The best part of recorded-setting traffic at Weblogs, Inc. this week…

The best part of watching Weblogs, Inc. crush all their traffic records this week is that my partner Brian Alvey was doing the following (see photo below) while it was happening.

Now, to put this in perspective Peter Rojas and the Engadget team were able to shut down our servers the first five or six times we covered a major event. Then we moved to AOL and–without placing blame–they couldn’t keep the servers up and running during Peter and Ryan’s major event coverage.

So, Brian’s team and AOL’s team spent a ton of effort building out the Blogsmith software and servers (which AOL bought this past fall). Thanks to TMZ’s crushing traffic (and Bankoff’s wisdom for creaking TMZ and putting it on blogsmith!) the system got stress tested hard. Think: Mel Gibson drunkness breaking, Britney Spears forgetting to wear some article of clothing, etc. The system got strong as celebrities acted like idiots celebrities.

This week the system did basically the traffic that AOL.COM does–without even sputter. Blogsmith is the best blog platform out there–much better than WordPress or SixApart’s offerings (no offense–that’s just an objective fact :- ) –and I really hope AOL gives it to the public for free at some point. It’s a gold mine their sitting on right now, and if they gave it out for free they would crush SixApart in a year (Ron Grant are you listening!??!)

Anyway, back to the point… Brian suffered and suffered through these outages. He had me hitting the roof, he had Peter and Ryan depressed and demotivated, and most of the time the problems had nothing to do with his code but rather the server infrastructure.

This week Brian went skiing with his family for the first time–and his first time in 15 years–and he is back baby!!! Of course, when we were running Weblogs, Inc. together I went snowboarding more in the past three year than I had in my life. I went to Sundance every year, the top conferences in the industry, etc. and he suffered at home. Now it’s his turn to hit the slops knowing he built a kickass platform, and most importantly a team he trust.

I know I speak for everyone at Weblogs, Inc. in congratulating Brian on a) building a great team, b) building a great platform and c) taking back his life!!!