Not that anyone will really notice considering we only changed one word.

The site move went well, so well I only consumed one can of Diet Mt. Dew as opposed to downtimes at the office where I put down two 20 oz bottles of the nectar from heaven. Anyway, I am sure you are brimming with questions so I’ll answer a few.

What changed besides the name?

The underlying web host the site runs on has changed. As most of you are aware the site could be slow when traffic was higher. For the past almost four years the blog had been running on a shared web host. It is now on a virtual private server which means we have dedicated access to a portion of the memory, disk space and CPU.

So will that solve the site slowness?

We will find out tonight. On the new host I will have more control over server settings and the ability to monitor how just our traffic effects the server.

Why did you change the name?

It made sense at this point to drop the “Fan” from the name to make the blog looks less like a fan site. It has always been our goal to run this site as a source of news and analysis in a professional manner.

If the name of the site has changed what do we call you?

Since the site is no longer Tar Heel Fan and we have multiple authors anyway, I will be changing my byline from Tar Heel Fan to my real name. C.Michael and Doc will keep their names as is.

Any chance we can get our avatars back?

Well, I probably owe you that much but instead of allowing custom ones here let me point you to Gravatar. All you need to do is register there with the same email address you use on the blog then upload an avatar there and it will appear on the blog.

Anything else?

The new URL is www.tarheelblog.com. If you access this site via an RSS feed you will need to update your feed reader accordingly.

As will all transitions of this nature there may be minor blips. Please let me know via the contact form. Feedback from you, the reader, is extremely important in maintaining a stable web site. Don’t assume I know something is broken, please let me know so I can look into it.

Now that we have that out of the way it is time to get ready for UNC-Duke tonight and to do check out this video of former UNC players and coaches in this “I Am A Tar Heel” video.

I am moving to a new web host in hopes that will alleviate some of the site slowness, especially on game days. As a result I will need to bring the site down and lock the database so I can move it. This is expected to take a few hours to complete during which time the blog will unavailable.

Thank you for your patience and your readership.

For the superstitious among us I would like to point out the last time I took the family to Disney was in late November 2008. That week UNC played Michigan St. and UNC Asheville. This past week I went to Disney and UNC played Michigan St. and UNC Asheville. That can only mean UNC is winning the national title. Glad to know UNC’s title hopes hinge on my vacation plans.

Anyway, a big thank you to Doc and C.Michael for holding down the fort. Three years ago it was a week long open thread. Now, with their help the blog doesn’t skip a beat.

So anything good happen while I was gone?

The first issue we were seeing was a message popping up which said “Error connecting to the database.” This message has been happening awhile at seemingly short and random times. The only definitive cause I could find was the routine database backups being run by the web host. As I began digging into the database last night to see if there was anything amiss, I discovered the problem. The database has taken on Dwight Stewart-esque proportions. Basically it had grown to 1.7 GB which is a huge chunk of data. The culprit was one table in the database attached to a web stats plugin I installed a long time ago and ultimately forgot about. The bloated database obviously made the site slower. I removed the plugin and the table attached to it, as well as cleaning up other unused plugins and database entries. The database is now a nice and tidy 80 MB.  Basically I reduced the size of the database by 96%. Now that the database is a much more manageable size the site should respond as fast as network latency or your respective system will allow.

The other issue we were seeing was related to the upgrade to WordPress 3.1 which I did earlier in the week.  There were multiple reports on the WordPress forums that 3.1 sucked in ways that cannot be expressed in polite company. I did tweaks a few things based on suggestions made in the forums and it appears the site is more stable than it was over the past couple of days.

If you encounter any issues reaching the site please let me know. In most cases, issues reaching any website are by and large on the client end. However if you have issues reaching THF or something does not work that appears to work on other websites then please let me know so I can take a look at it.

Once again, thank you for your readership. Growing pains are tough sometimes but it is certainly better than the alternative.

First of all, many thanks and my utmost gratitude to Doc and C.Michael. Not only have they raised the quality of content around here but their contributions have been a huge help to me, especially when the NCAA investigation was going on.

Just a quick look at the overall numbers:

Total hits: 1,422,617
Page Views: 2,786,841
Posts: 3304
Comments: 61,138

Let’s just say the past year has been very good in terms of THF’s growth and visibility.  It took almost four years and half years to reach one million hits which happened at the end of July, 2010. Since then THF has added almost half that traffic in just six months. That is a ton of growth to say the least.

Those numbers would not be possible if you, the readers, did not keep showing up to read what we write. Quality content brings quality readers and top notch comments. I still maintain THF readers are the smartest UNC fans on the internet. In that respect I think the overall success of this blog can be owed in part to the contributors but also to the readers who drive the discussion to that higher level.

So, thank you to the regular readers and anyone else who has had a part in making this blog successful over the past five years.

From all of us here at THF, we hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving and if anyone receives any visions about UNC basketball during a tryptophan induced coma, feel free to share them.

I will be on vacation this week so Doc is minding the store in the meantime. Of course the fact I’ll be on the beach most of the day and largely cut off from the world(how do people live like this?!?!) means the NCAA is totally going to release their findings on the investigation into UNC football.

Now, I am well aware that taking 4.5 years to reach 1,000,000 means THF is small potatoes and very much a niche blog. We get some attention from fellow ACC bloggers and local media in Raleigh but for the most part our footprint is rather microscopic in the world of blogging. Just as a point of comparison Deadspin does a million hits every 40 hours or so.  However, against other ACC blogs I think THF holds its own fairly well.

It is still a milestone nonetheless.  It means that over the course of the past four plus years people have come to read what was posted here and they liked it so much they came back, then they started commenting and it has been in a mode of perpetual growth since.

So our appreciation and thanks to readers who breathe life into this blog with their comments and regular visits.

A big thank you to Doc and C.Michael for coming on board as contributors and enhancing the blog by bringing their opinions and voice to this site. Thanks also to those who have written special pieces along the way.

A shout out to local media folks like Joe Ovies, Adam Gold(99.9 The Fan), Joe Gilgio(ACC Now), Jim Young(ACC Sports) and fellow ACC bloggers for including us in their blogrolls and linking to the posts we write.

And no internet milestone would be complete without thanking Al Gore for inventing it. Thanks Al!

The weather, at least in North Carolina and on the east coast promises to be nice and I usually take a break following the season.

Enjoy your weekend.

Go Mountaineers! Spartans! Bulldogs!

If you are bored and really don’t want to think about this season anymore, feel free to climb all the way back in the archives and take in a few posts on the good old days when UNC was winning and what not.