Yes, I do realize that www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com is down.
And I apologize for any inconvenience this is causing. I am in contact with my hosting provider, and have been having to wait 2-4 hours for a response all day long. They keep telling me things that are wrong, and I keep telling them that I’ll fix them but that I can’t do so until they give me permissions to my brushes folder back… and so on and so forth.
It’s driving me nuts.
I feel like, with 6000+ visitors a day, I have a responsibility to keep this website up. And so I feel awful when it’s down like this, since it apparently has been since yesterday (I didn’t receive an email when they took it down, either - I had to find out via email from all of you!)
I may be having to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server, or something else that will allow for the kind of usage that this site has.
Most of the problem seems to have come from one single IP, which I have since blocked. The cause for this problem was 250+ simultaneous Apache connections, and many/most of them seem to have come from this one IP. I’m not even sure what would cause that kind of a thing. I’m going to be looking for some kind of a script that limits the number of simultaneous Apache requests that come from a single IP (I know that some blogs have plugins that do it, so it must be possible), so that this doesn’t happen again.
In the meantime, please sit back and have some patience while I bang my head on the table about a bajillion times whilst waiting for a response to my ticket (no phone support on the weekends = teh suckage). Anybody know of a great web host that has 24/7 technical support via PHONE? And that has VPS and/or dedicated servers? 
If I can’t get this resolved over the weekend because of how slow the ticket system is, I will DEFINITELY have it back up on Monday. This’ll be the longest my website’s ever been down. 
Thanks for your patience, guys!
In the meantime, there is another place that you can download my brushes!
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Someone may have been trying to automate downloading the whole brush collection or or something like that. That’s the sort of thing that the host should be blocking at the IP level or with other bandwidth management methods. Not blocking access to your site for everyone (you don’t have control over how people download from the site).
If you’re interested in recommendation on a host email me; it appears the transition would be fairly simple. Just a site wide back up on your current host. Then they will roll everything back out on their servers.
Thanks for all the time you do put into this site.
That is EXACTLY how I felt, and EXACTLY what I told them, in fact! Here’s a quote:
I mean, there’s so much that I feel should be done BEFORE you get to a point where you shut someone’s website off. I have a responsibility to my users to have a website that doesn’t go down for days at a time. I never received an email about this, either, btw… I had to learn it from my users. And my email IS correct in my profile.
Could you please provide me with a report stating what my website’s CPU/RAM usage has been over the past few months to a year? I’ll be willing to bet that while there might be spikes, the average usage for my website is quite acceptable and that this is just a one time occurrence. This isn’t the way to treat a one-time problem.
I am definitely looking for recommendations for hosts. One that won’t shut off my website at the smallest problem. One that will look into and fix the problem at hand (and it NOTHING else can be done, turning off the website temporarily is a last resort), then notify me so that I can deal with it further. One that can work with me, if they see that my website is becoming too popular for the current plan that I’m with, and can look over my history and tell me what they think is right for me.
One with some common sense and good business tactics, in other words.
PLEASE… recommend away. 
*puts pillow under your head so that you don\’t hurt it whilst headdessking*
You\’re kickass. That\’s all I gotta say
I\’ll ask some of my tech buddies if they know of some good webhosting servers. Rob seems to have it under control which is le awesome. Thank you for your attention to this!! You\’re totally awesome!
Thanks so much, Megz! I appreciate the encouragement, and could use it about now.
sounds like either they were doing a batch download or you were under a DOS attack. Demand of service attack by some hackers if so blocking the IP adress wont work as they often use various computers and accounts that they have gotten control of via illegal means meaning tech term zombie pcs. very nasty. let me know what kind of bandwidth you need to cover a month and i’ll check my web hosting lists according to the space you need and will require.
Yeah, I’m fairly sure it was a DoS attack. I have the IP blocked, just in case it wasn’t… and if they have problems, they can just email me and explain themselves and I’ll remove it.
I need to look up all that bandwidth and CPU usage stuff, and I’ll get back with you if I decide I need to switch hosts. Thanks, Robin!
Hey! I talked with my tech buddies and the one said
http://www.mediatemple.net/
was pretty generous. Give them a try.
Thanks, Megz. I’ll check into it.
ugh that was no fun for you! Hang in there.
If you still are hunting try siteground ..haven’t had problems in two years i was with them and pricewise they are great i think anyways. here’s a link
Web hosting services by SiteGround
Thank you for ALL your hard work!! I love your brushes (as well as other items) and check them out often for projects I am working on.
I love that you give us the tools to design and use our own creativity!!!
I digital scrapbook for my personal stuff.
I also work in the digital processing of weddings and digital wedding albums.
It is so great I don’t have to worry about “getting them all”
because I know you are dedicated to your loyal followers!!!
Anyways……..just thought I’d drop you a note!
THanks again, Joy
Thank you very much, Joy! I appreciate the kind words and you taking the time to drop a note!
Also glad to hear that the brushes are coming in handy for you! Feel free to let me know if you ever have any ideas/requests.
Oh dear - I didn’t know that this has happened to you last month. I am so sorry that you web-host shut down your site. That is just awful.
I’m afraid so! Hopefully it’ll be all sorted out now, but I do still plan on upgrading or switching hosts. We shall see!