Hawk Wings: First birthday, problems
Apologies. I’ve been so busy writing for money this week in the other place 
that I haven’t had much time to post on Hawk Wings. (The first week of the month is always the worst).
Last Friday was the site’s first birthday. It’s come a long way and got a lot more focussed than the first post promised.
Entirely by coincidence Hawk Wings celebrated by breaking through the 10,000 mark in Technorati’s blog ranking system. (Like Daniel Jalkut I find Technorati disturbingly addictive. No doubt that’s part of the secret to the site’s success).
It’s a questionable measure of quality, but it means there are now only 8,965 blogs you would rather be reading than this one. ;-)
It’s been a fun year for me. I’ve learnt a lot about blogging, about WordPress and about Mail and OS X’s other productivity apps. I’ve enjoyed the interaction with the readers more than anything perhaps and the new friendships it has brought.
The blog has done better than it deserves to. While it’s a labour of love and not designed to make a profit, it has landed me other paying jobs, which are starting to affect what I want to do day-to-day. Life-changing stuff.
There are also problems.
Last week I had another email from TextDrive, telling me that Hawk Wings probably needs to move. The email said that Hawk Wings regularly does “about 100K hits daily, with bandwidth ranging in 400 to 800 MB a day.” They started placing blocks on all traffic from particular sites to keep the server alive.
It’s putting to much load on the shared server and making life difficult for other users. Obviously, TextDrive is right; that’s not good and it’s not fair. TextDrive suggests moving to a more robust (and more expensive) hosting solution.
In the short-term, I’ve killed the tag cloud in the sidebar and a few other bits and pieces that increased the site’s demands on the server.
In the medium term, I’ll need to move to another hosting package, hopefully still with TextDrive. I really like its philosophy and the tech support is excellent. But either way, it will mean coughing up more money to keep the site alive.
Quite a few people have donated already. To them I am very grateful.
If you haven’t, I am asking you to help. If you like the kind of things that Hawk Wings posts about, if it has made your email life better or boosted your productivity, consider making a donation to support its future.
You can make a donation via the PayPal button on the blog’s front page or since you are doing me a favour, I’ll bring the button to you:
Here’s to another year as enjoyable as the first!
Tags: Address Book, Apple Mail, email, hawk wings, iCal, mail.app, personal, Productivity, quicksilver, thunderbirdRelated posts
July 8th, 2006 at 12:52 am
I donated. Keep up the great work and I very much hope that we can collectively help you keep Hawk Wings online. Reading this blog convinced me to switch from Entourage to Mail.app in the first place and has kept on improving the experience. One of my most anticipated reads every day.
JS
July 8th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Congratulations on the 1 year anniversary! I hadn’t realized that our blogs’ birthdays were so very close.
100K hits a day! Oh my! That’s quite a challenge. From what I can tell you are not running WP-Cache. This could seriously improve at least the CPU performance of the site. I noticed a tremendous reduction in CPU usage after I installed and enabled it. Let me know if I can share any tips about installing it…
Daniel
July 8th, 2006 at 1:10 am
Hey Daniel, thanks. And likewise.
I was going to link to Red Sweater’s First Birthday post
, but was so taken by today’s post about Technorati that I linked to it instead.
You’re right. I don’t run WP-Cache and wouldn’t have the first idea how to install it. I’ll take you up on that kind offer. :)
July 8th, 2006 at 1:43 am
You could check out Netfirms. 750GB/month of bandwidth, lots of features, $10/month. I can’t say if they have any problems, though, because I haven’t used them personally.
http://www.netfirms.com/web-hosting-advantage
July 8th, 2006 at 2:13 am
You’ve got my support. This site is a great resource. Best of luck.
July 8th, 2006 at 2:17 am
Maybe it’s time to put you on a dedicated server, no? I was actually about to move a lot of sites to my own, happy, dedicated server soon — if you’d like, I can just add you to it? Drop me an email if you’d like, we can discuss more:)
July 8th, 2006 at 2:18 am
…or an ichat:)
July 8th, 2006 at 4:09 am
Hi Tim,
Happy birthday to Hawkwings, best to you in the future, and check your email!
July 8th, 2006 at 4:40 am
Happy Birthday — and it only fitting that it falls on Canada Day! because you seem to have an admiration of things Canadian (Prime ministers not withstanding…)
I have said it before and will continue to say it again, Hawkwings is the best thing to happen to the Apple Mail Community. The time and energy you put into it is very much appreciated.
July 8th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Thanks, Scott. I do love things Canadian - beavertails, MailTags, Spell Catcher X, lacrosse, Nova Scotia, Barenaked Ladies, Moxy Früvous, the list goes on and on. :)
Thanks for your kind words too. I sometimes think that Hawk Wings is just a parasite in the fur of developers and others who do the real work, so they are doubly welcome.
July 8th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Congratulations. Has TextDrive not proposed a way that you could stay there? It seems odd to me that a Web publisher could find an audience and success, and their response would be “go away.”
July 8th, 2006 at 11:11 am
It’s all a bit up in the air.
I hope that I can work something out with TextDrive. I really like its culture and philsophy, and the tech support is excellent.
July 8th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Congratulations for the first year of Hawk Wings. It surely is a breakthrough date for any blog (as many dies before getting this old) and I wish many more years to come to this great site. I’ve learned and enjoyed a lot since the visit one I made to hawkwings.net.
Sadly I’m unable to donate because PayPal blocks access to my account from Cuba (maybe this will change after their announced move to Singapore for international users) but I hope many people will do it to help this great work you’re doing to continue.
And about your problems w/hosting, I know that the TextDrive people are great and I imagine that tech support is great, but if you can’t work out w/them, try Dreamhost. They are cool people also, w/insanely great support and admin tools and the price is just incredibly low. And if you find some site on the web w/discounts for them you can get a whole year of hosting for US$69, which includes 20GB storage and 1TB bandwidth transfer. I know many people who host there and are very (I mean VERY) happy w/their service.
Cheers, and you deserve the success Tim.
July 8th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
I’ve been looking around and just moved to:
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/pg.info.dspUnixHosting
Here’s how I found them:
http://www.thehostingchart.com/
Hope that helps!
July 9th, 2006 at 1:37 am
Carlos - you could always post cigars ;-)
I know some other bloggers with Dreamhost. I’ve toyed with the idea before, but will try to organise something here first.
July 9th, 2006 at 4:55 am
That’s the dedicated host I was referring too:) We use our OS X server for other accounts, dreamhost as well. If Textdrive doesn’t work out, let me know, I’ll put you on it with your own account divided from my other work.