Day: January 4, 2009

After six years of service, Journalspace went offline, not because of financial difficulties or whatever reason that they have to pull-the-plug, but because of a backup failure.

Quoting Journalspace:

Here is what happened: the server which held the journalspace data had two large drives in a RAID configuration. As data is written (such as saving an item to the database), it’s automatically copied to both drives, as a backup mechanism.

The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that’s gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.

But that’s not what happened here. There was no hardware failure. Both drives are operating fine; DriveSavers had no problem in making images of the drives. The data was simply gone. Overwritten.

However, there should have been a true backup, a backup that is outside of the RAID configuration so in cases of overwrites, as was the case here, there is still a “backup” somewhere.

So anyway, what’s done is done. Due to this, thousands or millions of JournalSpace users woke up the next morning finding out that their homes are gone.

To help them find a new home and to get back all those blogs online (imagine: there’s a mass blackout viewing the blogosphere ‘lights’), here are 10 Blog Platforms that I highly recommend.

Hosted Blog services:

• Blogger.com (Google) [Free] - Use the latest version which you can find here: draft.blogger.com
  
  • Very customizable
  • Then you can select Blogger templates from eblog templates for free or premium
  • Examples of customized Blogger.com blogs (the ones I manage):
    
    • Anthenuria Principality
    • ASEAN: Asia’s Perfect 10
    • Dancing to Audition
    • HighStreet5 Community blog
    • Xindao23
    • YOUrLineage
• LiveJournal [Free] - Of course we have LiveJournal, one of the oldest social-blogging service today.
• Multiply [Free] - Is gaining big grounds in the social-blogging space especially after the mass migration of MSN Groups to Multiply. This exposed them to a huge audience, to add to their already huge blogs already hosted by their service.
• Tumblr [Free] - Tumblelogs are the easiest way to express yourself.
• TypePad [Premium] - from their product page: “SixApart’s premier hosted blogging service, powering millions of professionals and small businesses.” And it is true
• Vox [Free] - SixApart’s free social-blogging service. A popular service other than Google’s Blogger.com.
• Xanga [Free] - Social-blogging service, one of the pioneers if I am not mistaken.

Self-Hosting Your Own Blog, the platforms I recommend are:

• b2evolution [Free] - is a strong evolution of the b2/cafelog platform. It was the second fork that released a usable product (the first was b2++) - more on history here.
  
  • b2evolution is being used by a lot of bloggers and websites, even companies and organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium (the entity that develops and dictates HTML, CSS, XML, DOM/DHTML, etc)
  • read the full feature list and use cases here
  • the blog you are reading now is an example of a b2evolution blog, for more examples, just click here
  • for b2evolution hosting, click here
• ExpressionEngine [Free] - from their site: “a flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website” - oh yes, that is a true statement as well, I can’t even count how many sites and blogs I follow, as well as web developers I know who use it.
• Movable Type [Free] - One of the very popular blog platform - well, until they started charging for the product. But, don’t worry, they once again offer a Free MT, as a FLOSS License for developers, and as what they call “Individual Power Blogger” (ie. non-corporate)

Those are my suggestions, all of it were tested and I was impressed. Out of those ten, I use Google’s Blogger.com because it is tied-in to Google (which most people have), and b2evolution because of its customizability, extensivibility, and stability.

Below are a small few of the thousands or even millions of sites lost partly or forever, due to the unexpected shutdown of JournalSpace. Good luck to all of you, and feel free to reply here with your new Blog URL (all JournalSpace users)! Free linking and announcement for you all!!

• The Sacred Tome of the Divine
• Update Central!
• Sagan
• Zephris
• Cliffdancers
• My Blog
• Aquastrian

By the way, the JournalSpace team is considering releasing the journalspace source code to the FLOSS Community, as well as sell the domain and trademarks. Now that is the best way to close doors, not to put to waste the source code created, developed, and tested for six years.

Source: JournalSpace.com final words

Except where otherwise noted, this content is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Four Earthquakes hit parts of Asia early Sunday today (or late night Saturday UTC/GMT). A 7.6-magnitude hit the province of West Papua in Indonesia; a 5.9-magnitude hit the Afghanistan and Pakistan border; a 5.1-magnitude hit the Eastern coast of Taiwan; and another quake of 7.5-magnitude hit West Papua, Indonesia which was then followed by a series of smaller quakes one as strong as 6.1-magnitude.

Here is a timeline:

• @1943H UTC, 2008-01-03 Saturday
  
  • 7.6-magnitude quake hit West Papua, Indonesia
• @2023H UTC, 2008-01-03 Saturday
  
  • 5.9-magnitude quake hit the Afghanistan and Pakistan border
• @2204H UTC, 2008-01-03 Saturday
  
  • 5.1-magnitude quake hit the Eastern coast of Taiwan
• @2233H UTC, 2008-01-03 Saturday
  
  • 7.5-magnitude aftershock hit West Papua, Indonesia
  • followed by a series of smaller quakes, one as strong as 6.1-magnitude

All Earthquakes were reported to be of tectonic origin.

For more info, visit:
2 Powerful Quakes Rattle Indonesia
Hotel Collapses After Indonesian Quakes
1 Dead, Dozens Hurt in Indonesian Quakes
Earthquake Rattles Afghanistan-Pakistan
Moderate Quake Strikes Off Taiwan

Except where otherwise noted, this content is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.