Hack Attacks
We were there. 2014 saw many on line entities hit by massive “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks. In these cases hackers target the web servers with heavy false traffic in order to bog down the performance of the target servers with the goal being to bring down the servers and the target entity. One of the businesses hit by these attacks was Typepad which hosts Old Ones Dream. For several months, starting in late March 2014, production was adversely effected and traffic was slim to none at times. Page views that result from the search engines appeared to dry up at times.
Serious time and energy was given to consideration of whether to move Old Ones Dream from Typepad to Wordpress. I finally felt comfortable that the features that caused me to choose Typepad over Wordpress still held. No one is entirely safe from hackers and Typepad seemed to be winning the battle. It appears that is still true. It was a painful and distracting time.
Life Happens
Focus lost is hard to regain. Writers block is a high brow name for just depression. So all of the distraction for the rest of the year was just your normal garden variety. Life happens. Trapeze accidents, hack attacks and a pilgrims way, and we live it so shut up and write. My reading didn’t suffer - there was always something that had to be read right now. So for now I have decided to write first and read later - kind of like the “fire! .. ready, aim” approach to shooting.
Search and Ye Shall Find
The posts that were in most demand from the search engines in 2014 follow:
1. German Prisoners of War in South Carolina is the leader again with over 12% of all of the page views for the year. This post also attracted the most reader comments and the most offering of additional information from readers.
2. Small Grain Harvest in the 1940s tells tales of fieldwork on the newly mechanized farm in the days just after World War II.
3. The Best I Ever Had: Scalloped Oysters is a seasonal favorite and was the most requested page as Thanksgiving and Christmas approached.
4. Our Berkshire Pigs Go to Georgia for Sunday School is a distant fourth but that is an honorable mention. It is a true story about a tricky business man and some pigs traveling in style.
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If you would like to see my collection of Carolina Lowcountry memories—"Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork," you can view the book trailer here, and see the book page here on the publisher's website. The book is also available from Amazon, B&N, and your independent local bookseller.
