FtB needs some sort of backup -- say, “freethoughtblogs2.com”, using a completely different service provider, software template, etc, with at least the capability of notifying users when the existing system fails, and possibly even capabilities to serve current and new postings, receive & display comments, whatev.
Please take this up in the backchannels with the PZowers That Be!
Jörgsays
I agree with Pierce @#2.
Duncsays
Welcome back! It was pretty clearly some sort of DNS issue -- nslookup was returning “NXDOMAIN”, which means the domain doesn’t exist.
A backup would be a great idea, but… If you lack the capacity to keep the primary domain alive in the most basic sense, you’re going to struggle mightily to maintain any kind of backup system. The fundamental problem here is that FTB has essentially no technical capability -- everything more-or-less limps along as long as nothing breaks too badly, but it’s pretty obvious that nobody really knows how, or has the time and / or the skills to do anything about it.
Maintaining a live parallel system on a different platform would be challenging even for a reasonably well-resourced organisation with solid technical capabilities.
Lassi Hippeläinensays
A backup system would only add cost. If the money is available, it would better to use a better service provider.
AFAIK, the problem is at the service end. They occasionally send a message to the admin of the blog to check that the blog is alive. In computer engineering this is known as a “heartbeat message”. Unfortunately they still use the address of the late Ed Brayton, who definitely isn’t alive. So they pull the plug.
The fix is to make the service provider change the heartbeat address to PZ, which seems to exceed the skills of the provider.
birgerjohanssonsays
Welcome back!
Owlmirrorsays
Copy-pasting from 2024, with a few edits.
.
Hosts files are simple text files that contain the numerical addresses that the internet routing system uses, and a text string that corresponds to the server that you want.
On Unix(-like) systems (eg: Linux and MacOS), this file is located at
/etc/hosts
On Windows(-like) systems, this file is usually * located at
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
It even has brief header explaining what the file is and how entries should look.
.
Adding these entries will allow connections to freethoughtblogs to be made even if DNS cannot resolve the domain:
104.21.234.50 freethoughtblogs.com
104.21.234.51 freethoughtblogs.com
The IP address has not changed in the past 2 years, so it’s probably stable, and safe to leave those lines in. If you cannot reach freethoughtblogs even with those lines in your hosts file, the IP address may have changed. If the IP address has changed, you should be able to either comment those lines out ( add the “#” character at the very beginning of the line), or delete them, and see if you can reach the site. If you still cannot reach the site, it may be truly down.
__________________________________________
*: If you put the file somewhere else, you’re probably savvy enough to figure out where that is
Good.
FtB needs some sort of backup -- say, “freethoughtblogs2.com”, using a completely different service provider, software template, etc, with at least the capability of notifying users when the existing system fails, and possibly even capabilities to serve current and new postings, receive & display comments, whatev.
Please take this up in the backchannels with the PZowers That Be!
I agree with Pierce @#2.
Welcome back! It was pretty clearly some sort of DNS issue -- nslookup was returning “NXDOMAIN”, which means the domain doesn’t exist.
A backup would be a great idea, but… If you lack the capacity to keep the primary domain alive in the most basic sense, you’re going to struggle mightily to maintain any kind of backup system. The fundamental problem here is that FTB has essentially no technical capability -- everything more-or-less limps along as long as nothing breaks too badly, but it’s pretty obvious that nobody really knows how, or has the time and / or the skills to do anything about it.
Maintaining a live parallel system on a different platform would be challenging even for a reasonably well-resourced organisation with solid technical capabilities.
A backup system would only add cost. If the money is available, it would better to use a better service provider.
AFAIK, the problem is at the service end. They occasionally send a message to the admin of the blog to check that the blog is alive. In computer engineering this is known as a “heartbeat message”. Unfortunately they still use the address of the late Ed Brayton, who definitely isn’t alive. So they pull the plug.
The fix is to make the service provider change the heartbeat address to PZ, which seems to exceed the skills of the provider.
Welcome back!
Copy-pasting from 2024, with a few edits.
.
Hosts files are simple text files that contain the numerical addresses that the internet routing system uses, and a text string that corresponds to the server that you want.
On Unix(-like) systems (eg: Linux and MacOS), this file is located at
/etc/hosts
On Windows(-like) systems, this file is usually * located at
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
It even has brief header explaining what the file is and how entries should look.
.
Adding these entries will allow connections to freethoughtblogs to be made even if DNS cannot resolve the domain:
104.21.234.50 freethoughtblogs.com
104.21.234.51 freethoughtblogs.com
The IP address has not changed in the past 2 years, so it’s probably stable, and safe to leave those lines in. If you cannot reach freethoughtblogs even with those lines in your hosts file, the IP address may have changed. If the IP address has changed, you should be able to either comment those lines out ( add the “
#” character at the very beginning of the line), or delete them, and see if you can reach the site. If you still cannot reach the site, it may be truly down.__________________________________________
*: If you put the file somewhere else, you’re probably savvy enough to figure out where that is
For those who can’t edit hosts files (eg mobile devices) don’t forget HJB’s https://proxy.freethought.online