SORRY FOR THE DOWNTIME, LOYAL READERS

The Palmetto Scoop’s addition to Google News has largely been a blessing for this website — bringing in thousands of extra readers and spreading the joy of South Carolina news and politics all over the world.

But yesterday, it was sort of a curse.

TPS was one of the first Internet sites to post photos of Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentinian mistress of Gov. Mark Sanford.

About five minutes after they were posted, the story shot straight to the top of Google when her name was searched.

And roughly five minutes after that, the massive influx of traffic almost irreparably fried our host’s servers, which had already been lagging due to the non-stop coverage of the Sanford disappearance and affair.

So after a long night and early morning repairing the site and moving to a more powerful server, TPS is back up.