Earlier this year my website traffic reached almost 1 million unique visitors per month, which meant that 50,000 people were coming onto the site each day for healthy gluten-free recipes, lifestyle tips and my musings on the Paleo Diet.
When I started elanaspantry.com, I had not envisioned, or prepared for such large amounts of traffic. In the technology industry, building a website for heavy use is referred to as “scaling for growth.”
The site began to fail repeatedly in early February as traffic continued to climb. I spoke with technology people in Boulder and was told the site did not have enough server power. Two local website design firms advised me to migrate the site to Amazon Web Services (AWS) –that turned out to be a big mistake. By Easter weekend elanaspantry.com was down for 50 hours straight. That was when things started to fall apart. I did not handle the stress well, taking it all into my body –we’ll get to that part later.
After the Easter weekend outage, I repointed my site’s hosting from AWS back to Media Temple and still, the outages continued. I was on an 8 GB server using only 4GB of power. At this point I figured out that server power had nothing to do with my website outages.
Due to my failure from its inception to scale my website for large volumes of traffic, I had a poorly built database that could not “talk” to the servers my host provided. How did I figure this out? I spent hours online researching web development, learning the right questions to ask of the technology people that were helping me.
Funny enough, this process was similar to my health journey, which began in the early 1990’s. In order to heal myself, I had to take charge, stop abdicating my power to “authority” (i.e., doctors), and know how to interact with such health professionals so that they could be my allies. And once again, it was my job to make this power my ally, rather than listen to it blindly or alienate myself from it.
I learned a lot more than I wanted to about technology, web hosting, and scaling a site to make it operational. I also learned that taking much-needed breaks from the virtual world is a very healthy thing for me.
At first when my site failed I was so stressed I began to have a physical reaction –I seem to somaticize just about everything. However, eventually I came around to seeing the prolonged website outage as an enforced sabbatical. I grew accustomed to the long breaks and became bored. For me being bored is a fantastic thing. It means I have spaciousness, and that is where the healing happens. I used this time to reconnect with my body in a kinder and more thoughtful way. The persistent website outages allowed me to create new habits for healing that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the space to investigate.
During my “sabbatical” I also spent a lot less time working on cookie recipes. Lately, I’ve been cooking more vegetables and making desserts with even less sweetener. I’m really looking forward to sharing these ultra-healthy real foods Paleo recipes with all of you.
In the end, through the fantastic folks at WordPress VIP (a high end hosting service) I found a web development company that rewrote the database of my website and restored it to health.
So my When Things Fall Apart post is also an I’m Back post. I didn’t want to hop on the site and post some healthy sugar-free lemonade recipe and pretend that nothing happened –you know that’s not my style. As I have in the past, I want to connect with all of you, my dear readers.
Now I’d like to hear from you. Was it frustrating having my website go down several hundred times last spring? What will you make now that it’s back up and running smoothly? What are you looking for from elanaspantry.com next? And of course, what is your best healing strategy when times get a little tough? How do you create healthy new habits?
Finally, thanks for your patience and continued support, I really appreciate it, and all of you as well!
Ginger says
Glad you got your website under control and also glad you got the break you deserve. You are such an inspiration. My husband was diagnosed with ulcerative colitits back in the fall and was hospitalized. It may have actually turned out to be a blessing because it seems he had been misdiagnosed with auto-immune hepatitis before that and took several medications for years and years that were extremely hard on his body. Now, those medications have been reassessed (new doctor) and he is slowly regaining his health.
You have no idea what a blessing your recipes and information have been to us as we work to eat healthier and try to avoid inflammatory foods. We have tried to make changes gradually, replacing one food with another and then seeing what works and what doesn’t.
Look forward to trying your new recipes and thank you for all you do.
Pauline Musher says
Elana, I had bought your book so I didn’t relay on your web site. Never knew anything was wrong. I will always be a faithful follower of yours. What I would like to see, less sugar or sweeteners. I’m trying to be sugar free as well. Thank you for all your wonderful help!
Me (@musicgirl77) says
Glad you’re back. I started coming back more regularly for recipes and thought it was my computer ….I’ve been having computer problems too. But hubby and I have been forced to change eating habits even further due to insurance “lifestyle coaches”. It’s challenging to think about cooking completely differently again, after finally grasping the glutenfree need for myself 7 yrs ago. Between the two, we are trying to eat and cook COMPLETELY differently than we grew up with and being in our 50’s, that’s challenging. VERY challenging. Our 24 yr old is finishing college and still living at home and even though I tried to keep things as “normal” for him as possible, as he isn’t the least bit overweight, etc., he was paying attention and watching. He began reading up on the Paleo diet and told me he’d like to give that a try. I told him it should fit in pretty well with what we’re trying to do, although we don’t do many of the desserts and such….just whole foods mostly, and that I know just the website to get recipes and help from! Then comes my computer trouble, your website problems. And NOW we can try to bring it all together!! I’m excited for our next steps.
Becky says
Happy you are back and looking forward to less dessert recipes and more good for you items. Personally I like interesting appetizer recipes to bring to parties that are healthy and interesting. Of course I love your desserts but my 58 year old body doesn’t need them.
Jan Johnson says
I am glad you are back and glad you took a break! You have so many recipes here that it is no problem waiting for new ones! I use your books and come here to look for new recipes as I wasn’t here from the beginning. I wish the photos in your older recipes were pinnable, though, as I cannot pin the older ones as it says “image not valid” or something like that. But that’s okay! It is worth finding a way to keep up with them. Glad everything finally worked out with your website!
ttinmo says
You are AWESOME and so is your website. I love your recipes, but your health is more important. Maybe you could set up a schedule of regular breaks and tell your followers in advance. I really don’t think you would lose readers. You are worthy of the wait, I’m sure everyone would agree.
Julie says
I have most of your books and somehow I didn’t notice the outages! Glad you are back and better than ever!!
debra says
Love your site and yummy recipes! So glad your back!! :)
Katrina says
<3 I think you handled it well, because I didn't really have a clue. I still saw posts now and then, questions, reposts of recipes you like on Facebook, so I didn't really realize (though I did see you mention it, too). I already have my favorite recipes of yours available in my files rather than always relying on going to your blog, so I was good. ;) Glad you're back though!
Molly says
This may be your best post yet! Just kidding….your recipes are great and worth the wait! Honesty is wonderful and very appreciated.