Updates at the foot of the post.
This is a rarity but WordPress.com, the Internet’s largest blogging platform is down taking over 9.2 Million blogs with it.
![Picture 20 Wordpress.com is down, taking over 9.2 million blogs with it. [Update: Its Back Up]](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/files/2010/02/Picture-20.png "Picture 20 photo")
The good news is that the team are aware and hard at work attempting to get things back up and running. The bad news is that along with wordpress.com, the akismet spam detection plugin is also out and therefore it’s feeding time for spam bots.
There’s no word on what caused the problem but sites like TechCrunch and GigaOm (who are now members of WordPress’s VIP program) have also felt the brunt of the outage and are currently down.
As mentioned, there are over 9.2 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com (see chart below). It’s seen a meteoric rise over the past 4 years with thousands of new blogs still being added every day. According to Quantcast, around 220 million people visit one or more WordPress.com blogs every month.
![Picture 21 600x336 Wordpress.com is down, taking over 9.2 million blogs with it. [Update: Its Back Up]](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/files/2010/02/Picture-21-600x336.png "Picture 21 600x336 photo")
Update from Matt Mullenweg: founder of Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com:
“We’re investigating the source and the most expedient fix. I hope to have everyone’s blogs back and running as soon as possible.”
Update 2:
TechCrunch is (almost) back up.
Wordpress.com isn’t yet and you’re met with “WordPress.com will be back in a minute!” on its homepage.
Update 3:
WordPress.com does appear to be back up and running as fast as ever. We’ve emailed WordPress for official confirmation.
Update 4:
Official comment from Matt Mullenweg on Twitter:
“We are back running at full capacity now. Closely monitoring services for any aftershocks.”
Update 5:
Matt Mullenweg has issued a full statement on the official company blog.
The important points quoted below:
“We are still gathering details, but it appears an unscheduled change to a core router by one of our datacenter providers messed up our network in a way we haven’t experienced before, and broke the site. It also broke all the mechanisms for failover between our locations in San Antonio and Chicago. All of your data was safe and secure, we just couldn’t serve it.
We need to dig deeper and find out exactly what happened, why, and how to failover more gracefully next time and isolate problems like this so they don’t affect our other locations.”
We’ll keep you updated as and when we receive more information.
Wow, I'm surprised by this one, trying to think when was the last time I remember hearing about wordpress.com being down. Wonder if it's an attack or power/server issues.
A little surprised those tech blogs are not running their own installs of WordPress. It's the way forward to a robust, generative web!
BTW the WordPress Twitter is for wordpress.org only, the self-hosted version. You want @WordPressDotCom
Sure hosting it yourself is a guarantee for better uptime :)
Still down btw: http://www.downornot.com/wordpress
@zee, the right twitter id in this case would be @wordpressdotcom.
I believe Blogger is bigger actually
Nothing last forever or run forever. those kind of things is normal. don't you remember about google too? so no news that is down no matter what the reasons are (except the shut down) :D
Im so glad I host my own worpress site
they'll fix it. wordpress is great. check out information on our baby blankets and wedding handkerchiefs on word press blog at Li'l Inspirations – http://lil-inspirations.com/blog
Relieved to know I'm not imagining the problem and that it's not my computer. Those guys must be frantic. This so rarely happens (I've been blogging with them for about 8 years).
It's actually @wordpressdotcom
So much for Cloud Computing. Come visit Nerd Vittles and see how easy it is to run your own, non-stop WordPress site. 5+ years and counting. :-)
It's funny. I noticed whenever a site goes down they always say that the webmasters are aware of it and are working real hard to fix it. I think that can go without saying now. No site is ever going to say, “We are not aware of the issue and are not working very hard to resolve it.”
Sorry for this, just realized it and must say it.
Yeah, rats … Just when my SEO Alexa and quantcast rankings were srtating to shine :-)
Good thing this isn't a wordpress.com blog :-)
It is really sad that Techcrunch faces the heat every time even last time Techcrunch was down for sometimes.
Sad to see to many axes being ground.
And just think about all the blogs running intense debate they can't even comment on it. Thats why I don't believe in free sub domain hosted sites.
Wow, thats pretty scary dude. I mean like WOW.
Jess
http://www.privacy-tools.de.tc
Wow…. that is a monster downage.
Back up already? Guess they have good techs on hand.
I saw what you say as you can see: http://einger.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/wordpres…
MuLai Pans lagiii
It is ironic that wordpress would go down the moment I just defended it before a group of Blogpost fans !! Glad nothing serious happened. feel bad for TechCrunch and Gigaom though ! VIP Program ???
WordPress.com, the Internet’s largest blogging platform is down taking over 9.2 Million blogs with it which is awesome.The article is good & helpful as well.I like the article and hope to see more of such articles.
Internet is scary.
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(Not Only Ubuntu Blog)
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Server down times can happen when you have a self hosted blog as well, especially if you are hosted in shared hosting.
That's amazing…. and funny!
This is all the more reason why it is great to have a self-hosted installation of WordPress for times such as this.
…although I must say when Gmail goes down, I become a nervous wreck.
Great article, really enjoyed the read.
Your girl Mary :)
It's great! Thank goodness for WordPress being back up, I can go back to my online job!
wat the hell is this ..thank god the data is stored nw..there so many blog on the wordpress and i like some them also
Its an informative post and interesting as well..
There are over 9.2 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com.Thousands of new blogs still being added every day.
Great work done.
Everyone is vulnerable to some degree or another.
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LMAO that had to suck. Bad for business on their part as well. Maybe more people will think of getting hosting? I hear e-starr.com is pretty awesome.
even though they might be doing some upgrades or migrations but they should be providing alternative services to ensure no downtime…. this is terrible!
WordPress is great. There are over 9.2 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com. Thousands of new blogs still being added every day. Great work done.
I just started using WordPress and have yet to figure out is it just an online service or can you download the app and create docs/presentations and then publish them? Anybody with suggestions please let me know. – info@elccentral.com – Thanks!
Word press is just superb.The Internet’s largest blogging platform is down taking over 9.2 Million blogs with it which is awesome.Simply great!!
I noticed whenever a site goes down they always say that the webmasters are aware of it and are working real hard to fix it. I think that can go without saying now.
This is all the more reason why it is great to have a self-hosted installation of WordPress for times such as this.
I think that can go without saying now. No site is ever going to say, “We are not aware of the issue and are not working very hard to resolve it.”
I love your blog. I’ve added it to my favorite bookmarks and subscribed in a reader.
Looking forward to reading more posts.
Thanks.
WordPress is an open source CMS, often used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL.Used by over 300 of the 10,000 biggest websites, WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today.
……..so hoping it will be restore asap
Thanks Really Cool
Time is money, when a site is down its not earning money and thats how the bills are paid… If your site earns you 12 cents a month then a few hours of down time won’t cost you much, when you make real $$ from it then every minute counts (and it makes the site look bad to its visitors)
this is great. word press is increasing a lot.
the wordpress is growing a lot day by day. great post. thanks a lot for sharing this one.
Really BIG News for word press and continue getting grow.
word press rocks. They are doing real good. nice post.
go wordpress!
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cant believe word press is down :(
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this