We (@pagely) did get a run on tickets today about problems related to this event. In every case it was site specific - 3rd party .js script (served from s3) in header loaded as 'blocking' which when failed to load.. failed the page. Themes, plugins, and customer code not following best practices of loading js non-blocking.

We do not utilize s3 in such a way that this event materially affected our operational capacity. We store backups on s3, which we were unable to do for a period of time, however we still created those backups locally and the system simply 'retried' the push to s3 until it succeeded.

I'll be the first to say - hosting ain't easy. You make your choices and have to live with them. We are 100% AWS and today's event did not affect us operationally. That is to say the next AWS event may - if it was an EC2 outage = bad day for us.

What we always say though, and was proven today, if AWS fails - the whole/most of the internet fails - in that context, well 'the Internet' is 'downforeveryonenotjustme'

I rather align our services with someone (AWS) that has the most pressure to perform than a random that no one else relies on. This has proven out over the last decade.. yes AWS issues are massive and widespread, but in context of the shear scale of the operation are very rare in occourance. In other words reliability is pretty damn amazing for it's size - when smaller, much smaller, systems cannot boast the same level of reliability.

James at wpninja's should be getting an email shortly from our staff - first thanking him for his continuing business, love you man, and secondly outlining the js blocking issue I described above.

Viva WordPress!