Summer Review 2008
September 1, 2008
We held back on the review of July and decided that a review for both July and August would be more appropriate. We did quite a few things over the summer and traffic is getting larger on a monthly basis both in terms of pageviews, hits and unique visitors. Here are some of the things that we also worked with:
- Fine tuned our backup system adding even more redundancy. We are making more frequent database backups with the backups rsync redundant to another server. The entire server is on RAID now. All files and configurations are also backed up on a daily basis to Amazon S3 making our backup solution very tight for everything.
- We released the first BETA of our Onvertigo Media system which is much like YouTube. It is based off a software called phpMotion and really is great! We even have a system in place to get your videos off YouTube over to our system very easy so you don’t have to upload your videos again! Currently we are doing it on a “closed” basis, but if you are interested, let Trent know.
- Keeping up with the best functionality of WPMU, we have a complete copy of Onvertigo Bloggers working so we can test out the latest development releases and implement only the best functionality to our live site between releases.
- We still have a small community but have opened up the signup process to the public with only people that know me being able to answer the signup question. We also have several filters in place to stop spam signups keeping the site clean.
- For those of you that want your own domain name, we have a system in place that you can point a domain name to the server and add it to your blog for FREE! The domain registration is still there, but having a domain name on your blog on our system is 100% free.
- Added a Global Posts system where all blog posts will be added. All links are back to the original blog posts and it should help with people finding your blog content and keep everyone is the best position in terms of the search engines. It is at http://tags.onvertigo.com
- We have did away with the “upgrades” and “premium” services for now, but still appreciate donations to keep this service 100% free forever.
- We have added another 20+ “premium wordpress themes” that are not offered to my knowledge on any other blogging system. They were payed for in an attempt to keep this service more unique.
- Still in the process of adding a better stats system for individual blogs and will keep working on this
We are very happy with where we are on this system and hope to keep making progress. Thank you for your interest in Onvertigo Bloggers 
Backing Up and WP-Super-Cache
March 13, 2008
We are currently backing up all the files and folders of Onvertigo Bloggers on a daily basis to ensure that we don’t lose anything if something happens to the server. These backups are done securely off-site to ensure we have access to back things up! We also are in the process of a complete weekly server backup to another off-site location to offer a bit of redundancy in our backups. We still encourage our bloggers to use their Dashboard -> Manage -> Export function every once in awhile to backup their blog specific content as well!
If that wasn’t enough backing up, starting today we have another backup of not only files, but all the server settings as well for the entire account on Media Temple through their Virtuosso interface. This is another backup on yet another backup space. While this one may seem like overkill, it is essential for our server admin (me). This allows me to backup at any point before executing changes on the server or the software installed so I can have a quick “revert” if the changes give undesired results!
While these are not really important to the end users directly, it should help eliminate any significant downtime when implementing upgrades and changes. It also serves as the quickest “restore point” if something does happen to the server. Our server is just a computer and we have to guard in case of hardware problems Media Temple is amazing in getting those things fixed quickly!
As well, we are now using the newest version of WP-Super-Cache on some of the blogs to help keep the server load down! It isn’t running on all blogs on the system, but running on the ones that might slow us down! Just another update!
Backups Running Smooth
January 31, 2008
We have now made it 3 consecutive nights with the backup server running for all the blogs on this service.  Not only are we making backups in regular fashion back to this server, we are making backups as well to a couple different servers to make sure the data is backed up properly.   I am pretty stoked how easy it has been and the resources are not dropping on the server even with the large load.   Partly it goes in low priority at non-peak times.
I even did some testing by playing with the sites during the backups. Â No problems to report! Â All Good!
Trent Adams