Missing comments, bouncing e-mails

Today I heard from yet another reader of this site who had tried unsuccessfully to post a comment. It was a lengthy one, and after he posted it, it vanished.

This wasn't a case of a comment being post and me deciding not to approve it; the comment didn't get posted to the database, probably because a network timeout interrupted the transaction.

I occasionally hear from other readers that e-mails to me get bounced back. Based on the error messages I see, this too appears to be a problem with the network connection timing out in mid-transaction, probably because the computer which hosts BatesLine, which is shared with several other websites. My suspicion is that the server is overloaded.

Sometime soon I intend to move to a new hosting provider, but probably not until after the election. In the meantime, if you have a comment, especially if it's a long one, copy and paste the text into an e-mail message to blog at batesline dot com, so that it has two chances to get to me. And if you post a comment and you don't see a "comment pending" message, let me know that, too. It probably means there was a network timeout and the comment wasn't posted. Likewise if an e-mail message bounces back, give it another try in an hour or so, and e-mail me a copy of the bounce message. That will help me document the problem for my hosting provider, and maybe I can get it fixed without changing providers. Thanks.