Server storage issue led website to be offline

March 2, 2026 45

NOKOMIS — As some may have noticed on Monday, they might have been unable to check for the latest news on the Heartland Newsfeed website.

The website reportedly showed a database connection issue at around 6 a.m. local time.

“This was a bit abnormal,” stated Jake Leonard, executive editor-in-chief of Heartland Newsfeed. “We have situations where the website is temporarily taken offline due to billing issues, but that’s usually 2-3 times a year. We’re usually pretty good at paying on time.”

But as Leonard would discover, it was initially a networking issue on the side of web host Hivelocity. However, further investigation would later reveal a double backup of the website.

There were two active backups of the website: one backup on February 15 with a size of 46 GB, and the latest backup on Sunday at a size of 49 GB.

“I didn’t realize that I had backups so close to each other,” said Leonard in correspondence with Hivelocity technical support.

Sunday’s backup remains the only active backup as of publication, and as of 3:30 p.m. local time, the website is once again live.

“We’ll just have to be a little more proactive on these backups,” Leonard said. “We literally lost a news day because double backups had our website offline.”

Limited news operations will continue through 8 p.m. Monday, with the publication of some news content going live late. A full news day will resume at 8 a.m. Tuesday, barring any breaking news.

“We hate instances where this happens,” Leonard added. “We appreciate the patience of those who were working with us throughout today.”