but all for the better for BlogPatrol users!
• FIXED on May 20, 2008: Bug fixing was delayed for a few days because of firewall issues that prevented our web developer's access to the BlogPatrol server. Issue has been resolved and we are resuming our work to fix bugs and provide enhancements.
• IMPLEMENTED on May 15, 2008: Amidst the bug fixing, we are working on a cross-promotional agreement with a company doing exciting things on the Web. This cross-promotion required us to develop some new graphics, so we decided to develop and install a BlogPatrol favicon as part of that graphics development project. Enjoy!
• FIXED on May 13, 2008: We think we have resolved the problem with logging in or staying logged into their account. Please let us know if you find otherwise!
• FIXED on May 13, 2008: We think we have also fixed the password reset function. Please let us know if you find otherwise.
• FIXED on May 9, 2008: Review all reports to make sure stats data match from report to report. Correct any errors found as a result of analysis For example, verify data for search engine and keyword search reports.
• FIXED on April 21, 2008: The "Daily Visitors for the Week of MMM DD to MMM DD" still needs to display the current day when that day has zero (0) visitors. Otherwise, it looks like the report is malfunctioning and not tracking visitors for the current day.
• FIXED on April 21, 2008: Formatting of URLs in the reports named "Top 10 Pages" and "Last 10 Pages".
• FIXED on April 18, 2008: In the Stats Dashboard, the display of the time zone's UTC code needs to change with the user's time zone selection.
• FIXED on April 17, 2008: Made sure that the start and end dates in the title bar of the “Daily Visitors” report correspond exactly to the start and dates of the bar graph data for that report.
• FIXED on April 17, 2008: Improved formatting of the BlogPatrol reports that contain URL links so that the links no longer line break too early, which left too much empty space on the right side of those reports.
• FIXED on April 17, 2008: On the BlogPatrol signup form, corrected the username validation routine so that it works properly in Internet Explorer v6+ to notify a new user that they have selected a username that already exists.
• FIXED on April 17, 2008: Centering of new "Account Settings View Stats Change Password etc." links and placement as one row of data.
• FIXED on April 17, 2008: The Demo Stats reports were not rendering unless a user was logged into their BlogPatrol account.
• FIXED on April 16, 2008: The "Top Blogs" list is not rendering in some web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox.
• FIXED on April 16, 2008: Homepage and other pages become unavailable due to other bug fixes.
• FIXED on April 14, 2008: "Today's Visits" has a different value than the current day of the "Daily Visitors for Week of MMM DD to MMM DD". When displaying correctly, these two report elements should display the exact same value.
• FIXED on April 11, 2008: Another issue with the "Details of Last 25 Visitors" is the multiple counting of unique IP addresses. (BlogPatrol is designed to count any given IP address as being a unique visitor over a 24-hour period.)
• FIXED on April 10, 2008: Many of the web pages are displaying the text in a red font, which when fixed will be a standard black font.
• FIXED on April 9, 2008: Removal of the display of the User ID # at the top of the login.php once that user has logged into their BlogPatrol account.
• FIXED on April 9, 2008: On the My Account Settings page, the "Ignore my Computer" (formerly called "Ban my IP") function is not working because it will not save any data in its corresponding data field. Also the "my IP address is..." button is not working.

We will continue to post regular updates as we resolve the above-mentioned issues and/or identify new ones. We're also excited to bring you as many enhancements and improvements as our part-time budget and resources allow.

System Down - Database Repair Underway

May 21, 2010, 10:57 AM UTC-4 America/New York
BlogPatrol is currently down.  Repairs are currently underway for the BlogPatrol database.  I will post an update when the repair is complete.

May 25, 2010, 7:32 AM
The system is functional, but not optimal at this time.  The website and database may respond slowly until the database issues can be resolved, hopefully by the end of this week.

Stats Being Tracked, but Reports Unavailable

May 7, 2010 at 7:12 PM
BlogPatrol is currently tracking stats for users, but an issue is preventing the stats reports from displaying properly.  We are looking into this issue and will post an update as soon as possible.

10:50 PM
BlogPatrol is functionally again.  I apologize for the inconvenience that this downtime caused everyone.

Problem with Stats and Workaround

We have discovered that there is a problem with the stats, as of:

March 20, 2010 @ ~10 PM
The regular stats reports are not working properly, but you will find your stats using the classic stats reports. 

March 21, 2010 @ ~9:30 AM
We have reported this issue to our technical team, who will work on correcting this problem.  Updates will be posted when new info is available.

March 21, 2010 @ ~11:50 AM
We have made some adjustments and restarted the system.  All reports are rendering now, although some of the values of the regular stats reports are not synchronized with the values of the  classic stats reports.  We will investigate further and get everything synchronized.