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Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

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Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#81

Post by mvkel »

tobtoh wrote: post #42
trickjarrett wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of genuine curiosity, what percent of uptime would be worth managing your own infrastructure?

I don't think it's quite a simply answer like X% uptime. A lot of the decision is the 'quality' of the downtime. For example: * Is it generally stable, but only going down in peak load situations (obviously no good if you know peak load occurs when you are doing critical new product release/sales etc, but may be okay if you peak load corresponds to non-critical events). * How long is the outages? If it goes down for…

Well put. I echo your sentiments entirely. No point in bending over backwards for 99.999% uptime when it has zero effect on one's business.

Priorities...

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#82

Post by bgentry »

abalone wrote: post #40

Ummm.... they're hosting on HEROKU? In 2011, Tumblr was down for 42 hours. In 2011, Heroku was down for 76 hours in one incident alone. And that's all before you get to the hubris of the assumption that your custom coded setup will perform better. A more sensible argument would be to move to a host with a better proven uptime record, such as Blogger (nearly 100%). Sources: http://allthingsd.com/20111215/tumblr-had-42…

For a more fair comparison, I'll point out that the "skynet" Heroku outage you cited would have caused roughly 16 hours of downtime for the particular type of application used by the OP (a static site with no database), not 76.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#83

Post by davesims »

theli0nheart wrote: post #51
PStamatiou wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No biggie, I can temporary move our blog to another host with a simple DNS change and pulling the static site from our repo. Ah, the power of jekyll!

If you're using Jekyll, why not just host with S3/Cloudfront?

Where's the subtle flaw in this suggestion?

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#84

Post by PStamatiou »

kjackson wrote: post #59

Is your price really 50 cents per print plus shipping? Costco.com will print for 12 cents per print and free shipping, are you guys going to be able to be competitive against them?

Picplum is focusing on quality rather than optimizing on price. Our prints are considerably higher quality with premium archival lustre paper (much thicker), better packaging-- We're selling an experience not cheap prints with an ecommerce add-to-cart-then-select-sizes experience.

Happy to report that price has not been an issue and we have many happy return customers. Try it out and let us know what you think! Each new account has $5 in credits.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#85

Post by abalone »

bgentry wrote: post #82
abalone wrote: post #40

Ummm.... they're hosting on HEROKU? In 2011, Tumblr was down for 42 hours. In 2011, Heroku was down for 76 hours in one incident alone. And that's all before you get to the hubris of the assumption that your custom coded setup will perform better. A more sensible argument would be to move to a host with a better proven uptime record, such as Blogger (nearly 100%). Sources: http://allthingsd.com/20111215/tumblr-had-42…

For a more fair comparison, I'll point out that the "skynet" Heroku outage you cited would have caused roughly 16 hours of downtime for the particular type of application used by the OP (a static site with no database), not 76.

Jekyll requires deploys to publish new content, and deploys were down for 76 hours. So, partial outage.

My point is if uptime is your goal you should go with a proven solution. Relying on an unproven custom setup to be 100% mistake free smacks a bit of young engineer hubris.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#86

Post by abalone »

PStamatiou wrote: post #43
abalone wrote: post #40

Ummm.... they're hosting on HEROKU? In 2011, Tumblr was down for 42 hours. In 2011, Heroku was down for 76 hours in one incident alone. And that's all before you get to the hubris of the assumption that your custom coded setup will perform better. A more sensible argument would be to move to a host with a better proven uptime record, such as Blogger (nearly 100%). Sources: http://allthingsd.com/20111215/tumblr-had-42…

No biggie, I can temporary move our blog to another host with a simple DNS change and pulling the static site from our repo. Ah, the power of jekyll!

I wonder how many hours would pass before you caught this and set up a new server? What if you're on vacation?

Honestly there's a little bit of "because I did it myself and I'm awesome it won't fail." That's hubris and very typical of young engineers.

Letting someone else manage it for you is probably the right thing for a startup to do. You just need to choose someone with a good, proven uptime record. That is what should guide your decision.. with so many things in engineering.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#87

Post by davesims »

davesims wrote: post #83
theli0nheart wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using Jekyll, why not just host with S3/Cloudfront?

Where's the subtle flaw in this suggestion?

OK, here's a hint: we're talking about where to host besides Heroku because of Heroku's 76hr outage last Spring...

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#88

Post by resnamen »

Legion wrote: post #37

So, in the last week or so of reading Hacker News, I've been told: * Don't blog on Google+ * Don't blog on Tumblr Before I start blogging, are there any others I should know about?

DIY blogging software made from scratch, in 12 hours, with node.JS and Mongo. Anything else would be too mainstream for HN.

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#89

Post by resnamen »

Somewhat related gripe: does anybody like the admin UI in Tumblr? It seems like important settings are scattered all over the place. I don't understand why the site view and admin views are two discrete locations, either. Has the core service received much love since David Karp's first cut?

Re: Startups: Don't Host Your Blog on Tumblr

#90

Post by davesims »

davesims wrote: post #87
davesims wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the subtle flaw in this suggestion?

OK, here's a hint: we're talking about where to host besides Heroku because of Heroku's 76hr outage last Spring...

Last hint: Heroku itself is on top of AWS...

OK that was actually the answer.

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