You might have noticed that I had several test posts today. Normally, I do testing on a local server, but the issue I was trying to track down was a problem with my webhost. I had no other option so I said, F it. We’ll do it live.

All humor aside, the problem I was having was that YOURLS, my URL shortener that posts new blog posts automatically to twitter with my novelty shep.in urls, was not working properly. It was not able to actually write the URL to the YOURLS database. Basically, this is because Host Gator has mod_security enabled. In the past this hasn’t really been an issue because they would just whitelist the applicable rules. Unfortunately, the rules they had whitelisted were no longer working and YOURLS was failing.

After several trouble tickets back and forth, I finally decided it wasn’t worth it to host my URL shortening domains (shep.in and tvtalk.it for Let’s Talk About TV) with Hostgator. It was becoming too much of a hassle to ensure that everything was working properly. Even though I usually love Host Gator, I decided to move these domains to A Small Orange. Their Tiny Plan, which is all I need for URLs that redirect, costs only $25 a year. Well worth not having the headaches of making sure the mod_security rules continue to work.

The only thing left to do is wait for GoDaddy to change the nameservers on tvtalk.it (it has to be accepted by an Italian registrar before the changes can be made, which takes up to 5 business days). Actually, I will have to wait longer. Because I was not aware there was this waiting period, I changed the nameservers to A Small Orange’s. I’ve since decided to sign up at Zone Edit and use their nameservers, that way if something like this ever happens again I can just change the A record for the domain. So that can be up to an additional 5 business days.

So, sorry for the tests. I believe I have everything figured out fine now and you should not see anymore test posts in your feeds and/or twitter.