Adil Najam
As regular readers have noticed, All Things Pakistan was unavailable (“Forbidden” Error) from around 1AM Pakistan Time on Sunday March 1 to around 7PM Pakistan Time on Monday March 2 (around 3PM US Eastern Time on Saturday February 28 to around 9AM US Eastern Time on Monday, March 2). As you can imagine, this caused tremendous angst to us, especially in the early hours of this breakdown, as we wondered what this was about and how we could restore things. We got a flood of emails from readers and well-wishers wondering what was up and if all was well. Unfortunately, there was no way – except to our Twitter subscribers – to let all our readers know that this was, yet again, a mess-up on the part of MediaTemple (mt) our web server host company.
The bad news was that there was nothing that we could do at our end about this (more details here). The good news is that the server is back online, and so is ATP!
Media Temple (mt) tends to be highly rated in general, but there have been multiple serious problems with its service over the years we have hosted this site with them (here and here). In fact, in recent weeks the server has been acting up a lot and resulted in at least a few shorter breakdowns of the site. Maybe, we should think seriously about moving!
But more interesting, from a ‘Pakistaniat’ angle, is that each time some technical glitch happens – and one should expect some glitches some time – not only our readers but we ourselves become immediately scared that this could be something more sinister. I guess this is a factor of the general sense of insecurity and uncertainty that we have now all become unaccustomed to. A ‘sinister’ explanation seems more plausible always than the ‘obvious’ explanation. That it is so, is sad.
The coverage of the attack on Sri Lankan cricket team shows why we need this website. One of the few places on the web where at least a FEW sane voices are heard. Everywhere else it seems it is only rumor and hysteria.
Glad you are back
This was a TERRIFYING experience. Has it happened before?
It is good to have you guys back online but I don’t understand why the heck they call it Grid Hosting when all they depend on is single server. What a rip off?
Btw, I sorta-kinda feel relief because I was actually thinking about switching to MediaTemple but not any more.
Happy Blogging!