So I finally figured out what’s been slowing down the server that this blog runs on. Evidently, some spammers had been using the sendmail software as a relay for sending out their junk and the volume of spam was slowing down my computer (and my Internet connection). In order to stop the spam, I shut down Sendmail. (I know I could have configured it to make it more secure, but that would have required learning how to set it up etc. and I just didn’t have the time.)
Of course, shutting down Sendmail also shut down comment notifications (since it relied on that to send out those emails), so I had to spend some time figuring out how to get them back. I ended up going with a for-pay email service. I don’t know if it will work out in the long run because depending on how many emails I send out it could get very expensive. If and when I move to a dedicated hosting service (okay, “when”), that should fix that problem but until then…
By the way, in a completely unrelated vein, if anyone would like to click on the “Donate” button at the top left, I would greatly appreciate the help in defraying the costs of running this site.
Oh and thank you all for your patience as I went through the process of upgrading the server and figuring out why this thing was so slow. If it was frustrating to me, I’m sure it was frustrating to you.
