So the blog service with 99.9% uptime went down today. Here’s what they had to say:
WordPress.com is currently being targeted by a extremely large Distributed Denial of Service attack which is affecting connectivity in some cases. The size of the attack is multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second.
We are working to mitigate the attack, but because of the extreme size, it is proving rather difficult. At this time, everything should be back to normal as the attack has subsided, but we are actively working with our upstream providers on measures to prevent such attacks from affecting connectivity going forward.
We will be making our VIP sites a priority in this endeavor, and as always, you can contact us via xxxxx@wordpress.com for the latest update. We will also update this post with more information as it becomes available.
So were you affected? We were!
utterlyorange 
I didn’t notice anything at my site. In fact views today were higher than the past few days which is unusual based on my typical traffic patterns. Did this affect your visits or pageviews?
Nice website you have. I cover some of the same subjects. I’ll be looking through your stuff next. Isn’t WP great? Have you bought any upgrades? I have done the no-ad upgrade and I noticed a small traffic bump after it. I’ve only had it for about a month.
Yes, we had a few people contacting us saying that they were not able to access our page– the day after we had announced it to our client base! Talk about bad timing.
Checked out your page too- good content and nice graphics! We haven’t done any upgrades, but have looked into the no-ad upgrade. Have you noticed a difference in the amount of feedback on your page with the no- ad upgrade vs. your page before you upgraded?
Feedback and comments are a variable thing for me. At times I will get lots of them, and other times I won’t. I will say that I actually get more private email than comments. Having a blog has made me more willing to leave comments at other blogs.
Before I decided to have a blog I wouldn’t leave comments because I didn’t think I could add anything of value to the conversation. I think that you have to write your posts in a way to solicit comments. I try to share what I know and ask questions. I can’t say that doing that no-ad upgrade has resulted in more comments or private emails.
Probably the thing that has resulted in the most comments has been something unique that hasn’t been found at other places. The articles I have written that I hadn’t read anywhere else have been my most popular. For example I wrote how to create static routes in mac os x. I shared that after a client wanted to simplify how some of their workflow operated. Or if I have found partial solutions that I didn’t find anywhere else, sometimes people will comment and share what they know to fix the problem.
What seems to be death to comments at other sites is a tone of arrogance, incomplete research or hasty writing. If you are humble, well researched, unique then people seem to respond to that. Although I have created many original articles that didn’t get comments, I don’t take the apparent lack of interest personally. I think I read that there are more than 50,000 new blog posts an hour from more than an estimated 30 million blogs. In that sense, the fact that we get an audience at all is kind of amazing. Almost 95% of my traffic comes from Google and I don’t write with optimizing SEO in mind. I believe that content is king, and once I do that then I try to educate myself about SEO in general.
I think creating a community on blogs is hard. I’ve being doing my blog for almost 2 years and it hasn’t paid for itself. I continue however because it is rewarding personally for me to make connections or to continue education. Probably the most useful thing to do to create community is to give an incentive why people should care about you. I try to focus on things that I think will entertain or enlighten people. It takes a great deal of time to search, write and think about things that can be useful.
Just some ideas.
As a company, we take a responsible approach to Social Media and listen to the conversations that are taking place in the blogosphere before actively participating.
Thank you for the great comments! I will be sharing your post with our committee members. We welcome and find value in comments from experienced bloggers.
-Mary